There are several ways of arranging rural water supply. One of these is through water cooperatives that have been established to provide water supply, irrigation, and/or sewerage services. Water cooperatives are found in developed countries such as Finland, Denmark, Austria, Canada, and United States, and in developing countries in South America, such as Bolivia and Chile. Water cooperatives or their equivalent organizations that exist in Kenya are called self-help water projects. Yet, surprisingly little attention has been paid to this option even in countries with rich tradition of cooperatives in other sectors. In this study, Finland and Kenya were selected for a comparative analysis of the identified features of water cooperatives. Best practices observed in the features with differences could be shared between the two countries.

This article discusses the evolution of community-managed projects (CMPs) along with the global community-based management of water supply and sanitation services since the 1960s, particularly the evolution of Ethiopian water resources development in the last century. The study was conducted with intensive reviews of journals, reports, project documents, and discussions with the people involved in CMP implementation, including many Ethiopian government officials. The article presents the various development phases of the water and sanitation sector in Ethiopia together with national and global influences. Currently, in the 2010s, the CMP financing mechanisms and the national development of water supply and sanitation are more organized and integrated, and are in the stage of scaling up. The recently agreed national water, sanitation, and hygiene strategic framework is expected to have significant impacts on the rural water supply and sanitation development in Ethiopia.

We examine the moving and housing preferences of middle-aged and older in Finland, a country where population composition and movement through the life course are changing. A logistic regression reveals that middle-aged, moderate income residents, renters, those who have lived in their houses only a short time, and residents who are generally dissatisfied are most likely to consider moving. Downsizing appeals to residents with lower incomes who live alone, and who have been in their current houses longer. All potential movers agree on the importance of transportation access and a neighborhood grocery store; however, those preferring to downsize are also interested in house and neighborhood design as well as services that will allow aging in place. Income limitations may create affordability problems for some potential movers.

Active learning has gained growing political, instructional, and research interest. However, the definitions of active learning are wide. The learning outcomes related to it have been mostly positive but the measurement methods are not without problems. This review provides an overview of active learning, especially in the context of engineering higher education, by answering two research questions: (1) How is the concept of active learning defined and justified in engineering higher education research? (2) What are the learning outcomes connected to active learning and how is learning measured in engineering higher education research? Sixty-six empirical articles were analyzed inductively with qualitative content analysis. The analysis showed that active learning was defined in various ways, and in some articles, it was not defined at all. In addition, justification (theoretical or empirical) for the use of active learning was seldomly reported. Finally, the indicators used to measure the impact of active learning on students’ learning outcomes were mostly based on students’ self-report data and focused on course specific development in subject-related knowledge. More thorough descriptions and theoretical justifications, as well as the consideration of learning outcomes with appropriate research methods, could reinforce the transparency of empirical interventions and the application of active learning.

In recent years, the role and importance of performance measurement in public organisations has been much emphasised. However, the discussion on the issue so far has been on a rather general level. This paper aims to understand the challenges faced by public organisations in developing performance measurement systems (PMSs) for a specific managerial purpose, to support outsourcing decisions. The objective of the paper is approached with a literature review and a single qualitative case study carried out as an action research. The case study introduces a detailed description of a PMS development project carried out in the support services of a Finnish university. A framework developed in prior research is utilised to analyse the impacts of two typical characteristics (conflicting stakeholder needs and undefined objectives) of public organisations in a PMS design project. The contribution of the paper is to extend the existing understanding about public sector PMS especially regarding two key points: 1) to understand the impact of different purposes for measurement (in this case the outsourcing context) on the PMS development process; 2) to understand the need to align the PMS system with the organisational culture and other managerial control systems in order to achieve desired performance outcomes.

Water services, that is, water supply and wastewater disposal, are traditionally the responsibility of local governments. Many municipalities have joined forces to meet the challenges of increasing water quality requirements, aging infrastructures, and decreasing fiscal resources. Regional cooperation is claimed to generate benefits in various ways, but there are challenges to this assumption. This article assesses the benefits and challenges of regional cooperation through the following categories: economies of scale, socioeconomic and spatial disparities, autonomy and legitimacy, by comparing Finnish experiences with previous research findings. Our assessment concludes that the benefits and challenges of regional cooperation are not straightforward, not only dependent on the local context but also on the level and tradition of cooperation, especially on the degree of organizational autonomy.

The effect of digitalization on organizations has been studied separately but there has been very little research done on the overall “big” picture of the effects. However, the digitalization of society and business is marching forward at an ever increasing speed, calling for more converged research on the phenomenon. The main areas of effects elicited from the literature are organizational learning, digital innovations, organizational agility, business ecosystems, and organizational structures. More minor influences have been gathered in the framework of digitalization presented in this article. It can be seen as a tool for managers to explore their organizations capabilities on the digitalization front.

A green economy specifically considers the welfare of the environment and is closely aligned with sustainable development—in both, the use of natural resources should be less than their natural production. In this article, the concept of a green economy is discussed from the viewpoint of water services, a crucial part of a sustainable society, with the objective of enhancing knowledge about sustainable and resilient water services that will meet society’s future demands. Drawing from a literature review and a stakeholder workshop attended by 68 experts, it seeks to answer three research questions: (a) What are appropriate and sustainable urban water supply and sanitation policies for a society that is adopting the basic principles of a green economy? (b) What should be the role of water supply and sanitation in a green and circular economy and what are the current challenges to meeting this objective? and (c) What actions are needed in the Finnish water and sanitation services (WSS) sector to effectively meet the requirements of a green and circular economy? The results are applied to the specific case of Finland, and recommendations and conclusions for the Finnish society and its water services are presented.

This article examines how situated knowledge produced by citizens affects the construction and understanding of legitimacy in local environmental governance. By scrutinising a case from Finland where local citizens decided to take lake restoration in their own hands, we demonstrate how legitimacy is constructed in a specific local context. The main concepts used to interpret this dynamic are situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988; Lang, 2011) and situated legitimacy (Connelly, Richardson, & Miles, 2006). The paper shows how the local traditions together with the historical and social context have distinct effects on the construction of situated knowledge. Further, situated knowledge not only frames the boundaries and possibilities of local action, but also shapes the interpretations of legitimacy. Approaching the construction of knowledge and legitimacy from this perspective challenges the customary understanding of context in participatory practices and, as we suggest, has also the ability to improve these processes.

Purpose: This study aims to gain better understanding of the perceptions comprehensive school principals and chief education officers have about the implementation of school reform and the means they use to facilitate the development of such. Design/methodology/approach: This research project was carried out using a systemic design research approach. Open-ended questionnaires provided the data for the study and these were completed by educational leaders operating in local school districts. Findings: The results demonstrated that pedagogy was emphasized most often as the core of school reform by principals but chief education officers considered technical and financial factors more often as the critical core of educational reform. Nevertheless, both groups had quite similar ideas on how to promote school development. Research limitations/implications: The findings reflect the Finnish educational system and capture only two levels of leadership within the system. Future research ought to focus on studying school reforms within different school systems as a complex of correlated events, processes, strategies, interactions and qualities. Practical implications: To be able to achieve a successful and sustainable school reform more attention must be devoted to creating and activating collaborative learning environments, not only for pupils and teachers, but also for educational leaders at all levels of school administration. Originality/value: The study adds to an understanding of the often-mentioned gap or conflict in perceptions and beliefs between different actors in an educational system.

Water utilities face continuous challenges with the changes of operational environment, aging personnel, and related tacit knowledge of employees. This article explores knowledge management at one Finnish utility and points out knowledge sharing in daily tasks. It highlights how employees interpret knowledge and tacit knowledge and their sharing. Qualitative inquiry was used. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 61 employees (65% of personnel) in 2004 and 33 in 2013 (47%). Knowledge management was regarded as a personal, individually controlled property. Value was one obstacle to the unwillingness to share knowledge and tacit knowledge. Positive change between 2004 and 2013 was seen in the interpretation of tacit knowledge: being something that is recorded in your own head only. Tacit knowledge was daily shared with the closest coworkers. As a strategic asset, knowledge should be managed at water and wastewater utilities as further development needs crucial understanding of previous procedures and practices.

In this paper we ask what is the place of institutional entrepreneurship in a (regional) innovation system. The main research questions addressed are (a) how does a new science-based concentration of innovation become institutionalized in an innovation system; (b) who are the institutional entrepreneurs and what do they actually do in their efforts to institutionalize new beliefs, practices, and activities within a system; and (c) what knowledge do institutional entrepreneurs need and what kind of power do they exercise in the institutionalization process. We add new knowledge to studies focusing on innovation systems by revealing how new elements are attached into it. We also add power and knowledge to the study of institutional entrepreneurship and institutional change. The empirical analysis identifies the main phases of institutionalization, key actors in different phases, and their strategies of influence. This paper is based on the analysis of secondary data and twenty-eight interviews with key actors.

With this paper I aim to shed light on the attempts that have been made to adjust Finnish policy making to the changes in the global technoeconomic environment, as well as to the meta-rationales behind the evolving cluster-flavoured innovation (CFI) policies. Policy learning is discussed with reference to the main cluster and innovation policy changes in Finland and related conceptual development. My main aim is to paint an overall picture of Finnish CFI polices and learning related to them as well as to analyse how eff orts to redesign the policies have been unfolding over the past twenty years. This paper is based on (a) secondary data (ie, earlier studies and reports on the Finnish cluster and innovation policies) and (b) data from two empirical studies.

We investigate conceptually the institutional change process and innovation underpinning knowledge-based regional development from the point of view of institutional entrepreneurship. The main aim is to raise institutional entrepreneurship among debated concepts in regional development studies. We set out to discuss the following question: what kind of conceptual base provides empirical studies with a fresh set of research questions and hence point of departure in a study of the ways in which actors influence the course of events and aim to change the very institutional setting in which they are embedded.