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

Transcription

1 MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 14(1-2), Copyright 2007, Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition Enriching the Theory of Expansive Learning: Lessons From Journeys Toward Coconfiguration Yrjö Engeström University of Helsinki 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. This article synthesizes key findings from a 3-year intervention study, New Forms of Expansive Learning at Work: The Landscape of Co Configuration. 1 In this project, we have analyzed and actively facilitated efforts at transforming work and learning in three organizations: a bank, a primary health care center, and a hi-tech company. 2 Each historical type of work generates and requires a certain type of knowledge and learning. At present, the most demanding and promising developments are associated with the emergence of coconfiguration work. A critical prerequisite of coconfiguration is the creation of customerintelligent products and services that adapt to the changing needs of the user (Victor & Boynton, 1998, p. 195). 1 The 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. 2 In 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. Correspondence should be sent to Yrjö Engeström, Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Research, PO Box 26, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, E mail: yrjo.engestrom@helsinki.fi

2 24 ENGESTRÖM We may provisionally define coconfiguration as an emerging, historically new type of work that relies on (a) adaptive customer intelligent product service combinations; (b) continuous relationships of mutual exchange between customers, producers, and the product-service combinations; (c) ongoing configuration and customization of the product-service combination over lengthy periods of time; (d) active customer involvement and input into the configuration; (e) multiple collaborating producers that need to operate in networks within or between organizations; and (f) mutual learning from interactions between the parties involved in the configuration actions. Coconfiguration requires flexible knotworking in which no single actor has the sole, fixed authority the center does not hold (Engeström, Engeström, & Vähäaho, 1999). Expansive learning refers to processes in which an activity system, for example a work organization, resolves its pressing internal contradictions by constructing and implementing a qualitatively new way of functioning for itself (Engeström, 1987, 2001). The general working hypothesis of our study was that the expansive learning required and generated by the introduction of coconfiguration work may be characterized with the help of three central features (Engeström, 2004): 1. It is transformative learning that radically broadens the shared objects of work by means of explicitly objectified and articulated novel tools, models, and concepts. This transformative aspect of learning in coconfiguration puts emphasis on actions of design, modeling, textualization, objectification, conceptualization, and visibilization; we might say that this is the visible superstructure of new forms of expansive learning at work. 2. It is horizontal and dialogical learning that creates knowledge and transforms the activity, by crossing boundaries and tying knots between activity systems operating in multiactivity terrains. This horizontal aspect of learning in coconfiguration puts emphasis on actions of bridging, boundary crossing, knotworking, negotiation, exchange, and trading. This is the structure of situationally constructed social spaces, arenas, and encounters needed in new forms of expansive learning at work. 3. It is subterranean learning that blazes cognitive trails that are embodied and lived but unnoticeable. These trails serve as anchors and stabilizing networks that secure the viability and sustainability of the new concepts, models, and tools, thus making the multiactivity terrains knowable and livable. This subterranean aspect of learning in coconfiguration puts emphasis on actions of spatial transition and movement, repetition, stabilization and destabilization, and embodiment. This is the invisible, rhizomatic, or mycorrhizae like infrastructure of new forms of expansive learning at work. The three points may be read as three steps in the formation of expansive learning for coconfiguration. The creation of explicit concepts, models, and tools should lead to the implementation of those concepts and tools in horizontal boundary-crossing encounters and subterranean trails of trust and social capital. In the following sections, I briefly describe our findings from the three work organizations. In each case, I begin with the contradictions faced by the organization, then I move to the new concept and tools created and adopted by practitioners in the given site, then to the obstacles that emerged in attempts to implement the new concept and tools in practice, and eventually

3 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 25 to instances in which the practitioners showed potential to overcome those obstacles. After presentation of the three cases, I discuss their implications for the development and use of tools and technologies in work and learning, taking up the notion of instrumentality as an enrichment to the working hypothesis previously presented. Finally, I identify a gap in the working hypothesis and suggest the notion of experiencing as a possible bridge and revision to the working hypothesis. CASE 1: THE BANK My first case comes from the work of investment managers in a Scandinavian bank. International comparative studies of bank business and labor relations in banks show that deregulation, privatization, and technological change are profoundly transforming banking work throughout the industrialized countries. As Baethge, Kitay, and Regalia (1999, p. 5) phrased it, being a banker or a broker was a comfortable job in the world of regulated financial markets, in contrast to the uncertainties, heterogeneity of activities, and increased competition that banks and their workers are facing today. In the bank we studied, investment managers made ample money during the 1990s by trading in the stock market. After 2000, the situation changed quite dramatically. It became difficult to make profit by trading, and the results of the investment managers wealth management unit dropped to an alarmingly poor level. In terms of the revenues gained, a near-crisis situation developed. The learning challenge for the investment managers was to create and implement a sustainable way of working that would build on existing long-lasting customer relations but be less dependent on stock markets, and offer customers new possibilities of managing their assets. We intervened in the transformation of the wealth management unit by conducting a Change Laboratory in the spring and fall of 2003, with the investment managers and their unit manager. The Change Laboratory proceeded in 12 weekly sessions, six before the summer and six after (see Engeström, Pasanen, Toiviainen, & Haavisto, 2005). Our intervention took place soon after the introduction of a new tool called the investment plan for managing customer relationships in investment managers work. An investment plan is a written document comprising several pages of customer information. It is a confidential report resulting from the discussion between the customer and the investment manager. The investment plan is meant to articulate the objectives for the management of a customer s total assets and the strategy by which these objectives are to be achieved. To begin with, the investment plan was not, in itself, seen as a particularly useful solution but more as an extra burden of added work. In the course of the Change Laboratory intervention, participants suggested that some kind of sparring would be needed, which meant helping the investment managers collaborate and make investment plans for and with customers (Excerpt 1). The notion of sparring began to emerge as a core of the new concept. Excerpt 1 Investment manager 1: We need I spoke already about this kind of sparring discussion with customers. That s what we are missing. We do have different tools; they can

4 26 ENGESTRÖM be improved and made more customer-friendly, but I am still asking for. At times it seems that we are all doing these things alone.( ) Investment manager 2: What might work well is that, for instance, M. makes two [investment plans] per month and they are presented and discussed together in a group meeting Researcher: Exactly Investment manager 2: And there they get critique and sparring. Because if he prepares them alone in a dark corner, it will not lead anywhere. Eventually the very organization of the unit was redesigned to support a sparring way of working. The position of a sparring manager was created, and the group structure of the unit was changed to support collaborative discussion of client cases. New procedures such as coaching sessions led by the sparring manager were introduced to facilitate the implementation of the new concept and the investment plan as the key tool. However, the implementation of the sparring way of working was difficult from the beginning. Clients were traditionally seen as protected personal property of each individual investment manager, and the sharing of clients was seen as extra work. In other words, whereas the concept of a sparring way of working initially took shape through enthusiastic problem solving efforts from below, it somehow lost much of its momentum when put into everyday practice. A gap emerged between the designed concept and the implemented one. In the intervention process, there was an episode that seemed to have potential for bridging this gap. In the tenth Change Laboratory session, we asked two investment managers to perform a simulated encounter between an investment manager and a client. The client was modeled after a real client and the two practitioners had received the client s file ahead of time. The simulation sparked an unusually intense and engaged discussion that contained no less than eight significant ideas or suggestions formulated by the participants. The following excerpts illustrate two of those suggestions. Excerpt 2 Investment manager 3: When one has listened to the client, one should have a clear outline how one shall proceed. It might be the outline of the background form of the investment plan, or something else. It should be in one s head and on the paper, so that the one would proceed accordingly. Excerpt 3 Investment manager 3: And then perhaps this something I myself do quite a lot diminishing our own offer. Like, here is our small proposal and would it at all correspond to what you are looking for? I myself use these same terms. Now that it s easy to look at it from the outside, it is clear that we should be selling something really fine and of good quality. One actually sees this only when one looks at a mirror like this. Researcher: Yes, it s interesting that this word small was used a few times. Is it your custom here? You said that you use it yourself

5 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 27 TABLE 1 Key Findings From the Bank Contradiction New Concept New Tools Obstacle Potential Diminishing returns from stock trading vs. old tools and ownership of clients Sparring way of working Investment plan and sparring organization Sharing clients is not in the culture; extra work Simulated client meeting sparked engagement Investment manager 3: Well, I don t know if I use exactly the words a small proposal but one does diminish it Investment manager 4: Basically pitiful Researcher: Why this, where does this small, modest come from? Investment manager 3: I think that we try to lower the threshold for the client, to indicate that this is not frightening. But when one looks at it from the side, one notices that it makes it [the offer] less interesting Excerpt 2 contains a straightforward suggestion for a new tool: Investment managers should develop an outline for conducting meetings with new clients. Excerpt 3 is a critical observation that contains a suggestion by implication: Investment managers should stop diminishing their offers. The ideas and suggestions were both specific and of general relevance. They brought together the personal and the collective, the immediate and the future-oriented. It seems that this kind of discourse carries unusual potential for generating engagement that may bridge the gap between design and implementation. Table 1 summarizes the key findings from our first case. In the next sections, I present the other two cases following the same logic. CASE 2: THE HEALTH CENTER The second case comes from a municipal health center responsible for the primary care of the population of a district in the city of Espoo, which is located near the capital, Helsinki. In 2004 and 2005, we interviewed patients and conducted Change Laboratory sessions with the physicians and nurses of the center. Each session was devoted to one or two patient cases. Some sessions led to additional multiprofessional meetings with the patient. The chief physician of the health center described the contradiction of the work as a tension between two types of needs the center had to deal with. On the one hand, most of the patients had relatively simple medical problems that could be handled one at a time in a fairly standardized and compact manner. On the other hand, there were also patients with multiple and complex problems who needed a different kind of approach and different tools and rules. The latter group was diffuse and poorly charted, but it included patients with multiple chronic illnesses, with complex social problems, and with mental health problems and addictions. This latter group is sometimes called heartsink patients (O Dowd, 1988) because they often cause the practitioner to feel helpless and frustrated.

6 28 ENGESTRÖM The chief physician proposed that the practitioners should develop a model of two patient pipelines for dealing with the tension. One pipeline would be devoted to relatively standard patients, the other one to complex patients who need more attention, time, and probably also new tools. The development and implementation of this general model of two patient pipelines was adopted as the task and vision for the intervention. As complex patient cases were discussed in sessions with the practitioners, it became clear that the second pipeline required a new mode of work that involved (a) construction of an overview of the patient s care jointly between the patient and a practitioner; (b) discussion of the care by the team of practitioners working in the health center, with the presence of the patient, if needed; and (c) joint decisions for improving the coordination of the care, if needed, taken in an extended network meeting with the presence of other caregivers. This mode of working was given the name community consultation to indicate the idea that the entire working community of the health center and usually also caregivers outside the center needed to become involved in discussion and improvement of the care of complex patients. To construct a shared overview of the patient s care, two tools were employed. The first, the care table, listed all the official and unofficial caregivers that were involved in the patient s care as well as their particular tasks and interconnections. The second, the care trajectory, depicted the health related life and care events of the patient on a timeline that typically covered several years, or even decades. These tools were used in a negotiated way so as to ensure the inclusion of the views of both the patient and the practitioner. Often the very construction of the two representational tools led to the identification of important gaps, discrepancies, misunderstandings, and unmet needs in the care. The new model and new tools were refined and simplified for use on the basis of suggestions and experiences expressed by the practitioners. At the same time, the practitioners began to express increasing doubts and misgivings about their implementation. It was difficult for them to identify complex patients who would actually benefit from community consultation. Several practitioners expressed doubts about the prevalence of such patients to begin with; these wondered whether there really are enough such cases to warrant the extra work the implementation would require. In other words, we witnessed, again, a gap between design and implementation. However, there were also moments of intense involvement even excitement in the Change Laboratory sessions. These were associated with situations in which the analysis and futureoriented design discussion of a patient case was connected to some real time decision or boundary-crossing action aimed at transforming the care here and now. I call these situations real time knotworking episodes (for the concept of knotworking, see Engeström, Engeström, & Vähäaho, 1999). One such episode occurred when a physician presented to the health center team the case of a patient whose chronic illness was progressing in a way that worried the patient excessively and would eventually threaten her mobility and ability to live independently. The patient had gone through a number of rehabilitation therapies, only one of which she had experienced as helpful. Her eligibility for further therapies, paid for by the national health insurance organization, had recently been terminated, and she felt that her care had come to a dead end. The physician suggested that the city board of health should pay for the continuation of the therapy that the patient had experienced as helpful. However, this therapy was expensive and rare, and the

7 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 29 administrators of the city board of health had told the physician that such a request would be denied unless a very strong case could be made for it. In the discussion, another practitioner of the health center suggested that the physician should contact neurologists at the city hospital in order to get an expert recommendation for the therapy. Other participants pointed out that this may not lead to positive results and recommended that the physician contact the private neurologist the patient had seen annually. At this point, a nurse took up a concrete possibility that led to practical action. Excerpt 4 Nurse 1: I d like to ask about this neurologist that visits us once a month. Can we use him in any way? Head physician: Does someone visit us? Nurse 1: Yes, a neurologist does. He ll come today again to L health center [the neighboring health center of the municipality]. He ll have an evening consultation. Physician 2: Wasn t he specifically doing it for headache patients? Nurse 1: Yes, but Head physician: Yes, yes. Nurse 1: Couldn t we perhaps use him, since there are no patients there? Today, for instance, he ll have one single patient. Head physician: Ahaa! Physician 1 [patient s own physician]: Should we call A [the patient] right away Head physician: Immediately. Physician 1: and reserve an appointment? Head physician: Well, if we follow the instructions of KM [the visiting neurologist], we can t do that because this is too difficult; he does not accept too difficult patients. Physician 2: Yes Nurse 1: No, this is probably too difficult for him. Physician 1: But maybe A [the patient] is free today and willing to go if I call her. When will the neurologist come? Nurse 1: Half past three today. Physician 1: All right! Head physician: Let s try it!( ) Physician 1: A lovely opportunity! In the midst of general excitement, the physician went out of the meeting room and called the neurologist. During the call, the participants discussed the general implications of this patient case. Excerpt 5 Head physician: Well, I think this is clearly a pretty common type, this kind of handicapped patient

8 30 ENGESTRÖM Physician 2: Mildly handicapped. Head physician: Mildly, yes handicapped, who gets some therapy somewhere. And as it often happens, she has been dropped from therapy paid by the state. There are often cases in which the doctor is asked to write some kind of a certificate to get a one-year continuation for the therapy. Physician 2: Yes, right. Head physician: And, with adult patients in particular, the overall planning of the care is, unfortunately, often in nobody s hands. The physician returned from making the phone call. Other participants were keen to know the outcome. Excerpt 6 Physician 2: Will he see her? Physician 1: KM refused. Nurse 1: I guessed it. Head physician: Aha! Physician 1: He said no way! Because according to the agreement this is for patients suffering from a severe headache. Nurse 1: I guessed it. Physician 1: And it is unfair if we give an appointment to another patient even if he has only one patient today. He sticks to democracy and cannot take any other patients but those suffering from a headache. So he unfortunately refused today Head physician: Well, well. Physician 1: To see A. In the next Change Laboratory session, the physician was asked about the situation in Patient A s care. It turned out that the intense knotworking attempt in the previous session had energized her to take further knotworking actions, with impressive consequences. Excerpt 7 Physician 1: When I told the patient that she will, after all, not get to see the neurologist [KM] on that day, she said that she had met a private neurologist FD some time in So I called him [FD] and asked for his opinion in this matter. And he was strongly in favor of the therapy [that had been denied]. And then I asked if the patient has some sort of a document from this private doctor. He had written a statement for her in which he had also spelled out that this is in principle an incurable disease in which medication will not help only rehabilitation therapy will and this particular therapy has clearly proven to be helpful. Then I called U [the administrative physician of the municipality responsible for payment decisions], and from him I did get a permission to give up other useless therapies and to concentrate only on this one therapy. Then I called the therapy unit [of the municipality] and the nurse who signs the permissions said that, yes, if you send the patient here with all the documents, this therapy will be affirmed. And then I called the patient, and now she is very happy. So it is taken care of now.

9 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 31 TABLE 2 Key Findings From the Health Center Contradiction New Concept New Tools Obstacle Potential Complex patients and multimorbidity vs. tools and rules for treating one problem at a time Two patient pipelines; community consultation Care table and care trajectory Maybe there are not many complex patients after all; extra work Real-time knotworking episodes generated intensity In the course of the intervention in the health center, we witnessed a few similarly intense episodes of real-time knotworking. They strongly resemble the finding we reported in an earlier study with somewhat different terminology: It seems that to overcome the gap between action and imagination in history-making, it may be necessary to bring them closer to one another and occasionally to merge articulative decision-making and configurative modeling (Engeström, Engeström, & Kerosuo, 2003, p. 305). Table 2 summarizes the findings from the health center case. CASE 3: THE HI-TECH COMPANY The third case comes from a medium-sized manufacturing company that develops and manufactures products demanding high security, such as biometric and visual passports, electronic and visual ID cards, smart cards (credit/bank cards containing integrated circuits), and SIM cards. The company had a long history in mass production that depended on a reservoir of tacit craft skills among the employees. In recent years, it had taken big steps into hi-technology product development and flexible manufacturing of rapidly changing products customized to the requirements of specific corporate and public sector clients. The initial contradiction within the company was identified as a deep tension between the traditional tools, rules, and division of labor, based on mass production and craft skills on the one hand and the new demands of rapid new product development and customization on the other hand. We conducted a number of Change Laboratory-type intervention sessions with workers and foremen in different departments of the company in 2004 and The company management had designed a strategy that listed: continuous improvement and cost-efficiency, customer management, creation of winning concepts, and internationalization as its main foci for This meant multiple, simultaneous transformations, and multiple, simultaneous competence development demands, which were not easy to coordinate and synchronize. There was an evident risk of fragmentation of the strategy into bits and pieces carried out in different parts of the company, in isolation from the whole. In the course of our interventions, the concept of multiheaded strategy (e.g., Cummings & Angwin, 2004) was constructed to capture the challenges of these transformations. To turn the concept into usable tools, we the researchers and the company s human resource professionals constructed two matrices, called the strategy table and the competence table. The strategy table represented the strategic foci set by the management on one axis, and the different departments of the company on the other axis. The cells of the table were to be filled with concrete goals and tasks by each department and work unit. Similarly, the competence table represented different types of work and knowledge (mass production, process enhancement,

10 32 ENGESTRÖM mass customization, coconfiguration) on one axis, and the departments of the company on the other axis. Again, the departments and work units were to fill the cells with concrete competence development tasks. The tables were to be placed as visual displays in the premises of each work unit so that the units could regularly evaluate their achievements and update their challenges against the background of the entire multiheaded strategy. The new concept and new tools were enthusiastically received by the management and the experts of the company, but it soon became clear that nobody was willing to take the responsibility for bringing the tools to the shop floor, and monitoring the various departments in their implementation. Again, we witnessed a wide gap between design and the implementation. In this hi-tech company, it was particularly difficult to identify episodes that would show potential to bridge the gap. Customers, or end users, were more distant, for most of these work units in the hi tech company, than they were for the investment managers and health care professionals. Thus, real or simulated encounters with customers could not be effectively used as a source of personal engagement. Instead, there were numerous episodes in which the workers and also foremen and experts reflected on their personal skills and perspectives of developing their competences. Some of these episodes evoked fairly intense involvement on the part of the practitioners. Excerpt 8 Worker 1: If I wanted, I would have to get to visit one of those factories that make the colors, somewhere in Switzerland, for example, there, on the spot. It is not useful for me to visit some X s printing shop. We do have the best knowledge and skill that probably exists. Worker 2: For a month in Switzerland. Worker 3: In the spring or in the summer? Worker 4: When they have good weather for biking Worker 1: Between April and June I mean, we get the colors from Switzerland and France and they are mythical places; it seems that everyone raises his hands and gives up when one needs to clear up a problem. It seems that there is still a Great Wall of China, or at least the Berlin Wall, still standing between us. The knowledge is interrupted somewhere along the way. Excerpt 9 Worker 5: But when we had problems with the coating at one point, I made phone calls around Finland. There were professors and all kinds of people with whom I talked. And it was cleared, then this coating issue of S why the lamps of cars are coated in a certain way and how that actually fit our job well. Excerpts 8 and 9 show that issues of personal competence, skill, and knowledge were highly charged for the workers. They experienced a powerful need to go and find knotworking partners beyond the company walls, to find the new elements of expertise needed to cope with the challenges of the transformations. In Excerpt 8, the tension embedded in this issue is dealt

11 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 33 TABLE 3 Key Findings From the Hi-Tech Company Contradiction New Concept New Tools Obstacle Potential Demand for new products and customization vs. mass production tools, rules, and division of labor Multiheaded strategy Strategy tables and competence tables Who would implement and enforce strategy work on the shopfloor? Projections of personal competence development with practitioners with by means of jokes about traveling abroad. In Excerpt 9, the worker reports a successful crossing of the boundaries of the company. In these discussions, one could sense an emerging new identity hanging in the air, an identity of a competent worker who goes out and connects with any source or partner available, domestically or internationally, to construct the necessary competence. The key findings from the hi-tech company are summarized in Table 3. ENRICHING THE WORKING HYPOTHESIS: INSTRUMENTALITIES OF LEARNING AND WORK The first part of the working hypothesis presented at the beginning of this article proposes that expansive learning for coconfiguration work is transformative learning that radically broadens the shared objects of work by means of explicitly objectified and articulated novel tools, models, and concepts. The three cases support this assumption. At the same time, they indicate that the novel concepts, models, and tools are not singular or separate mediational entities, but tend to form integrated toolkits. This implies a shift from utilizing well-bounded singular tools to designing and implementing tool constellations or instrumentalities. A tool constellation or instrumentality is literally the toolkit needed in an activity. The tools of a skilled carpenter may fill multiple boxes. They offer the practitioner multiple alternative access points to a task. Thinking is performed with the tools. Thus, the tools open a window into the mentality of the trade. In their study of a blacksmith s use of tools, Keller and Keller (1996) pointed out the variability and flexibility of tool constellations. It is important to note that the ideas constituting the mental components of a constellation often include procedures for correcting or repairing deviations from the image of the desired outcome of a particular step in production. Therefore, tools may well be used in multiple ways even within a given constellation. (Keller & Keller, 1996, p. 103; see also Engeström & Ahonen, 2001, p. 394). As Fleck (1994) and Williams, Stewart, and Slack (2005) showed, information and communication technologies tend to be configuration technologies created from selections of existing (often standard) component technologies and tools and some customized elements configured together. The design and implementation of instrumentalities or configuration technologies is obviously a stepwise process that includes fitting together new and old tools and procedures, as well as putting into novel uses or domesticating packaged technologies.

12 34 ENGESTRÖM Each configuration is built up from a range of components to meet the very specific requirements of the particular user organization. Configurations therefore demand substantial user input and effort if they are to be at all successful, and such inputs can provide the raw material for significant innovation. The specific implementation/innovation process with configurations is a matter of learning through the struggle to get the overall system to work, i.e., a process of learning by trying : improvements and modifications have to be made to the constituent components before the configuration can work as an integrated entity. (Fleck, 1994, pp ). In their important article on complex mediation, Bødker and Andersen (2005) went a step further and developed the notion of multi-mediation. This refers to co-occurring mediators, mediators from different levels, and mediators in chains. In particular, the presence of multiple levels of mediating artifacts in human activity is emphasized. However, I find Bødker and Andersen s definition and use of levels somewhat opaque. In my own work, I have discussed levels of artifact-mediation on the basis of the type of epistemic work the artifact does in a given action or sequence of activity. Certain artifacts are particularly useful for asking and answering what? questions, whereas others are better suited for how? and why? questions (Engeström, 1990, Chapter 8). One way to systematize this perspective on multiple levels of mediating artifacts is summarized in Figure 1. The hierarchy of Figure 1 indicates that on the top, a germ cell model opens a very wide landscape of applications, whereas at the bottom, images and stories are typically quite specific and bound to a particular situation or case. However, the same artifact may be used in radically different ways. A hammer is typically used as a recognition device: It helps you to recognize what may be hammered, such as nails. But a hammer may also serve as a symbol of workers FIGURE 1 Epistemic levels of mediational artifacts.

13 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 35 power a where to? model or at least a sign that triggers such a model. In other words, the material form and shape of the artifact have only limited power to determine its epistemic use. In the bank case previously analyzed, the concept of the sparring way of working was tightly connected to the investment plan and procedures of the sparring organization, such as coaching lessons led by the sparring manager. In fact, the investment plan had been developed before our intervention, but it did not generate much enthusiasm among the investment managers before they developed the concept of the sparring way of working and connected the investment plan to it. Interplay between the investment plan (a how? artifact) and the concept of a sparring way of working (a where to? artifact) made the new mediation powerful. In the health center case, the process began with the head physician s graphic presentation of his vision of the idea of two patient pipelines (a where to? artifact). This was followed by a series of sessions where the two new tools the care table and the care calendar were used and developed step by step. In the hierarchy of Figure 1, the care table typically helps to ask and answer in which location? questions, whereas the care trajectory typically elicits narratives ( who, what, when? ) and leads to a condensed timeline ( how, in which order? ). Toward the end of the intervention study, we introduced the concept of community consultation (another where to? artifact) to the practitioners, to sum up and generalize what had been achieved. In the hi-tech company case, the strategy table and the competence table were meant to serve both as maps or repositories ( in which location? ) and, at least potentially, as systemic diagnostic tools that would help the workers and managers see complex connections and answer why? questions. The meaning of the tables was based on the formulation and recognition of the where to? concept of multiheaded strategy. In all the three cases, the expansive learning processes supported by the Change Laboratory interventions took the shape of constructing and using new mediational concepts and tools in multilayered constellations or instrumentalities. This has important implications for our understanding of the role of technologies in learning. First, in studies of technologically mediated learning environments, new digital tools are typically introduced in a relatively ready-made form, as tools that only need to be used, not constructed or developed further by learners and teachers. In expansive learning for coconfiguration work, constant tool construction and reconfiguration of given technologies by their users is essential. One layer of technology may be given in a relatively ready-made form, but other complementary layers need to be constructed and experimented with to make the technology robust and rooted in the life of the activity system. This is in line with the findings of Ciborra (2000), who pointed out that the ideal of total control over fixed and bounded technologies is rapidly becoming obsolete in complex organizations. Second, whereas technologically mediated learning environments are often complex tool constellations, it seems clear that many of the technologies introduced to facilitate learning are themselves poorly analyzed and understood in terms of their epistemic qualities and potentials. The epistemic levels depicted in Figure 1 are but a preliminary attempt to create a framework for critical reflection and epistemically conscious design of technologies for learning something Bødker and Andersen (2005, p. 394) called leveled design. Paradoxically, such a design approach may lead to conscious decisions not to predesign all the epistemic levels of an emerging instrumentality: that is, to the conscious reservation of open spaces for emerging designs and reconfigurations from below.

14 36 ENGESTRÖM Finally, in studies of technologically mediated learning environments, overarching concepts and visions ( where to? artifacts) are typically not considered as part of technology. Concept formation and tool use are traditionally seen as entirely separate topics in cognitive science and related disciplines. The cases previously presented indicate that concepts and visions should indeed be regarded as essential elements in technology (see also Engeström, Pasanen, Toiviainen, & Haavisto, 2005). When debates and articulation efforts of the conceptual whereto? level of a learning instrumentality are neglected, technology tends to become an end in itself, easily discarded or put only to minimal use, as shown by Cuban (1986, 2001) in school environments. REVISING THE WORKING HYPOTHESIS: EXPERIENCING AS A BRIDGE At the beginning of this article, I presented a threefold working hypothesis. The first point of the working hypothesis states that expansive learning associated with transition toward coconfiguration work is transformative learning that radically broadens the shared objects of work by means of explicitly objectified and articulated novel tools, models, and concepts. Indeed, in the interventions we (practitioners and researchers) constructed new concepts, models, and tools. The practitioners were happy with these and seemed to accept them as their own. But when they were supposed to implement them in practical horizontal knotworking and trailblazing, as stated in the second and third points of the working hypothesis, there was a lot of inertia and obstacles were taken up. In other words, a gap emerged between the first part of the hypothesis and the rest of it. Conversely, in all the three sites, there were episodes in which the practitioners became exceptionally engaged. In the tables presented earlier, these phases are called potential, referring to emerging possibilities of bridging the gap between design and implementation. All these episodes were characterized by strong personal involvement by the participants. Moreover, in these potential episodes, we observed a coming together of specific situational solutions and ideas or visions of general systemic change. The personal and the collective, as well as the immediate and the future oriented, seemed to merge in these phases. The first impression from these phases is that they all have to do with identity formation. After all, practitioners facing major transformations in work must somehow see themselves as individuals taking on a new personal identity, when the entire work activity is radically changed. Gee (2003) pointed out that this is a necessary component in all serious learning: All deep learning that is, active, critical learning is inextricably caught up with identity in a variety of different ways. People cannot learn in a deep way within a semiotic domain if they are not willing to commit themselves fully to the learning in terms of time, effort and active engagement. Such a commitment requires that they are willing to see themselves in terms of a new identity, that is, to see themselves as the kind of a person who can learn, use, and value the new semiotic domain. In turn, they need to believe that they will be valued and accepted by others committed to that domain that is, by people in the affinity group associated with the domain. (p. 59) Gee (2003) distinguished between three types of identity: real world identity, virtual identity, and projective identity. Obviously the third type projective identity is mainly relevant here.

15 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 37 But the concept of identity is also problematic, especially virtual identities, which are commonly presented as roles or masks that can be chosen, adopted, and abandoned at will (Turkle, 1995). More generally, identity is too often depicted as an internally coherent, fixed, and well bounded entity. As such, it leaves little room for contradictions, change, and development. For these reasons, the concept of experiencing, as put forward by Vasilyuk (1988), seems more promising, as a bridge between design and implementation. According to Vasilyuk (1988), experiencing is particular internal work by means of which a person overcomes and conquers a crisis, restores lost spiritual equilibrium and resurrects the lost meaning of existence (p. 10). In other words, Vasilyuk defines experiencing as the working out of contradictions human beings encounter in maintaining their activities. If one had to use one word only to define the nature of such situations one would have to say that they are situations of impossibility. Impossibility of what? Impossibility of living, of realizing the internal necessities of life. The struggle against impossibility, the struggle to realize internal necessities that is experiencing. Experiencing is a repair of a disruption of life, a work of restoration, proceeding as it were at right angles to the line of actualization of life. If the psychological theory of activity studies, figuratively speaking, the way in which a human being travels life s road, then the theory of experiencing studies the way in which he or she falls and rises again to continue the journey. (p. 32; original emphasis) Clearly practitioners facing major transformations in their work activities are working out contradictions and struggling to overcome the impossible. But, in the expansive learning efforts described earlier as potential bridges, they do more than that. They put themselves into imagined, simulated, and real situations that require personal engagement in actions with material objects and artifacts (including other human beings) that follow the logic of an anticipated or designed future model of the activity. They experience the future. To grasp this, it is useful to add Dewey s (1934) notion of experience to Vasilyuk s concept of experiencing. Experience is a matter of the interaction of organism with its environment, an environment that is human as well as physical, that includes the materials of tradition and institutions as well as local surroundings. The organism brings with it through its own structure, native and acquired forces that play a part in the interaction. The self acts as well as undergoes, and its undergoings are not impressions stamped upon an inert wax but depend upon the way the organism reacts and responds. There is no experience in which the human contribution is not a factor in determining what actually happens. The organism is a force, not a transparency. Because every experience is constituted by interaction between subject and object, between a self and its world, it is itself neither merely physical nor merely mental, no matter how much one factor or the other predominates. In an experience, things and events belonging to the world, physical and social, are transformed through the human context they enter, while the live creature is changed and developed through its intercourse with things previously external to it. (pp ) Dewey pointed out that in experience, the live creature is changed and developed through its intercourse with things previously external to it. The challenge for the theory of expansive learning is to reconceptualize Dewey s live creature not just as an individual but also, and above all, as a collective activity system.

16 38 ENGESTRÖM CONCLUSION The initial working hypothesis presented at the beginning of this article may now be enriched and reformulated as follows. Expansive learning required and generated by the introduction of coconfiguration work may be characterized with the help of four central features: 1. It is transformative learning that radically broadens the shared objects of work by means of explicitly objectified and articulated novel tools, models, and concepts that tend to form integrated multilevel instrumentalities or constellations. 2. It is learning by experiencing that puts the participants into imagined, simulated, and real situations that require personal engagement in actions with material objects and artifacts (including other human beings) that follow the logic of an anticipated or designed future model of the activity. 3. It is horizontal and dialogical learning that creates knowledge and transforms the activity, by crossing boundaries and tying knots between activity systems. 4. It is subterranean learning that blazes cognitive trails that are embodied and lived but unnoticeable. These trails serve as anchors and stabilizing networks that secure the viability and sustainability of the new concepts, models, and tools, thus making the multiactivity terrains knowable and livable. At this point, learning by experiencing is only a tentative proposition meant to stimulate further theoretical work and empirical studies. 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. REFERENCES Baethge, M., Kitay, J., & Regalia, I. (1999). Managerial strategies, human resource practices, and labor relations in banks: A comparative view. In M. Regini, J. Kitay, & M. Baethge (Eds.), From tellers to sellers: Changing employment relations in banks (pp. 3 30). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bødker, S., & Andersen, P. B. (2005). Complex mediation. Human Computer Interaction, 20, Ciborra, C. (2000). From control to drift: The dynamics of corporate information infrastructures. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since New York: Teachers College Press. Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused. Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cummings, S., & Angwin, D. (2004). The future shape of strategy: Lemmings or chimeras. Academy of Management Executive, 18(2),

17 JOURNEYS TOWARD COCONFIGURATION 39 Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Capricorn Books. Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki, Finland: Orienta-Konsultit. Engeström, Y. (1990). Learning, working and imagining: Twelve studies in activity theory. Helsinki, Finland: Orienta- Konsultit. Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14, Engeström, Y. (2004). New forms of learning in co-configuration work. The Journal of Workplace Learning, 16, Engeström, Y. (2007). Putting Vygotsky to work: The Change Laboratory as an application of double stimulation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole, & J. V. Wertsch (Eds.), Cambridge companion to Vygotsky. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Engeström, Y., & Ahonen, H. (2001). On the materiality of social capital: An activity theoretical exploration. In H. Hasan, E. Gould, P. Larkin, & L. Vrazalic (Eds.), Information systems and activity theory: Volume 2: Theory and practice (pp ). Wollongong, Australia: University of Wollongong Press. Engeström, Y., Engeström, R., & Kerosuo, H. (2003). The discursive construction of collaborative care. Applied Linguistics, 24, Engeström, Y., Engeström, R., & Vähäaho, T. (1999). When the center does not hold: The importance of knotworking. In S. Chaiklin, M. Hedegaard, & U. J. Jensen (Eds.), Activity theory and social practice: Cultural-historical approaches (pp ). Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press. Engeström, Y., Pasanen, A., Toiviainen, H., & Haavisto, V. (2005). Expansive learning as collaborative concept formation at work. In K. Yamazumi, Y. Engeström, & H. Daniels (Eds.), New learning challenges: Going beyond the industrial age system of school and work (pp ). Osaka, Japan: Kansai University Press. Engeström, Y., Virkkunen, J., Helle, M., Pihlaja, J., & Poikela, R. (1996). Change laboratory as a tool for transforming work. Lifelong Learning in Europe, 1, Fleck, J. (1994). Learning by trying: The implementation of configurational technology. Research Policy, 23, Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Keller, C. M., & Keller, J. D. (1996). Cognition and tool use: The blacksmith at work. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. O Dowd, T. C. (1988). Five years of heartsink patients in general practice. British Medical Journal, 97, Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vasilyuk, F. (1988). The psychology of experiencing. Moscow: Progress. Victor, B., & Boynton, A. C. (1998). Invented here: Maximizing your organization s internal growth and profitability. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Williams, R., Stewart, J., & Slack, R. (2005). Social learning in technological innovation: Experimenting with information and communication technologies. Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar.

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