Tasks in forest management associations have traditionally been carried out within areas of responsibility based on geograph. Since worksite marketing, procurement and implementation of the labor have been handled by the staff member's, job descriptions have become very extensive.

As the number of business services has increased implementing a comprehensive review of the organizational struc-ture, job descriptions and services had become topical. A wide range of services posed challenges for the mainte-nance of staff skills in all areas. Coping with work stress was also seen as a part of the risk because the staff had to focus on multiple things at the same time and the days were often very fragmented.

The thesis describes the process-oriented approach of implementing and managing an organizational change in a forest management association. The biggest change was the separation of service sales and project implementation. Marketing and sales of the services will be handled by the forestry experts in the future. Harvesting and forest man-agement managers were responsible for implementing the projects large geographic areas. Process diagrams and process descriptions were drawn up of all Forest Management Metsä-Savo key processes.

Change management was paid particular attention because of the scale of the change. The entire staff was involved in planning and implementing the change throughout the project which was why the staff committed to completing the change. The staff includes entrepreneurs and lumberjacks, whos valuable experience is generally not taken enough advantage of in the development of operations. The change was implemented successfully.

The organization benefited from the process because it clarified the job descriptions. Forestry experts were able to focus more closely to serving the forest owners, including forest cultivation time. Harvesting and forest management managers become responsible of the implementation of the tasks over a wider area. Since the entrepreneurs and lumberjacks only had a single manager, practices among the harmonized and the activity was explicit.