Sanahelinää ja sairauspuhetta: Työhyvinvoinnin johtamisen ja opettamisen haasteet JYEAT-koulutuksessa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54329/akakk.176392Keywords:
well-being management, vocational leadership training, medicalization, collaborative development, leadership challengesAbstract
This study analyzes the challenges of managing and teaching employee well-being within the Specialist Qualification in Leadership (JYEAT) program. The study argues that the most significant challenges are not merely internal to organizations but stem from broader societal phenomena, such as the medicalization of work life (a “discourse of illness”) and the gap between leadership rhetoric and daily reality (“empty jargon”). The study was grounded in the constructivist paradigm of qualitative research and drew upon approaches from action research and design-based research. The data were collected in a group intervention called the Yhteisfoorumi (Co-Forum), where educators and leadership trainees developed practical experiments to address the identified challenges.
The findings reveal a fundamental mismatch: although the challenges were identified as systemic and structural, the experiments developed by the participants remained predominantly individual-focused and pedagogical. The impact of these interventions on deeper issues, such as medicalization or a lack of senior management commitment, was limited. The study concludes that advancing well-being requires a shift away from searching for isolated tools and medicalized solutions. Instead, leadership education must strengthen managers’ ability to critically analyze the root causes of problems and to facilitate collaborative development of work itself within their organizations.
