Abstract:The objective of this paper is to examine the organization renewal process in forest owners' associations and the role of members in this process. Based on 15 qualitative interviews with district council members in a forest owners' association, we describe the characteristics of today's elected member representatives in terms of their motives for volunteering, their relationship with the organization, and the organizational practices and routines of the renewal process. It is shown that most district council members are traditional forest owners with a family history within the association and that the district councils are therefore not representative of all member groups. We thus argue that it will be important for the renewal process that the associations carefully consider how they want to be perceived by both current and potential members in order to encourage the involvement of different owner groups. The election committees, which prepare the elections to the councils and board, play an important role in the associations' renewal processes and must become more active in their search for suitable candidates.

No abstract

Forest-owning companies in Sweden have both a goal to yield a good short-term rate of return on their forest and a goal to maintain a high long-term rate of return by maintaining the production of wood-based products. Both these objectives are taken into account in the forest planning process. For the long-term goal, the companies develop strategies formulated in the forest planning system and for the short-term goal, sale strategies are formulated in the sale plans. These strategies may raise conflicts on how to use the forest resources. These conflicts would occur in the work with the tract bank (TB), the register of stands ready for harvesting. The objective of this study was to analyze how Swedish forest owning companies form their strategy patterns around the work with the TB and to discuss the implications of the pattern formation for forest planning in the companies. Planners and harvest managers at three large forest-owning companies responded to a questionnaire. The results show that the delivery plan based on the sale strategy is often a main factor in determining the content of the TB.

Forest data and forest information are central to forest management planning. The knowledge a large forest-owning company possesses about its forests could potentially be a strategic capability. In this study, the forest-planning process of a large forest company is analyzed in terms of knowledge management (KM). The study was conducted as a case study of Sveaskog -the largest forest-owning company in Sweden. The study focuses on the long-term harvest strategy through medium-term planning until the stands are transferred to the tract bank and ready for operational planning. Interviews with key persons within the organization were conducted to assess how forest knowledge is used in this process. The results are presented for the four knowledge management processes: creation, storage-retrieving, transferring and applying. They show that the planning system relies to a great extent on codified knowledge realized by a push strategy.

Little is known about the extent of work-related accidents occurring during the performance of forestry work by the non-industrial private forest owner or their assistant (hereafter called self-employed NIPF). The absence of an effective accident registration system largely excludes this group from accurate representation in official statistics. In this study, data from 1996 to 2001 were collected from hospital injury records managed by the Umeå Accident Analysis Group at the University Hospital in Umeå. During that period, it was found that 485 persons in the Umeå region were given medical attention due to injuries possibly acquired during self-employed forestry work. Questionnaires about the accidents were sent to each of the 485 injured persons and 80% were returned. Responses revealed that 225 of the respondents were injured during selfemployed forestry work. Out of these, 81% performed fewer than 31 days of forestry work annually. Due to the injury, 29% had been on sick leave for some period of time and 42% had persistent symptoms. On average, each injury led to 13 days of sick leave and 24 hours of institutional care. Firewood production was shown to be a key factor behind the large number of accidents for self-employed NIPF. Further studies on the lack of knowledge about how the work should be done and conscious risk taking should be considered as an important link to the development of effective accident prevention strategies.