Published February 6, 2012
by afdubreu
Dr. Mari Kira, Aalto University School of Science, Finland
Date: Thursday February 16, 2012
Time: 10 am - 12 pm
Location: HNES 142, Keele Campus, York University
For those of you who cannot attend in person, you can also take part in this event online at http://connect.yorku.ca/marikira/
TALK ABSTRACT
My research and the present talk focus on two interconnected topics: sustainable work organizations and sustainable work. The perspectives I take relate to organizational change and development for sustainability, and the design and development of work for sustainability.
Sustainable work organizations seek to maintain their adaptive capacities and dynamically reach their operational or business goals in a manner that contributes to the regeneration, rather than the consumption, of various resources engaged in and affected by their operations. The unwavering goal of protecting and regenerating various resources is a value-based hallmark of a sustainable work organization. In my talk, I will present some key findings relating to the leadership and organizational development for work-organizational sustainability based on a recent anthology (Docherty et al., Eds, 2009) and on-going European research on sustainability (Kira & Lifvergren, 2011).
The sustainability literature has traditionally considered three important resources – social, economic, and ecological resources. However, my aim is to understand how also the personal and professional resources of employees may be supported to develop in sustainable work (Kira et al., 2010) such that employees’ capacity for well-being and for making a positive contribution through their work strengthens. I draw from recent theories in the positive organizational scholarship to discuss how work experiences may promote the development of human resources at work. Especially, I will focus on employees’ possibilities to work in alignment with their work identities as a source of human sustainability (Kira et al., 2011).
References
Docherty, P., Kira, M. & Shani, A.B. (Eds., 2009), Creating Sustainable Work Systems, Developing Social Sustainability, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
Kira, M. & Lifvergren, S. (2011), Sowing the seeds for sustainability. In: I. Ehnert, W. Harry and K. Zink (Eds), Handbook of Sustainability and Human Resource Management, forthcoming.
Kira, M., Balkin, D.B. & San, E. (2011), Authentic work and organizational change: Some longitudinal evidence from a merger. Journal of Change Management, forthcoming.
Kira, M., Eijnatten, F.M. Van & Balkin D.B. (2010), Crafting sustainable work: Development of personal resources. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23, 5, 616-632.
About Mari Kira
Mari Kira is an Academy Research Fellow at Aalto University School of Science, Finland. At Aalto, she carries out research and coordinates a research project on sustainable work systems. The questions she approaches in her research are: What does the sustainability of human resources at work mean and how can it be promoted in contemporary organizations? How does human sustainability connect with an organization’s overall sustainability orientation? At the moment, she is especially interested in studying the role of work and organizational identities in connection with human and work-system sustainability. Mari has been studying human and social sustainability in working life for already over a decade. Earlier, she worked at University of Kassel in Germany and at Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, where she also defended her PhD thesis in 2003. She has also been a guest researcher at University of Colorado at Boulder, USA, in three occasions. Mari’s work has been published in several international journals (e.g., Journal of Organizational Change Management, International Journal of Training and Development, and Systems Research and Behavioral Science). She has also co-edited an anthology on “Creating Sustainable Work Systems” that was published in 2009 by Routledge.
Posted in: Events
