Research

The Influence of Business Advocacy in Finnish Employment Relations and Governmental Policies (ADVOCACY), Research Council of Finland, 2024-2028

Short project description:

Whose ideas and interests influence governmental policies and legislation? How do social partners, business advocacy groups and politics interact in Finnish society? These are questions that ADVOCACY aims to answer. The project will focus on analysing the roles of business advocacy groups and social partners in policy processes and their outcomes. The project covers three main areas: 1) Institutional change within Finnish employment relations; 2) Business advocacy organisations’ influence on the Finnish welfare state; 3) Debates on the value of feminised work.
The research data entails mainly qualitative data, such as interview data, policy documents and social media data. ADVOCACY also uses register data. Methods used are mainly qualitative; discursive, policy-constructivist and multimodal methods, but also entail some quantitative analyses. ADVOCACY contributes to the emerging area of feminist studies on business-society relations. The study will produce significant empirical results on timely and societally relevant cases, thus have societal impact.

Selected earlier projects

2018-2022 Academy of Finland (RCF) Postdoctoral Researcher project Neoliberalizing Welfare State Employment: Ideology, Institutional Agency, and Gendered Labour Market Outcomes. Tampere University.

2017-2018 (+ affiliation until 2020) Academy of Finland (RCF) project Gender, Power and Reconfigured Corporatism in Finland (PI Professor Johanna Kantola). University of Helsinki & Tampere University.

2014-2016 Doctoral research project The Politics of Gender Pay Equity. Hanken School of Economics.

2013 ESF funded Women’s Careers (NaisUrat) project (PI Ingrid Biese & Paula Koskinen Sandberg). Hanken School of Economics & Ekvalita Ab.

2009-2012 ESF funded Gender Equality into Pay Systems. The Effectiveness of Job, Competence and Performance Evaluation in Finland (PI Virpi Liinalaakso). Aalto University.

2006-2007 EU 6th Framework Programme funded project PROMETEA-Empowering women engineers’ careers in industrial and academic research (PI Liisa Husu). University of Helsinki.