Service

Service organization has a history starting from 1997. Organization has been founded to create and train people without a permanent job to maintain and de-velop their work skills further. Personnel are mainly long-term unemployed peo-ple. It is very important for this organization that it has good relations with local authorities, companies and people around the area. Municipality purchases the services provided and related to employed people. Therefore commitment from the municipality can be considered very high and very confidential.

Organization is divided into different departments; technical, handicraft and ser-vice, where supervisors are in charge of their own function. The technical de-partment is located in a different building approximately two kilometres from the handicraft and service departments. These departments provide services and products to customer based on customer orders. Orders are tailor-made according to customer specifications or services provided through cafeteria and hostel.

Organization is providing hostel accommodation, cafeteria services, tailor ser-vices and technical serser-vices, for example fixing furniture, bicycles etc. The main target for this organization is to serve customers who here include external cus-tomers who are actually buying services and internal cuscus-tomers who are the per-sonnel working in the organization. This is very important due to the fact that organization’s main purpose is to keep young unemployed persons trained and updated, to maintain their skills so that they are able to move to working life in future.

Organization has and must have very tight and good relationships to the munici-pality. This is because the municipality purchases all employment services from this organization. Also, as the organization is arranging many events, local com-panies and institutions must be well known for the organisation to be able to co-operate with them successfully. Physically organization is divided into two build-ings, one being the technical department and the other the service and handicraft department.

Decision-making is to a great extent based on authorities; management is really in the key role. This is mainly due to the fact that management holds and takes care of all issues related to funding. Therefore strict frames are set by the management.

Human relations within organization can be assumed to be good, but when au-thorities exist, a more neutral attitude is common. Still we can assume that per-sonnel are quite committed to the organization on the level of management. This can be said due to the fact that there are not so many other opportunities for peo-ple to find similar jobs. Equal commitment can be assumed to be valid on the em-ployee level. On the other hand, often jobs are temporary and this may have a negative influence on the commitment of the personnel.

Assumption related to the human role that the role of human relations in the work environment is quite stable. This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that the whole organization is aiming to develop and maintain skills of the personnel so that they can be more skilful and motivated than they are when arriving at organi-zation.

Relationships between people can be assumed to be very equal and based on co-operation. This is due to the fact that most of the people/personnel are having a same kind of situation concerning their jobs. The fact that the organization is lo-cated in a small town also means that there are closer relationships between peo-ple as they all know each other in the civil life.

Considering the organization’s cultural perspective, there can be found some is-sues which may have an effect on different sectors within organization. The first issue could be the wide service and product range that the organization is provid-ing. A small organization is serving a very wide range of customers inside the organization. External customers also consist of a very wide range of different type of institutions, consumers and companies. This kind of mix with different customer relationships may cause plenty of misunderstanding and raise issues where different parts of organization are not acting as they should in terms of cus-tomer service. It seems that sub-cultures may very clearly seem to be settling within departments operating in the technical and service areas as they are in dif-ferent buildings. When these difdif-ferent cultures are facing each other in organiza-tion, different perspectives are likely to occur.

Different approaches to the quality perspectives and attitudes may also reflect the issue that most employees are long-term unemployed and most blue-collar work-ers have only a short term contract while supervisors have a permanent contract.

This may have an influence on commitment so that some are more committed to the organization than others.

Another gap-causing issue may rise from the management. As there is quite a clear separation between the white-collar and blue-collar workers and between the permanent and short term contract-based employed, it can be assumed that some friction on management and employee levels may be found. This may actualize because responsibility is very clearly on the management level, and due to the short term contracts of workers and supervisors, there is no real possibility to give more responsibility or to continuously share responsibility down in the organiza-tion. This may be frustrating for everyone in the organizaorganiza-tion.