Marina Kinnunen
Education
 13.02.2023

Research enhances services and can also be a nice hobby - Marina Kinnunen got her doctorate while working

Nina Jokiaho
The guiding thread of Marina Kinnusen's career has been to get a deeper understanding of organisations and, thereby, find ways to improve operations and services. Today, she leads Pohjanmaan hyvinvointialue (Wellbeing Services County of Ostrobothnia), where the result of her doctoral research is in everyday use.

Marina Kinnunen has more than 20 years of experience working in the social and healthcare sector. Before her current position as director, she worked in several other managerial positions. She started as a nurse, a job she still sometimes misses. However, working as a nurse, she started to feel the urge to develop practices at work. Her motivation and willpower led her to start studying while working. The study path took her all the way to a doctoral degree. In 2010, she received her Doctor of Science in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Vaasa.  

How did she manage to stay motivated and have time both for work and doctoral studies?  

– I have been a competitive athlete. I am used to fully booked days from a very young age, as well as always having a goal to work towards. I remember when I first met with my thesis supervisor and asked if I’m really capable of doing this. I am a practical person, not a researcher at all. Yes, said my supervisor and together we broke down the research project into pieces and set up sub-goals. Then I just progressed one sub-goal at a time as I would with any project. In the end, I felt that my practical knowledge actually helped me in my research.

Marina Kinnusen's thesis
Learning from errors in an organisation – Factors preventing and making it possible (in Finnish)

The topic of Kinnunen's dissertation was learning from errors in organisations. She developed a system that is still in daily use at the hospital. As a director, she still reads every incident report that the staff make through the system. She feels this is important, since the cornerstones of her management philosophy are openness and learning from mistakes. As some time already passed since the dissertation project, she points out that today she also emphasizes learning by success.  

What have doctoral studies at the University of Vaasa given you? 

– Doctoral studies gave me so much, that I now have a new dissertation project in progress, Marina laughs. 

Her new subject is related to thehealth and social services reform in Finland, the so-called “sote-uudistus”. According to Marina, the health and social services system should be seen as an entity where there should be more cooperation and less confrontation. She is also interested in the effect of private health insurance  on the system. 

– We have really big challenges in health and social services reform, and very little research is done on this. I find this topic extremely interesting to research. I want to help all of us to better understand and explain how we can benefit from health and social services for the good of our population.  

The health and social services reform in Finland is now at a critical turning point. The only goal set for this new project was to complete the interviews by the end of last year as the reform was ready and in use at the beginning of this year.  

– I want to do research alongside my work, but schedules don't always allow me to participate in research groups. I realised that I miss many parts of the dissertation process, so doing research is now my hobby. Since I have already gone through the dissertation process once, I don't stress and feel I need to hurry. I am enjoying the process and the fact that I can contribute to opening up this topic more. In my research, as in my work, the goal is to get better and provide Finns with more comprehensive health and social services. 

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