Enriching the Theory of Expansive Learning: Lessons From Journeys Toward Coconfiguration

Abstract

An intervention study aimed at analyzing and transforming work and learning in three organizations (a bank, a primary health care center, and a hi-tech company) allowed us to investigate forms of coconfiguration work in which there is a focus on the development of products and services that adapt to the changing needs of users. The working hypothesis of our study was that the forms of expansive learning (that is, the processes by which a work organization resolves its internal contradictions in order to construct qualitatively new ways of working) required for coconfiguration work have transformative, horizontal, and subterranean features. Based on our three organization case studies, this article argues tentatively (as a stimulus to further theoretical and empirical research) that our working hypothesis has to be enriched by the notion of experiencing, which serves to bridge the design and implementation of organizational transformation. In terms of the role played by tools and technologies in work and learning, the notion of instrumentality is introduced to further enrich our working hypothesis, emphasizing that expansive learning for coconfiguration work involves tools and novel mediational concepts in the form of multilayered, integrated toolkits.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research reported in this article was conducted in the project New Forms of Expansive Learning at Work: The Landscape of Co-Configuration within the “Life as Learning” research program of the Academy of Finland. I am grateful to Vaula Haavisto, Merja Helle, Anna-Liisa Niemelä, Auli Pasanen, Osmo Saarelma, Tarja Saaren-Seppälä, Hanna Toiviainen, and Liisa Varjokallio for their contributions to the project.

Notes

¹The synthetic nature of this article means that I have to rely on a number of theoretical concepts without elaborating on them here. These theoretical concepts have been presented and discussed in earlier publications to which I refer in appropriate places in the text. Also, the data presented in this article consists of illustrative examples and excerpts that serve as clarification and concretization of theoretical claims.

²In the facilitation, we used an intervention methodology called the Change Laboratory, described and discussed in Engeström, Virkkunen, Helle, Pihlaja, and Poikela (1996) and Engeström (2007). The intervention methodology itself is outside the focus of this article.