PR in Finland

I am going to start with our topic Scandinavian PR. Today I want to focus on PR in Finland:

In the second half of the twentieth century, Finland faced several crucial changes in economy. It moved from an agriculture- and forestry-driven country to a country, where innovations and manufacturing new communication technologies is important. Today, Finland is a forerunner in this industry, especially in mobile phone technology.
These communication technology developments affected organizations and also governments and municipalities heavily. Within a few years, they used Internet to inform the stakeholders and the public. In 2002, more than 50% of Finnish households had access to Internet. 89 % of Finnish municipalities organize their services and information via Internet in 2002. Today, noone can imagine organizations without modern communication technologies.
Developments in Public Relations in Finland do not differ so much from other European countries. You can see the same trends. In the 1990s environment issues were a popular trend and organizations published environmental principles and developed environmenatl programs. Later in the decade, the trend went towards organizational values and ethics. Once again, organizations reacted to this and created ethic program and corporate social responsibility.
There are a rising number of women working in this field. In 2000, already about 80% of communication professionals were women. However, leading positions is still in men's hands.