Read the story behind the story from https://tietovirta.wordpress.com/ in blog post "Reflections from my academic life"

1. Bright side of my academic life and
10 most important publications
Harri Laihonen, PhD

2. You never forget your
first conference

3. Systems conference gave new ideas and
resulted to a journal article
1. Laihonen, H. (2006) “Knowledge flows in self-organizing processes”,
Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 10(4), pp. 127-135.
• This article aims to point out the essential role of knowledge flows
when studying new ways of organizing in a knowledge‐intensive
service sector where organizations operate in rapidly changing
markets. The purpose of this article is to analyze the concept of
self‐organization and its basic characteristics from a knowledge flow
point‐of‐view.

4. Next few years I focused on my doctoral thesis and only published some
conference papers…

5. Chongqing / China

6. Limerick / Ireland

7. Liverpool / UK

8. Budapest / Hungary

9. • Budapest was the first time I presented a paper on health care
ecosystem and knowledge flows – the main idea of my doctoral thesis
began to crystallize (final title: The knowledge flows of health system
management)

10. • When finalizing my doctoral thesis I moved on to Performance
management team and a whole new world opened to me
• Knowledge-intensive services, intellectual capital and service
performance became my main focus areas

11. Glasgow / Scotland

12. Alexandria / Egypt

13. Matera / Italy

14. Two important journal papers resulted from
the discussions in the previous conferences
2. Laihonen, H. and Lönnqvist, A. (2010) “Knowledge-based value creation:
grasping the intangibility of service operations in Finland”, Int. J. Knowledge-
Based Development, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.331–345.
3. Käpylä, J., Laihonen, H., Lönnqvist, A. and Carlucci, D. (2011) ”Knowledge-
intensity as an organisational characteristic”, Knowledge Management Research
& Practice, 9(4), pp. 315-326
• These both aim to understand how knowledge assets are turned into value in
service operations – dynamics of knowledge assets. The latter paper also points
out that there are different types of knowledge-intensity profiles, which lead to
different strategies in value creation.

15. Antalya / Turkey

16. Ideas presented in World productivity
congress led to an important journal paper
4. Lönnqvist, A. and Laihonen, H. (2012) “Welfare service system
productivity: the concept and its application”, International Journal
of Productivity and Performance Management, 61(2), pp. 128 –
141.
• This paper examines productivity at the level of a welfare service
system. This approach aims at optimizing the performance of the
whole system and to avoid sub-optimizing the production of
individual services or organizations. A definition for the concept of
welfare service system productivity is developed and its applicability
is demonstrated.

17. Nice / France

18. In Nice we presented a first version of
measurement framework, which was later
published as a journal article
5. Laihonen, H., Jääskeläinen, A. Lönnqvist, A. and Ruostela, J. (2012)
”Measuring the productivity impacts of new ways of working”,
Journal of Facilities Management, 10(2), pp. 102-113.
• “New ways of working” refers to non-traditional work practices,
settings and locations with information and communication
technologies (ICT) to supplement or replace traditional ways of
working. They are being deployed in knowledge work context in order
to increase employees working motivation, job satisfaction and
productivity. However, these benefits are not self-evident. This paper
aims to examine the task of measuring the expected benefits.

19. Also a paper based on my doctoral thesis got
published in health management journal (!)
6. Laihonen, H. (2012) “Knowledge structures of a health ecosystem”,
Journal of Health Organization and Management, 26(4), pp. 542-
558.
• This paper aims to hypothesize that modern health systems are
transforming towards what has been called a health ecosystem in
complexity-based health care literature. It has been argued that
complexity arises from the interconnectedness, which in this paper is
equated with knowledge flows between actors. The paper seeks to
discuss the possible implications of a health ecosystem approach to
health system management

20. Matera / Italy

21. In Matera we presented a paper on knowledge
work productivity, which received an outstanding
paper award from Emerald later on
7. Jääskeläinen, A., and Laihonen, H. (2013) ”Overcoming the Specific
Performance Measurement Challenges of Knowledge-intensive Service
Organizations”, International Journal of Productivity and Performance
Management, 62(4), pp. 350-363.
• The purpose of this paper is to identify practical ways to overcome the
specific performance measurement challenges of knowledge-intensive
organizations. By reviewing performance measurement, service
management and human resources management literature the paper
recognizes two aspects that are crucial for the success of knowledge-
intensive organizations: the performance and well-being of individual
knowledge workers and the ability to provide value for the customer. The
authors evaluate three measurement solutions for measuring these
aspects, in three empirical settings.

22. Rome / Italy

23. Cambridge / UK

24. In Cambridge we continued with the agenda of system-
level performance measurement. A revised paper was
awarded with an outstanding paper award
8. Laihonen, H., Jääskeläinen, A.
and Pekkola, S. (2014)
“Measuring Performance of a
Service System – from
organizations to customer-
perceived performance“,
Measuring Business
Excellence, 18(3), pp. 73-86.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to
investigate the implications of the
networked and open nature of the
service business on performance
measurement. The literature has
acknowledged that the value of
service is increasingly produced by
service systems, but solutions for
measuring the performance of a
service system are still lacking.

25. • The year 2013 was different.
• In Dubai we presented a paper with key ideas published later on in a
Finnish book(let) on knowledge management (Tietojohtaminen)
• I also spent three weeks in Italy to write a conference paper (among
many other things), which was later on presented in Barcelona. It was
an important paper although it wont get published as a journal
version. These papers and related discussions laid the foundation to
much of my work since.

26. Dubai / Emirates
Photo by @Jalonen

27. Matera / Italy

28. Alberobello / Italy

29. Metaponto / Italy

30. • A new personal agenda was born – connecting ‘performance
management’ and ‘knowledge management’ into knowledge-based
performance management

31. Zagreb / Croatia

32. Discussions in Zagreb led to a journal article
linking KM and PM
8. Laihonen, H. and Sillanpää
V. (2014) “What is the role
of knowledge
management in
establishing the
effectiveness of public
welfare services?”,
Knowledge and Process
Management, 21(2), pp.
112-121.
Purpose:
Because of the increasing cooperation of
actors in public service systems, the
evaluation of service outcomes involves a
complex set of information sources and
processes. Organization-specific evaluation
practices yield only a partial picture of the
effectiveness of services. To address this
issue, the paper studies the information
processes in the context of Finnish social
services and analyzes knowledge-related
problems in system-level performance
measurement. As a result, this paper
proposes that more systematic knowledge
management is needed in order to provide
valid information on the effectiveness of
public welfare services.

33. Barcelona / Spain

34. • Barcelona was dealt with earlier – basis for my current agenda

35. In 2014 we harvested the results of earlier
hard work
9. Jääskeläinen, A., Laihonen, H. and Lönnqvist, A. (2014) ”Distinctive
features of service performance measurement”, Journal of
Operations and Production Management, 34(12), pp. 1466-1486.
10. Jääskeläinen, A. and Laihonen, H (2014) “A strategy framework for
performance measurement in the Public Sector”, Public Money &
Management, 34(5), 355-362.
- These papers point out the special nature of service performance
measurement and suggest a strategy framework for measuring
performance in the public sector.

36. Aarhus / Denmark

37. Matera / Italy

38. In Aarhus system-level performance remained on
the agenda with a special focus on knowledge
flows
• And I’m pretty sure there will be plenty more that in the future 

39. At that time we also started couple of interesting
new projects (which I had to leave after moving to
a new organization)
• Vuolle, M., and Laihonen, H. (2014) “Negative Emotions and
Knowledge Work Performance”, International Forum on Knowledge
Asset Dynamics (IFKAD), 11-13 June, Matera, Italy.
• Laihonen, H., Vuolle, M., and Käpylä, J. (2014) “Negative customer
experiences and intellectual liabilities in construction industry”,
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Intellectual
Capital, Knowledge Management And Organisational Learning
ICICKM 2014 (pp. 274-280), 6-7 November, Sydney, Australia., 6-7
November, Sydney, Australia.

40. Sydney / Australia

41. This was a presentation of my academic highlights
so far…below one way to summarize

42. Find more from
• https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Harri_Laihonen
• http://fi.linkedin.com/in/laihonen
• https://twitter.com/harri_laihonen
• http://www.slideshare.net/laihonen
Be patient, there will be more on knowledge management in public
service systems, inter-organizational knowledge flows and system
performance, just to give some examples. Hopefully, something about
knowledge work as well.