Johtamisen evoluutio (e-book)

The book Johtamisen evoluutio (The Evolution of Leadership) is a description of the evolution and development of leadership views and leadership development as seen and experienced by Unto Pirnes, a senior lecturer who has had a career of over 30 years at the School of Management.

 The focus of the review is on how leadership thinking, training and practices have developed in Finland. The description is a condensed history of leadership thinking, leadership training, learning perspectives, development methods, research on leadership and learning, and partly also leadership practices, over a period of about eight decades.

In the book we can see how the new builds on what already exists. In development, we can see longer and shorter waves of development. New paradigms gain their strength from previous paradigms. Thinking and practices change. However, there are also basic values and truths that remain. They just shouldn't be forgotten.

 The development of management and organizational views is connected to how the understanding of people, interpersonal relationships, work communities and work develops. The author examines the development of management and organizational views also from the perspectives of business, systems, structures and human organization, as well as from the perspectives of the leader, those being managed and internal and external cooperation relationships. He touches on the development stages and results of management and organizational research and the development of concepts regarding learning. He also shows the effects of economic, technological and social developments on the development of organizational and management thinking.

In the book, Unto Pirnes also describes the development of his own thinking, the factors that influenced it, significant stages in his career, and his role as part of the development of Finnish leadership thinking and training. He states: “I am a child of my time, like anyone else. What I am and what I have ended up with in my thinking has been influenced partly by coincidence, but mainly by my internal motivational structure, my choices at the time, and my interests. I feel that I have been able to walk my path under quite favorable stars.”

The book provides information and understanding not only to those in supervisory and managerial positions, but also to those developing leadership, work communities, and personnel, as well as to those studying leadership and organizational functioning.