Pekka Kettunen

Workplace Bullying in the Finnish Public Sector Who, Me?

We examine incidents of workplace bullying by using an Internet-based survey. Our unique sample consists of 1,072 public-sector employees working in 12 Finnish ministries. Of those surveyed, 20.3% reported experiencing work task–related bullying multiple times per month, whereas 11.3% reported experiencing personal-level bullying. Supervisors were less likely to be bullied than subordinates, and women were more likely to experience bullying than men. Among victims who had experienced bullying during the past 12 months, nearly 60% reported that their problem had yet to be solved. To combat workplace bullying in public-sector organizations, we propose a proactive punitive strategy that includes stricter rules and severe administrative penalties to those who breach them.

The Governance of Childcare in Transition: A Comparative Analysis

Local governments are important childcare service producers. This chapter delineates their corresponding features across Europe, explores adjustments in childcare governance and discusses its consequences. The EU has, to a certain extent, harmonized child daycare by setting common goals. However, the recent changes in this policy area, arising from the economic crisis, policy-specific motivations, and more generic reforms concerning municipal tasks and obligations, have led to different service reorganization and provision strategies in terms of scaling and re-scaling. The public debt crisis in 2010 has impacted child daycare too, and recent local government reforms have had an impact on the autonomy of municipalities in this sector. With the retrenchment of local government, public coverage of childcare is threatened, while tendencies of up- and trans-scaling are enhanced.

Reasons for Inter-municipal Cooperation: A Comparative Analysis of Finland, Iceland and Norway

The broad responsibilities of Nordic local governments may explain why inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is rather frequent among Nordic municipalities. This is, however, not a sufficient explanation for the variance in institutional features we find in the Nordic countries. Hence, we develop a more comprehensive model in the chapter, asking to what extent legislative features and the characteristics of local government systems may explain the variation in IMC. The empirical part of the chapter describes IMC in a number of policy areas, and considerable differences emerge. Although we note that the profile of IMC use in different sectors varies among the three countries, these differences are not caused by variations in fragmentation and decentralization. In light of the evidence, legal and constitutional explanations seem more pertinent.