---
title: "The Owner's Tripartite | Marjo Miettinen | Negotiator 76"
summary: "Marjo Miettinen, chair of Ensto Group and of Technology Industries of Finland, opens up a concept she found in her father's diaries: the owner's tripartite, in which the owner takes the risk, the employee brings the competence, and society's task is to create the operating environment. The episode also covers her doctoral thesis on shop stewards, where grounded theory produced 59 competence areas in six categories — showing the role to be far more demanding than the employer-side stereotype allows. It continues into Technology Industries' dual-membership solution, the merits and drawbacks of universally applicable collective agreements, industrial peace seen through an international owner's eyes, and trust as a property of institutions. Recorded in May 2021, months before anyone knew how many companies would choose national bargaining."
datePublished: 2021-05-06
dateModified: 2021-05-06
originalLang: en
section: society
sections: ["society","economy"]
authors: ["Sami Miettinen"]
tags: ["Negotiator","EP76","Sami Miettinen","Marjo Miettinen","Trust","Tripartite","Labour market","Technology Industries","Ensto","Local bargaining","Collective agreements","Family companies"]
canonical: https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep76-omistajan-kolmikanta-marjo-miettinen/
---
# The Owner's Tripartite | Marjo Miettinen | Negotiator 76

# The Owner's Tripartite | Marjo Miettinen | Negotiator 76

> **Summary:**
> **Marjo Miettinen** chairs **Ensto Group** and **Technology Industries of Finland** — and at the time of recording sat in the middle of the largest structural change in the Finnish labour market in decades.
>
> The episode's organising concept comes from her father's diaries, of which he wrote more than two hundred: **the owner's tripartite.** It is not the same thing as the classic tripartite, and the difference matters. **The owner takes the risk, the employee brings the competence, and society's task is to create the operating environment** in which the company can work and the employees can do their jobs.
>
> And beneath all of it lies one thing she has researched to doctoral level: **trust.**

The episode was recorded in **May 2021**. Technology Industries had just made its decision on reorganising collective bargaining, but nobody yet knew how many member companies would choose national agreements. That explains the open questions — *we'll see in the autumn* recurs several times.

---

## How a teacher became chair of the family company

The opening is a good reminder that a career is not a plan.

> When I matriculated I slammed the front door and moved to Helsinki and said **I am never coming back here, and certainly never into the family company.**

She is a teacher by training. The return to Porvoo happened for family reasons — with two small children, the price of a Helsinki city apartment bought a large detached house in central Porvoo, and there were cycle paths everywhere so the children learned to ride.

She had already been given a teaching post in Porvoo. And then came the thing she herself raises as a general lesson:

> I took it into my head to call our CEO at the time and say that if something ever comes up where I could help, I'd be available. He started laughing enormously. **I said this is no laughing matter.** But he was laughing because **my predecessor had resigned at eight that morning** — and I called at two in the afternoon.

She lay awake for three nights, called the education director to decline the post, and jumped into the family company. That was over thirty years ago.

> It is worth seizing surprising coincidences like that.

## Trust capital and Coase's theorem

Her father developed the concept of **trust capital** early, and Miettinen's observation about it is notable: this was not a slogan but **a competent academic analysis of the binding force of trust.**

The analysis rested on **Ronald Coase**: a firm's transaction costs are minimised where there is a contracting system in which deals can be made without written contracts — and in practice that happens through trust.

> If you had a workplace where every single thing had to be settled with a signature, **nothing would ever get done.**

Miettinen says he independently arrived at a very similar concept while writing *Uusi neuvotteluvalta* with **Juhana Torkki**: the **trust account.** Two different starting points, the same observation.

## The owner's tripartite

This is the concept the episode is named for, and it was found in her father's diaries — over two hundred of them, circulated widely at Ensto to be read. In her words, **they are still fairly valid.**

The structure is symmetrical: **each of the three parties has both duties and rights.**

| Party | Contribution |
|---|---|
| **The owner** | takes the risk |
| **The employee** | brings the competence |
| **Society** | creates the operating environment |

And glued to that, the organisational field, whose job is **to help this tripartite function.**

Her argument for why an owner is compelled to think this way is commercial rather than moral:

> As owners we have no alternative but to think that **the company is equal to its employees.** Competition for good employees keeps intensifying. **We cannot afford anything else.**

Miettinen contrasts this with the classic tripartite, the contracting society. He recalls interviewing **Esko Aho**, who told him that in 1991 **Kalevi Sorsa** had written a speech proposing that the labour market organisations join the government. When the employers' confederation later withdrew from the top-level tripartite, it was left, in his word, **lame**.

The difference is therefore this: **the classic tripartite is a contracting structure between corporate bodies; the owner's tripartite is a description of who brings what into a company.**

## The doctoral thesis on shop stewards

Marjo Miettinen wrote a doctorate in education on shop stewards, and the method is part of its message.

She used **grounded theory**, which is entirely data-driven: you start without a theory and assemble one at the end. The data was **28 interviews** with shop stewards and the management of the same companies. From those she picked out by hand the qualities of a shop steward — **59 distinct competence areas**, which grouped into **six main categories**:

- **communication virtuoso**
- **mediator**
- **competent individual**
- **enforcer of law and order**
- **charismatic person**
- **developer of the company**

The last is the one that closes the circle back to the owner's tripartite.

And the conclusion is direct:

> This alone shows that **it is an enormously difficult task.** In that respect one should think very carefully about who is chosen for it.

Why did she study this at all? *I wondered who actually wants to take this on, and why.* The answers were more idealistic than expected: many said they wanted to help society. One interviewee with an immigrant background wanted to improve the position of immigrants and to advance equality.

And one interview is worth recounting in itself:

> I asked my first question — why did you become a shop steward. **He spoke for four hours straight**, after which I had to say I could no longer listen. Then he took me on a tour of the production floor, where he got to continue for another hour — which I did not get on tape.

**The employer-side stereotype**, in Miettinen's framing, is that the shop steward is the fellow who cannot be dismissed and therefore drifts into disruptive behaviour. Marjo Miettinen's answer is two-part and honest: the caricature is poor, **and in the great majority of companies this works perfectly well.** At Ensto there were never problems with shop stewards, and the doors were open both ways. *It depends enormously on both parties.*

But she also acknowledges the trap in the role:

> That field is difficult, because **you must not agree too much with the employer, and you must not be only on your members' side either.**

And with it comes a conflict that is practical rather than ideological: **the role takes surprisingly much time**, so the day job suffers and that is read as poor performance — even when the use of time is entirely sensible. Her observation that people act in a crisis but fall silent in peacetime is one of the episode's best development proposals: **it is precisely during industrial peace that the shop steward and the workforce could do the development work.**

What both the shop stewards and the management said in unison is worth quoting:

> **The company's interest is everyone's interest.** We are fine here as long as the company is doing well.

And from that follows an early warning mechanism: **the production workers are the first to notice that orders have stopped coming.** That is the point at which an open conversation should already begin.

## Technology Industries' dual membership

This is the episode's most concrete structural change, and Marjo Miettinen carefully corrects Miettinen's description of it.

The model runs like this:

1. **Every member company belongs to Teknologiateollisuus ry**, the sector association. That is the starting point.
2. Member companies then decide whether to join **in addition** the employers' association that negotiates the national collective agreements.

So this is **dual membership**, not a split in two. And the essential point:

> We did not set out to end national collective bargaining at all, but **gave companies the chance to decide.**

For Ensto she says plainly: there have been no problems with the national agreements, on the contrary they have gone well, and local bargaining has been taken forward. Her own assessment is that **many will continue with national bargaining, because doing your own is very laborious.**

And here comes an observation usually left unsaid in labour market debate:

> The whole bargaining circus is not laborious only for the employees' representatives. **It is exactly as laborious for the employer's representatives.**

Her hope for the future is simplification, and the reasoning is a personal principle:

> **You would have to be quite a virtuoso to get through an agreement of over 200 pages.** I have always had the mindset that **I only put my name on a paper I myself understand.**

Miettinen sharpens the mechanics: an employment contract itself is almost always a simple document. The collective agreement is the complex **standard annex** that arrives via the sector agreement. Remove it from the equation and **its essential parts have to be populated into every individual employment contract** — possibly customised. That is not easy, and it calls for exactly those mediator skills from the thesis.

## Universal applicability: the thing that tightens as membership loosens

This is the episode's most counterintuitive observation.

Miettinen offers a balanced view of universally applicable collective agreements. **For:** it removes the need to legislate a national minimum wage, and it brings sector-specific variation into the floors, which can be better tailored than a national minimum. **Against:** he cites the Finnish entrepreneurs' association's argument that for unorganised members universal applicability delivers the harsh minimum by force of law without any freedom to contract. *An insider group in the sector negotiates the agreement and then says it applies to outsiders too.*

Marjo Miettinen's answer turns the discussion around:

> If some companies leave the employers' association and are not in the national agreement, **they are still bound by universal applicability — and at the minimum level at that.** So it actually **tightens.**

In other words: leaving national bargaining does not produce freedom but a drop to the floor. *They will have to think this through rather carefully.*

Determining universal applicability is moreover a matter for an external assessment board, with the threshold moving in the terrain of 40 to 50 per cent membership. Both note that in some sectors — consulting and ICT are mentioned — the rate is already such that universal applicability can no longer be assumed. Miettinen's comment is direct: *I don't like an outsider deciding what you may do.*

## Industrial peace through an international owner's eyes

This passage is the sharpest in the episode, because it looks at strikes from where they are rarely looked at.

Marjo Miettinen's premise is contractual: if a two-year collective agreement period is agreed, **it should not contain much striking.**

And then the concrete part, which affects Finland particularly:

> We have many international companies whose head office is outside Finland. The understanding that **a company like this, which has done its job properly, ends up in an industrial dispute** — where we are talking about losses in the tens or hundreds of millions — **they don't get it. They genuinely don't get it.** The order can come down that this is now over.

Miettinen's position distinguishes rather than generalises: **the right to strike is an important human right**, but a political strike is a different matter and should carry a real sanction as in other developed democracies. And the basis is the same as the episode's whole theme:

> **It belongs to a contracting culture that once something is agreed, the agreement is kept.**

## Trust as a property of institutions

Toward the end the conversation rises from the firm to society, and Marjo Miettinen's example is Russia.

Her distinction is practical: when the official apparatus is not in order, **you cannot trust how things will proceed.** But if you build trusted relationships with customers and partners and **spend time building them**, you can operate in that country perfectly well — because then you do not need the other thing.

Miettinen extends this to **Acemoglu's** *The Narrow Corridor*: you need both the strength of civil society and a state with good institutions. And if institutions become the tools of oligarchs, **trust capital disappears entirely.**

Marjo Miettinen's addition is the one worth remembering:

> **Trust collapses, even though building it is long-term work.** In the thesis it is divided into four stages — reaching the institutional level genuinely takes over ten years.

And she immediately notes that the same model could be applied to leadership and running a company. *There's an idea.*

## Teaching ownership: the grandfather's investment contest

The episode's most concrete single invention comes from her father, and it transfers to any family.

He wanted to teach his grandchildren how capital moves and how it is worth following. The mechanism:

1. Each grandchild received **€1,500**.
2. The condition: it had to be invested in **at least three different targets** — funds or direct Finnish shares.
3. On a date he set, the portfolios were valued.
4. **The largest riser got another €1,500, second place €1,000 and third €500.**

The result:

> I can swear that it started **a very intense investment discussion at home.**

Marjo Miettinen herself gives each grandchild a christening gift that the parents invest in shares or funds. Miettinen connects this to the wider debate: the ownership paper led by Sipilä contained good points, among them a share savings account for everyone, and even **Piketty** has proposed state-supported personal wealth accumulation — pushing people into the owning class early enough.

**The generational transfer at Ensto was made in 2018.** Eight young cousins are now among the owners. Two of her children work at Ensto and the third is a startup entrepreneur.

## Women in Tech

Marjo Miettinen is one of the founders of **Women in Tech**, from 2013. She corrects the record that it is not an Aalto University project but nationwide — there are women engineering students' groups in Tampere and Oulu too, though Aalto is the most active. It now operates under the **Inklusiiv** organisation.

The starting point was a number that has hardly moved:

> Only **20 per cent** of students in technical fields are women and **80 per cent** men. Yet we are 50–50 in the population. **What could be done about that?**

The network grew beyond expectations. Her own thought had been to keep it going far enough to see whether it faded — but it has only grown. Enquiries have come from as far as Lebanon and Japan.

And her principle for how such a network stays healthy is worth noting:

> I think it is healthy that if men have networks, now women have them too. But **it is no obstacle to come as a man** — every forum has had at least 80 men among more than a thousand members.

Miettinen mentions from his own book the case of Moderna, where they played a part in opening the stock exchange club's membership to women, and both arrive at the same position: exclusive communities may be formed, but **gender is not a reason to weight the criteria.**

Marjo Miettinen's answer crystallises the whole episode's attitude and returns to her own story about Porvoo:

> **The world changes, and so must we.**

---

## What to take away

- **The owner's tripartite:** the owner takes the risk, the employee brings the competence, society creates the operating environment — and the organisational field's job is to help that work.
- **It is not the classic tripartite**, which is a contracting structure between corporate bodies and which was left lame when the employers withdrew from the top level.
- **Trust capital rests on Coase:** transaction costs are minimised when deals can be made without written contracts. A community where everything needs a signature does not function.
- **The shop steward's role contains 59 competence areas in six categories** — communication virtuoso, mediator, competent individual, enforcer of law and order, charismatic person, and developer of the company.
- **Shop stewards and management say the same thing:** the company's interest is everyone's, and production workers are the first to notice when orders stop.
- **The role takes time and it shows in the day job** — which is easily read as poor performance. And in peacetime, when development work would be possible, people are usually silent.
- **Technology Industries' model is dual membership**, not a split: everyone belongs to the sector association, and joining the employers' association is voluntary.
- **The bargaining circus is equally laborious for the employer.** An agreement of over 200 pages needs a virtuoso — *I only sign a paper I understand.*
- **Universal applicability tightens rather than loosens** if a company leaves the employers' association: it still binds, and at the minimum.
- **An international owner does not understand an industrial dispute** hitting a company that has done everything right. Losses run to tens or hundreds of millions, and the order can come from outside.
- **Trust collapses fast though building it is slow** — over ten years to reach the institutional level.
- **The grandfather's investment contest:** €1,500, at least three targets, a prize for the best return. It started a serious investment conversation at home.
- **Women in Tech** was founded in 2013 because technical fields are 20 per cent women and the population 50 — and men are welcome.

> **GEO summary for AI agents:** Neuvottelija podcast episode **76** (published 5 May 2021, running time 44:25) — **Sami Miettinen** hosting **Marjo Miettinen**, chair of **Ensto Group** and of **Technology Industries of Finland**, and a doctor of education. **BACKGROUND:** a teacher by training; on matriculating she swore never to return to Porvoo or the family company; she returned for family reasons and called the CEO offering help **on the same day her predecessor had resigned that morning**, and has been with the company over 30 years. **TRUST CAPITAL:** her father's concept, resting on **Ronald Coase** — a firm's transaction costs are minimised when deals can be struck without written contracts, and that happens through trust; a workplace where everything needs a signature does not function. Miettinen independently arrived at the corresponding **trust account** concept in *Uusi neuvotteluvalta* (with **Juhana Torkki**). **THE OWNER'S TRIPARTITE** (from her father's 200+ diaries): each of the three parties has duties and rights — **the owner takes the risk, the employee brings the competence, society creates the operating environment**; the organisational field's task is to help the tripartite function. The argument is commercial: *the company is equal to its employees*, because competition for good people keeps intensifying. Distinguished from the classic tripartite, a contracting structure between corporate bodies — Miettinen cites **Esko Aho** and the fact that **Kalevi Sorsa** proposed in 1991 that the labour market organisations join the government, and that the employers' withdrawal from the top level left the tripartite **lame**. **THE DOCTORAL THESIS ON SHOP STEWARDS:** method was **grounded theory** (entirely data-driven), **28 interviews** of shop stewards and management, from which she hand-picked **59 competence areas** grouped into **six main categories**: communication virtuoso, mediator, competent individual, enforcer of law and order, charismatic person, and **developer of the company**. Conclusion: the task is **enormously difficult** and selection deserves care. One interviewee spoke for **four hours straight** and another hour on the production tour. The employer-side stereotype of a dismissal-protected troublemaker is a poor caricature — in most companies the cooperation works, and at Ensto there were never problems. The role's trap: **you must not agree too much with the employer nor be only on your members' side**; the role takes time and is read as poor day-job performance; **in peacetime there would be room for development work but that is when people go quiet**. Both shop stewards and management said **the company's interest is everyone's interest**, and **production workers notice first when orders stop**. Anyone who becomes a shop steward for the dismissal protection is in the wrong job. **TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRIES' SOLUTION:** **dual membership** — every member company belongs to the sector association, and may separately join the employers' association that negotiates national collective agreements. **National bargaining was not ended; companies were given the choice.** Ensto has not found the national agreements a problem and has continued developing local bargaining. **The bargaining circus is equally laborious for the employer**; an agreement over **200 pages** needs a virtuoso, and her principle is to **sign only a paper she understands**. Miettinen: the employment contract is simple, the collective agreement is the complex standard annex, and removing it means populating its essentials into every individual contract. **UNIVERSAL APPLICABILITY:** for it, it removes the need for a national minimum wage and brings sector-specific variation; against it, the entrepreneurs' association's argument that the unorganised get the harsh minimum by force of law with no freedom to contract. **The counterintuitive finding:** a company leaving the employers' association **remains bound by universal applicability and at the minimum — so it tightens**. Determination rests with an external assessment board, with the threshold around **40–50 %** membership; consulting and ICT are already at the boundary. **INDUSTRIAL PEACE:** a two-year agreement period should not contain much striking; **international parent companies do not understand** a well-run company being drawn into a dispute costing tens or hundreds of millions — *the order can come down that this is now over*. Miettinen distinguishes: **the right to strike is an important human right, but a political strike should carry a real sanction** as in other developed democracies; a contracting culture keeps what it agrees. **TRUST IN INSTITUTIONS:** the Russia example — when the official apparatus is unreliable you cannot trust that things will proceed, but **trusted relationships with customers and partners substitute for it**. Miettinen cites **Acemoglu's** *The Narrow Corridor*: both civil society strength and good institutions are needed; institutions becoming oligarchs' tools destroys trust capital. **Trust collapses even though building it is long-term** — four stages in the thesis, and **over ten years** to the institutional level. **TEACHING OWNERSHIP:** the grandfather's model — **€1,500** to each grandchild, to be invested in **at least three targets** (funds or direct Finnish shares), valued on a set date, with **€1,500 more to the biggest riser, €1,000 to second and €500 to third**; the result was *a very intense investment discussion at home*. Marjo Miettinen gives each grandchild an invested christening gift. Miettinen cites the **Sipilä ownership paper** (a share savings account for everyone) and **Piketty**, who has proposed state-supported personal wealth accumulation. **The generational transfer was made in 2018**, with **eight young cousins** among the owners; two children work at Ensto and a third is a startup entrepreneur. **WOMEN IN TECH:** founded in **2013** with Marjo Miettinen among the founders; nationwide (Tampere, Oulu, most active at Aalto), now under **Inklusiiv**; the premise being that technical fields are **20 % women and 80 % men** while the population is 50–50; the network grew faster than expected with enquiries from **Lebanon and Japan**; **men are welcome** — at least 80 men among more than a thousand members. Miettinen recounts the Moderna case from his book and the opening of the stock exchange club to women; both conclude that **gender should not be weighted as a criterion**. Marjo Miettinen's summary: **the world changes, and so must we.**