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What do the participants gain? Group counselling to enhance agency at work

  • Marjatta Vanhalakka-Ruoho
  • Ritva Ruponen
Article
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Abstract

Group counselling was carried out in an IT enterprise. The task was to study structured group counselling as a space for enhancing participants’ agency at work. The first research question concerned changes the participants reported regarding the group and their collaborative and individual work. The second research question asked what kinds of individual courses of development emerged based on changes in the participants’ self-observation and action patterns.

Keywords

Group counselling Workplace Relationality 

Résumé

Quel gain pour les participants ? Le counseling de groupe pour améliorer l’agentivité au travail. Une intervention de groupe a été menée dans une entreprise informatique. L’objectif était d’étudier comment une intervention structurée de groupe peut servir d’espace permettant aux participants d’améliorer leur agentivité (agency) au travail. Une première question de recherche portait sur les changements que les individus avaient remarqués concernant le groupe et le travail individuel et collaboratif. Une deuxième question de recherche interrogeait les types de trajectoires individuelles ayant émergé suite aux changements survenus dans l’auto-observation et les modèles d’action des participants.

Zusammenfassung

Was gewinnen die Teilnehmer? Gruppenberatung zur Verbesserung der Handlungsfähigkeit bei der Arbeit. Gruppenberatung wurde in einem IT-Unternehmen durchgeführt. Die Aufgabe bestand darin, strukturierte Gruppenberatung als Raum für Verbesserung der Handlungsfähigkeit der Teilnehmer zu untersuchen. Die erste Fragestellung betraf berichtete Veränderungen der Teilnehmer betreffend der Gruppe und ihrer Kooperativen-und Einzelarbeit. Die zweite Forschungsfrage untersuchte, welche Arten der individuellen Entwicklung aufgrund veränderter Selbstbeobachtung und Handlungsmuster der Teilnehmer entstanden.

Resumen

¿Qué ganan los participantes? Consejería de grupo para mejorar la agencia en el Trabajo. Una consejería de grupo se llevó a cabo en una empresa de Tecnologias de la Información (TI). El objetivo fue de estudiar como la terapia de grupo estructurada puede servir de espacio para mejorar la agencia de los participantes en el trabajo. La primera pregunta de la investigación se intereso a los cambios que los participantes comunicaron en referencia al grupo, al trabajo individual y colaborativo. La segunda pregunta de investigación estudió, el tipo de procesos individuales que surgieron en base a los cambios producidos en la auto-observación y los patrones de acción de los participantes.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of Educational Sciences and PsychologyUniversity of Eastern FinlandJoensuuFinland

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