“Trying to predict the future”: third-generation activity theory’s codesign orientation

ABSTRACT

In the 1980s, Yrjö Engeström took up Leontiev’s activity theory, extending and modifying it extensively to apply it to learning in organizations. Whereas the work of Vygotsky and Leontiev represented a cultural psychology, this “third-generation” activity theory (3GAT) was arguably closer to an organizational sociology. This organizational sociology is specifically oriented to interventionist research: i.e., the consensus-driven codesign of systems of collective action. This underdiscussed orientation explains 3GAT’s descriptive organizational modeling and triangle heuristic. Understanding this orientation is crucial for understanding how 2GAT was translated into 3GAT, as well as how a 4GAT might emerge in turn.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to David R. Russell for reviewing and commenting on an earlier version of this manuscript, and to David Guile for conversations that helped me think through parts of the argument.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For consistency, I use “Leontiev” in the text, although the name is sometimes transliterated differently in different sources.

2. Engeström’s Learning by Expanding appeared in 1987. Here and throughout, I cite his second edition (2014), whose argument is identical to the 1987 edition.

3. The levels of activity had previously been mentioned by cultural psychologists working in the Vygotskian tradition, such as Lave et al. (1984) and Wertsch (1985), but Bødker made them central to her empirical analysis.

4. As we’ll see, Engeström coined the term “activity network” and theorized the concept that same year (Engeström, 2014).

5. Later, Cole began drawing on Engeström’s work and Developmental Work Research. See, e.g., Cole and Engeström 1993; Cole 1995, 1999.