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Local government in Finland has undergone considerable restructuring since 2005 as a number of new larger municipalities (mergers) and partnership areas between social and health sector service producers have been formed. Employees and the quality of their working life have not been among the main issues in this government-driven restructuring process. The article focuses on the observed changes in the quality of working life in Finnish municipalities. The data consist of two comprehensive surveys carried out in 2009 (N = 3,710) and 2011 (N = 4,618) for employees in the social and health sector and the education sector, and in 2011 also for employees in the administration sector, and of comparison data from the years 1995, 1999 and 2003. Quality of working life (QWL) consists of five sum variables: open ways to solve work conflicts, work influence, supervisory work, social openness at workplace, and intrinsic rewards of work. The measures proved to reflect in context-specific ways situations and conditions of work. The results imply that QWL is quite a slowly changing phenomenon, which is revealed here through a long-term research period and statistical comparisons. On the level of daily work, the wide-scale reform seemed more incremental than radical. As a positive sign, it is noteworthy that the intrinsic rewards of work have remained on a relatively high level through the years. There are some cases in which QWL has changed more radically. It is obvious that the reform context has increased awareness of human resource issues in these cases, which is visible in the improved QWL. It is also possible that the improvement in the supervisory role as reflected in increased satisfaction with supervisors and the relatively high level of social capital in most of the municipalities have played a buffering role against the confusion and strains related to the reform.

Externally funded research, development and innovation (RDI) projects can be seen as a learning environment creating new skills and competencies for students, teachers, researchers, companies and public organizations. Laurea University of Applied Sciences' RDI project model develops academic knowledge and competencies by solving real problems in real-life situations. This paper describes the model through the MACICO project. This paper describes how the MACICO project and its demonstrations are integrated into the study units and studies in general, as well as providing a description of the roles and benefits of different stakeholders when creating a learning environment. Conclusions also reflect what needs to be taken into account when creating research demonstrations as student works.

Digital lifelong learning and more specifically digital peer learning (DPL) can play a major role to foster transformative agency in professions and occupations which are critically positioned for responding to acute societal needs. Yet so far, no published studies seem to have focused on this. This article aims at filling this gap with the help of a study in which online workshops and web forums were created for supporting homelessness practitioners in Finland to share and discuss scattered practical innovations and to generate advanced solutions to problems in their work. By these means, the study also generated data to see if transformative agency takes place among these professionals by means of DPL, how this happens, and with what results for the critical field of homelessness work. This study opens up a new agenda for research and development in lifelong learning in a digital era. What is already known about this topic As digital peer learning (DPL) can be largely organized by the learners themselves, it carries significant advantages for lifelong learning and work development: a close link to the field of practice and to clients' and stakeholders' needs, potentially a wide reach of practitioners, little institutional investment, and cost‐effectiveness. The application of DPL raises a number of challenges we summarize here as the spectator challenge, the challenge of drowning in details, and the discontinuity challenge. What this paper adds DPL literature lacks specific contributions on how it can support practitioners to identify and implement concrete solutions to pressing needs in society. This article shows that DPL may facilitate professional transformative agency in such a way that the two processes can intersect with one another and generate concrete and effective lifelong learning solutions for much needed developments in critical fields such as homelessness work. Implications for practice and/or policy Cultivating personally and professionally meaningful conflicts of motives evokes emotional involvement and potentially also learners' curiosity and cognitive engagement, opening an avenue to transcend the spectator stance. Experience and discursive elaboration of a conflict of motives directs learners to focus on the essential, thus providing an effective means for overcoming the risk of drowning in details. This can be facilitated by offering artifacts, metaphors, or models which may be taken up by practitioners in DPL as support or “second stimuli” to engage in transformative initiatives. To transcend the discontinuity challenge salient in many DPL processes, it is of particular importance to find ways to embed DPL and engage the learners in long‐term change efforts. Even relatively short online workshops and web forum discussions can gain momentum when efforts are made to establish links between past experiences and the future prospects.