EXPANSIVE LEARNING AS COLLABORATIVE
CONCEPT FORMATION AT WORK*
Yrjö Engeström, University of Helsinki
Auli Pasanen, University of Helsinki
Hanna Toiviainen, University of Helsinki
Vaula Haavisto, University of Helsinki
INTRODUCTION
It is commonly accepted that concepts are among the basic building blocks of human
cognition, knowledge, and learning (e.g., Keil, 1992, Lamberts & Shanks, 1997, Margolis
& Laurence, 1999, Murphy, 2002). What is not so often realized in cognitive science and
educational research is that coping with the world requires that we operate with
increasingly complex theoretical concepts. Terms like terrorism, global warming, HIV,
globalization, or human genome are not merely words. They are names for multi-faceted
and ill-bounded – sometimes monstrous – objects, ideas, and practices, which human
beings and their institutions desperately try to understand and manage, or conceptualize.
It is not an accident that in many languages the word ‘concept’ (e.g., in German ‘Begriff’,
in Finnish ‘käsite’) is derived from the word ‘to grasp’, literally to take or grab with one’s
hand. It is equally interesting that the English word concept is related to ‘conceiving’,
that is, imagining, envisioning or making up a possible future state of affairs.1 These two
roots indicate the dual meaning of concepts: they are practical tools for handling and
mastering objects, and they are also future-oriented visions or ways of worldmaking
(Goodman, 1978).
The examples listed above make it clear that complex concepts are restless, contested and
contradictory. They carry ethical and ideological challenges. They evolve and generate
surprising manifestations. They cannot be easily defined and put to rest as categories in a
dictionary. In other words, our conceptualizations also grab and mold us. Yet we need
complex concepts as tools, which makes it necessary that we try to fix and stabilize them,
at least temporarily (Smith, 1996).
*
Published as Chapter 2 in Yamazumi, K., Engeström, Y. & Daniels, H. (Eds.) (2006), New learning
challenges: Going beyond the industrial age system of school and work. Osaka: Kansai University Press (p.
47-77).
1
Nor is it accidental that the notion of ‘concept’ plays such a central role in practices and methodologies of
product development and design (e.g., Fogg, 2003). The term ‘concept car’, for example, denotes a futureoriented model of a ‘dream car’ that plays at the boundaries of what might be possible (Bell, 2003). More
generally, concepts in design are commonly understood as first drafts or sketches of the essential contours
of an emerging product.
2
Standard cognitive theories of concept formation have been preoccupied with stable,
well-defined and neutral concepts. These theories offer little for developmental and
pedagogical work with unstable and contradictory complex concepts. From the
perspective of cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, Miettinen & Punamäki,
1999) and expansive learning theory (Engeström, 1987), we suggest the following basic
points of departure for the study and development of complex concepts.
First, complex concepts are best understood as products and tools of collective activities
that evolve historically. Complex concepts need to be studied as embedded in complex
human activity systems, not merely as logical propositions or textual products. Thus, the
concept of diabetes, for example, evolves in the collective activities of medical research,
care, and being ill (Jensen, 1987).
Secondly, such concepts are inherently polyvalent, debated, and dynamic. For example in
the case of diabetes, every local action of diagnosis destabilizes the concept and
potentially contributes to its evolution. Different stakeholders, including different medical
specialties, produce partially conflicting versions of the concept. Thus, the formation of
complex concepts involves confrontation and contestation.
Thirdly, complex concepts are future-oriented. They embody affects, visions, hopes,
fears, and collective intentions. This is clear when we speak of ‘concept cars’ or other
design concepts. But think about ‘terrorism’ or ‘human genome’ or ‘diabetes’. These
concepts are loaded with passions for control, for utilization, for elimination, and so on.
Fourthly, complex concepts are best learned through investigation, debate and re-design
of the learners’ own life activities. In other words, complex concepts are best learned
when they are challenged, re-constructed and implemented in practice. Such expansive
learning (Engeström, 1987) brings together acquisition and creation. Concept formation
is not just internalization of culturally given concepts but above all externalization,
generation of culturally new concepts (which also will need to be internalized).
In this paper, we will examine the following three questions which may significantly
enrich and expand the general starting points described above.
1. How can collaborative concept formation be analyzed not only as vertical
movement between ‘scientific’ or authorized concepts and everyday or
experiential concepts but also as horizontal movement between different
worldviews or perspectives?
2. How can collaborative concept formation be analyzed as construction and use of
multiple, interconnected levels of conceptualization?
3. How can complex collective concepts be analyzed in their future-oriented and
visionary potential?
3
In the following sections, we will discuss each one of these three questions in its turn,
using data from two intervention studies in Finnish work organizations. The empirical
material of the cases analyzed stems from two series of Change Laboratory interventions
(see Engeström, Virkkunen, Helle, Pihlaja & Poikela, 1996) carried out between 1997
and 2004. The cases deal with the development of work in two fields of practices, namely
the care of patients with multiple chronic illnesses in collaboration between the primary
health care and hospitals, and the investment management for wealthy customers in a
large Finnish-Scandinavian commercial bank.
COLLABORATIVE CONCEPT FORMATION AS A TWODIMENSIONAL PROCESS
The traditional view presents concept formation as a vertical and top-down process in
which culturally accepted concepts are handed down. Such authoritative concepts are
essentially uncontested; their ‘correctness’ is not questioned. In his classic Thinking and
Speech, Vygotsky (1934/1987) opened up a radically more interactive and creative view
of concept formation. Greatly simplified, it may be schematically depicted as in Figure 1.
Instead of authoritative concepts simply being handed down, Vygotsky described the
process as a creative meeting between children’s spontaneous or everyday concepts
developing bottom-up, and the scientific concepts taught in school instruction, moving
top-down.
SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT
CREATIVE MIDDLE
EVERYDAY CONCEPT
Figure 1.
A simplified summary of Vygotsky’s view of concept formation:
reciprocal, but still vertical
In spite of its obvious virtues, Vygotsky’s view did not address the issue of qualitatively
different or colliding worldviews, perspectives and positions in concept formation.
Clearly such differences and clashes exist both among authorized ‘scientific’ concepts
and among everyday concepts (for an extended constructive critique of Vygotsky’s view
of concepts, see Davydov, 1990).
Figure 1 may be read as depicting the vertical reciprocal dynamics of concept
development which open up a space for the “creative middle” where new conceptual
ideas and elements are constructed in collaborative and contradictory encounters between
4
representatives of different activity systems. We will next analyze this process through
the case of constructing the concept of care agreement in the health care of Helsinki.
In the end of the 1990s, the health care in the Helsinki area was criticized for being both
expensive and inefficient. The problems manifested themselves especially in patients
with multiple chronic illnesses who drifted from one caregiver to another without anyone
having an overview and overall responsibility for their care. In 1999 in Helsinki, 3.3% of
the patients used 49.3% of all health care expenses, and 15.5% of patients used 78.2% of
all resources (Engeström, Engeström & Kerosuo, 2003). A new concept of work was
becoming a strategic priority as the different caregivers and patients themselves needed to
learn to produce together well coordinated and highly adaptable long-term care
trajectories.
The learning challenge here was to acquire a new, negotiated way of working in which
patients and practitioners from different caregiver organizations would collaboratively
plan and monitor the patient’s trajectory of care and take a joint responsibility for its
overall progress. Our research group organized an intervention to support this kind of
collaborative learning. In 1998 - 1999, we conducted a ten-week Boundary Crossing
Laboratory - a version of the generic Change Laboratory method - with practitioners
from the Helsinki children’s hospital and from local primary care health centers. In each
weekly session, we presented videos and documents from the care of a child patient with
multiple chronic illnesses. To give voice to the parties involved, also the patient’s mother
was present and took part in the discussion in the sessions.
The concept of care agreement was not offered as a starting point of the project. It took
shape gradually through transitions between the concepts declared from above and the
conceptualization attempts experienced and expressed from below, as depicted in Figure
2. Our first excerpt is taken from the phase in which the need for parent involvement and
the idea of care responsibility negotiation were discussed as potential means of providing
coordinated care (Figure 2, phase 3). The hospital physician’s repeated use of the word
‘responsibility’ is a crucial element here. The term ‘care agreement’ is not mentioned yet,
but the physician struggles to find an articulation for “some kind of arrangement” to
organize the caregivers around this sick child and the family.
Excerpt 1
Hospital physician: I kind of woke up when I was writing the minutes (of the
preceding session). …What dawned on me concerning B (name of the patient in
the case discussed) is, I mean, a central thing… for the mastery of the entire care.
How will it be realized and what systems does it require? I think it was pretty
good, when I went back through our discussion, I think one finds clear attempts at
solving this. It is sort of a foundation, which we must erect for every patient.
Researcher: That seems to be a proposal for formulating the problem. What is…
or how do we want to solve it in B’s case? I mean, is it your idea that what we
want to solve is the mastery of the entire care?
5
Hospital physician: I think it’s just that. I mean that we should have… or
specifically concerning these responsibilities and sharing of responsibility and of
practical plans, and tying knots, well, we should have some kind of arrangement
in place. Something that makes everyone aware of his or her place around this
sick child and the family.
(Boundary Crossing Laboratory, session 5, italics added)
DECLARED FROM ABOVE
CRITICAL
PATHWAYS
AUTOMATIC
FEEDBACK
DECLARED
CONCEPT 1
DECLARED
CONCEPT 2
EXPERIENCED
CONCEPT 1
EXPERIENCED
CONCEPT 2
EXCESSIVE
MULTIPLE
PAPERWORK
ILLNESSES,
FRAGMENTED CARE
CARE
RESPONSIBILITY
NEGOTIATION
DECLARED
CONCEPT 2
CARE
AGREEMENT
DECLARED
CONCEPT 4
EXPERIENCED
CONCEPT 3
NEED FOR PARENT
INVOLVEMENT
EXPERIENCED FROM BELOW
Figure 2.
The collaborativeformation of the concept of care agreement: A
developmental view
The existing administrative concept for coordination of care used by the health
professionals was ‘critical pathway’, which had been designed to guide the movement of
a patient within a single diagnostic category. Patient cases showing multiple
uncoordinated and disconnected diagnoses and trajectories of care led to an intense effort
to design a new concept for negotiated collaborative care. This new concept was
eventually named ‘care agreement’.
The introduction of a new concept did not simply mean the rejection of the former key
concepts. To the contrary, old and new concepts coexisted, competed, and clashed with
each other as well as with the living reality they were meant to grasp. Some participants
wanted to stick with the critical pathway based on taking a single diagnosis at a time,
even though it clashed with the concrete cases of patients with multiple simultaneous
illnesses.
6
Excerpt 2
Hospital physician 1: Here is first of all … the care for asthma and then there is
the care for food allergy. So in the case of one child, this cannot really be
presented on one overhead, how this goes…
Head physician (in aggravated tone): But isn’t it quite common that children
with allergies have these other problems? So surely they, surely you will plan
some sort of a process which guarantees that these children do not belong to
many critical pathways but…?
Hospital physician 2: Well, unfortunately these children will indeed belong to
multiple critical pathways…
(Boundary crossing laboratory, session 7)
The new conceptualization grew gradually out of contradictions identified in the present
ways of conceptualizing the care of patients. The interplay of the key concepts and their
significance for the participants in the course of the laboratory sessions is graphically
presented in Figure 3. Excerpt 2 is taken from session 7, in which the critical pathway
was still dominating as a conceptual focus of collaborative discourse.
Addressing critical pathways, excerpt 2 may also enrich the interpretation of Figure 2
that displays the sequential phases of the concept formation in this case. Paradoxically,
this chronologically relatively late piece of discussion from session 7 represents a
developmentally very early phase, namely phase 1 in Figure 2. Concept formation does
not proceed in a linear fashion. The key concepts of critical pathway and care agreement
continued to coexist until the end of the Boundary Crossing Laboratory sessions. In fact,
this kind of struggle and coexistence will go on for years, even after the established old
concept has been officially replaced by the new one.
7
Figure 3.
Evolution and interplay of key conceptualizations in the Boundary
Crossing Laboratory: A chronological view (Engeström, 2001, p. 149)
A tentative answer to our first research question may now be summarized. The dynamic
movement of complex concepts is partly based on their debated or multi-voiced character
(see R. Engeström, 1995). Furthermore, complex concepts evolve historically and
situationally through (a) vertical shifts and debates between declared concepts given from
above and experienced concepts emerging from below, and (b) through horizontal shifts
and debates between different points of view or different constructions of meaning
related to the object in question. In analyzing such processes of concept formation, it is
important to distinguish between the chronological and the developmental lines of
movement, as developmentally early conceptualizations typically continue to coexist with
developmentally later conceptualizations meant to replace the earlier ones.
COLLABORATIVE CONCEPT FORMATION AS CONSTRUCTION
AND USE OF DYNAMIC MULTI-LEVEL CONCEPTUAL
INSTRUMENTALITIES
Our second question concerns the construction and use of multi-level conceptual
instrumentalities. This is another avenue to enrich Vygotsky’s distinction between
scientific and everyday concepts, and it pertains also to more elaborate dichotomies, such
as Davydov’s (1990) distinction between empirical and theoretical concepts. We suspect
that complex concepts evolve as dynamic multi-level hierarchies in which the different
8
levels of conceptualization display qualitatively different epistemic potentials. We call
such dynamic hierarchies conceptual instrumentalities.
Consider the excerpt 3 as an instance of concept formation and concept use.
Excerpt 3
General Practitioner: ...And here is the whole range of different types of
diagnoses and their connections that this lady has [displays on overhead shown
below as Figure 4]. As requested, I then prepared this care calendar, and I found
it to be extremely good and helpful in representing the overall situation. May I
present it next?
Researcher: Please do.
General Practitioner: So if we think about Rauni as a person, she has made a
tremendous career abroad. And this is manifested in the list of diagnoses...
Figure 4.
A general practitioner’s graphic conceptualization of a patient
The general practitioner was conceptualizing a particular patient case. She stabilized her
attempt with the help of a diagram (Figure 4) and a name (she called the diagram
‘amoeba’). These were generalizations which tried to capture and abstract something
essential in the particular case. On the other hand, the conceptualizations stayed very
close the to the particular patient’s identity and experience. The general practitioner used
the expression “Rauni as a person”, and the particular combination of diagnoses listed in
the diagram was unique to Rauni. This type of conceptualization is aimed at creating an
image or prototype that is a mixture of particularities and generalizations (on prototypes,
9
see Rosch & Lloyd, 1978). Such a conceptualization attempts to describe and synthesize
what is important in the specific situation it captures and represents. As we see in the
general practitioner’s amoeba (Figure 4), such a conceptualization tends to be a holistic
image or pattern, often also containing a relatively static mapping of elements or
dimensions. It typically does not specify dynamic relations or interactions between its
components.
At the other end of the hierarchy, there are conceptualizations which attempt to ask and
answer where-to questions about the future of the entire collective activity system or
network of activity systems. These typically represent a vision in the form of a simple but
powerful systemic model. Such where-to concepts are typically constructed and acquired
through prolonged collaborative discussion, analysis, modeling and testing. To use
Davydov’s (1990) terminology, they are germ-cell models, meant to capture in a
simplified form the basic internal relations and tensions of the activity that make the
participants understand their history and strive for possible expansive change in their
activity systems. In the course of our interventions in health care, the practitioners
constructed such a germ-cell model of the care agreement practice (Figure 5).
PRIMARY
CARE
HEALTH
CENTER
REFERRAL
CARE FEEDBACK
CARE
AGREEMENT
HOSPITAL
CLINIC
PATIENT,
FAMILY
Figure 5. A germ-cell conceptualization of the care agreement practice, designed by
lead practitioners
In this model, the crucial new element is the interconnection between primary care,
hospital, and the patient, named as care agreement. Without this connection, the
traditional referrals and forms of care feedback are riddled with tensions and breakdowns,
as hospitals blame primary care for unnecessary referrals and primary care practitioners
blame hospitals for sucking in patients without properly informing their primary care
physicians, not to speak of negotiating with them. Most importantly, the new model puts
the patient (or the patient’s family) in the position of a negotiating partner in the
formulation and implementation of a mutual agreement for coordinating the care.
The construction and use of dynamic multi-level conceptual instrumentalities may
proceed by ‘filling gaps’ between the situational what conceptualizations and historicalvisionary where to conceptualizations. This means ongoing bottom-up and top-down
movement whereby the epistemic potentials and requirements of the different levels are
10
discovered and invested with meaning. In the case of the care agreement, such
intermediate concepts created by the participants were care calendars, care maps, a basic
algorithm for care agreement work, and care maps with dynamic interconnections (Figure
6). Due to space limitations, we cannot go into the details of these intermediate levels
here (see, however, Engeström, Puonti & Seppänen, 2003).
GERM
CELL
MODELS:
WHERE TO?
Care agreement model
SYSTEMS MODELS:
WHY?
Care maps, when dynamic
ALGORITHMS, SCRIPTS:
HOW?
CLASSIFICATIONS:
IN WHICH LOCATION?
STORIES, NARRATIVES:
WHO, WHEN?
IMAGES, PROTOTYPES:
WHAT?
Figure 6.
Basic algorithm for
care agreement work
Care maps
Care calendars
Situational
models
(e.g. the amoeba)
A dynamic hierarchy of conceptualizations in the care agreement case
Seen in this way, collaborative concept formation and concept use are not separate and
successive phases. Concepts are constructed by using them, or, the use of a concept
means always the construction of the concept. The execution of a concept is not dictated
by administrative guidelines, no matter how detailed they may be. Table 1 summarizes
the evolution of the conceptual instrumentality of the care agreement over a period of ten
months after the initial formulation of the germ-cell concept. The table shows that despite
the explicit intentions of the pilot practitioners, not all conceptual levels were employed
at once as tools for gaining negotiated control over the discoordinated care of the pilot
patients. Ten pilot cases were prepared and presented during the course of a ten-month
intervention. A moreless comprehensive use of the different levels was reached only in
the fifth case and thereafter.
11
Table 1.
Implementation of tools of negotiated care in ten successive patient
cases (Kerosuo & Engeström, 2003, p. 347)
Patient Cas e,
M ain Ailme nt
Case 1
Rheumatoid
Arthritis
Case 2
Heart Ailm ent
Case 3
Heart Ailm ent
Case 4
Diabetes
Case 5
Diabetes
Case 6
Nephropathy
Case 7
Diabetes
Case 8
Heart and
Pulm onary
Ailment
Case 9
Nephropathy
Case 10
Pulm onary
Ailment
Care
Calendar
Car e M ap
Care
Agreeme nt
“Own Tools”
Patient's c are map:
- Problems i n the flow o f
inform ation
X
X
-
X
-
-
X
X
-
X
-
-
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
-
X
X
-
-
Care cal endar a list of epicrisis
Com bined care calendar and care
map. Care ag reeme nt proposal on a
hospital referral.
Depiction of a m odel client at the
health center as an amo eba.
Care map as a flowchart.
In sum, dynamic formation and movement of complex concepts is partly based on their
multi-level nature. The concept takes shape at different levels of conceptualization,
ranging from situation-specific images and prototypes to general germ cells. The different
levels of conceptualization pose and answer different epistemic questions, from ‘what?’
to ‘where to?’ The formation of such a multi-level conceptual instrumentality requires
time and multiple rounds of object-oriented employment of the instrumentality, as well as
opportunities for collective reflection and reformulation of the conceptualizations (for the
latter, see Engeström, Engeström & Kerosuo, 2003). One possible course of such concept
formation is to begin simultaneously from the bottom and from the top of the hierarchy,
and to subsequently ‘fill in the gaps’ in between, moving back and forth between the
different levels in accordance to the demands of the tasks at hand. This may be seen as an
extension of Vygotsky’s notion of concept formation as a two-way movement.
COLLABORATIVE CONCEPT FORMATION AS CONSTRUCTION
OF PERSPECTIVAL ‘WHERE-TO’ CONCEPTS
In his classic book on the collective use and evolution of concepts, Stephen Toulmin
pointed out the inescapable connection between concept formation, ethical judgment, and
volition.
“The tasks of constructing novel sets of concepts in any field of enquiry and refashioning existing concepts
so as to go beyond the scope of currently established procedures likewise raise comparative questions,
12
about what changes would be ‘better’ or ‘worse’, rather than single valued ones, about what step is
‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’” (Toulmin, 1972, p. 487)
Toulmin continues by stating that “the issues involved in a choice between alternative
new strategies demand, in certain respects, an element of prophecy” (Toulmin, 1972, p.
489). How might such an element of prophecy be built into complex concepts?
Our second 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 (Regini, Kitay & Baethge, 1999). As
Baethge, Kitay and Regalia (1999, p. 5) phrase 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 has 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 which would build on existing long-lasting customer
relations but would be less dependent on stock market, and would 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
twelve weekly sessions, six before the summer and six after the summer.
Drawing from historical data and interviews we, the researcher-interventionists,
constructed a four-field matrix in which we projected the zone of proximal development
of this activity as our working hypothesis (Figure 7, field 4; for the concept of zone of
proximal development applied in collective activity systems, see Engeström, 1987). This
hypothesis was based on a broader focus of our project on the emergence of coconfiguration work, which, as suggested by Victor and Boynton (1998), we expected to
become a possible solution to the contradictions of mass production and mass
customization.
13
Expanded object of work
2 Investment manager
(focus on customer
relationship management
and on investments)
Short-term
orientation
1 Stockbroker
(focus on markets and on
performance of active
trading)
Wealth manager 4
(focus on total wealth
management based on
shared wealth management
contracts)
Long-term
Portfolio manager 3
orientation
(focus on markets and
on performance of defined
investment strategies)
Narrow object of work
Figure 7.
Researchers’ hypothesis of the zone of proximal development for
investment managers’ work
The researchers’ vision of the future work of the investment managers was formulated as
‘negotiated total wealth management.’ We hoped that by analyzing the historical layers
and current contradictions of their work, the practitioners would step by step open up and
substantiate this vision, turning it into a germ-cell model for co-configuration-type wealth
management. In other words, the conceptualization of ‘negotiated total wealth
management’ was proposed from above, as shown in Figure 8.
FROM ABOVE
NEGOTIATED
TOTAL
WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
FROM BELOW
Figure 8.
‘Negotiated total wealth management’ as researchers’ formulation
of the future of investment management
14
Our proposition was supported by the simultaneous introduction by the unit management
of a new investment plan2 as a tool for managing customer relationships in investment
managers’ work. To highlight its connection to a transition toward co-configuration work
(negotiated total wealth management), we also called the investment plan ‘wealth
management plan’ (Figure 9).
FROM ABOVE
NEGOTIATED
TOTAL
WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
INVESTMENT
PLAN/ WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
PLAN
FROM BELOW
Figure 9.
Investment plan/wealth management plan as a complementary
component of the proposed concept of negotiated total wealth management
The participants of the Change Laboratory were asked to bring their own customer cases
and respective investment plans into the sessions to be discussed and analyzed
collectively. One of the investment managers, Henri, had in a previous session presented
a problematic customer who was seemingly unwilling to commit to the bank relationship
but rather was moving his money away from the bank. For an investment manager, this
meant often a dead end situation where contacts with the customer did not lead to
productive actions. The customer was named ‘The drifter’. The participants – Markku
among them - discussed how to proceed with this kind of a customer (Henri was absent
from this session).
Excerpt 4
Markku: The starting point is that we have to be active now. Because the
customer is active in the way that he tells us to move his money there and there,
away from [our bank]. So now we must make suggestions, and since Henri is not
here [laughter], we may also consider whether it would be wise to change [the
investment manager]. Because it may not be likely that the situation will change
2
An investment plan is a written document comprising of several pages of customer information. It is a
confidential report resulting from the discussion between the customer and the investment manager.
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.
15
radically if we stick to the same contact person. At least we might try if another
person might achieve something. [italics added by the authors]
The idea of switching investment managers in order to solve the deadlock brought an
entirely new element into discussion from below (Figure 10). In effect, it broke a
persistent taboo which had kept each investment manager’s ‘own’ customers outside the
scrutiny of colleagues. It implied that the investment managers would collaboratively
start to analyze their customer relationships and discuss how they might be managed in a
most reasonable way. This was a challenge both to the traditional way of working based
on individual ‘ownership’ of one’s customers, and also to the researchers who had not
considered this as an element of the proposed new model.
FROM ABOVE
NEGOTIATED
TOTAL
WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
INVESTMENT
PLAN/ WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
PLAN
’DRIFTER’;
SWITCHING
INVESTMENT
MANAGERS
FROM BELOW
Figure 10.
‘The drifter’ as a challenge from below
In the discussion, new elements appeared which raised the issue of the underutilized
potential of (a) the services and products to be offered and sold to customers, and (b) the
significant part of the clientele that remained in the shadow of the small customer group
of active traders. The former was called ‘black holes’ in an investment manager’s
mastery of complicated customer cases (excerpt 5). The latter was recognized as
‘unproductive mass’ (excerpt 6). Together these two elements gave increased weight and
concreteness to the perspective that was emerging from below (Figure 11).
Excerpt 5
Juha: We have these black holes in that easily each one of us will speak and sell
and present what is already familiar...
Miia: Yeah...
Juha: ...what we already know. And when we face a bit more complicated or
difficult case, which I don’t master so well, then I’ll rather keep my mouth shut
and won’t sell it...
16
Excerpt 6
Markku: Our biggest problem is the unproductive mass. It is, after all, closely
connected to investment activity...
FROM ABOVE
NEGOTIATED
TOTAL
WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
’DRIFTER’;
SWITCHING
INVESTMENT
MANAGERS
INVESTMENT
PLAN/ WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
PLAN
BLACK HOLES,
UNPRODUCTIVE
MASS
FROM BELOW
Figure 11.
‘Black holes’ and ‘unproductive mass’ as new elements from
below starting to replace the from-above concept of ‘negotiated total wealth
management’
In this phase, the researchers’ initial conceptualization of ‘negotiated total wealth
management’ started to fade, whereas the investment plan continued to be in the focus of
discussion. The model proposed by the researchers assumed that efforts should be
focused on developing new products and services. In contrast, the ‘black holes’ and
‘unproductive mass’ discussions emphasized that existing products and services should
be more effectively offered to customers largely neglected thus far. The drifter, black
holes, and unproductive mass were issues that revealed how difficult it was to master
work individually, as it had been done thus far. In this situation, in spite of a realization
of its importance in the uncovering of drifters, black holes and unproductive mass, the
investment plan/wealth management plan into daily practice was in itself not seen as an
immediate solution but more as an extra burden of added work. One of the participants,
Jari, 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 7). Subsequently, Mika elaborated the idea further (excerpt 8). The notion of
‘sparring’ began to emerge as a core of the new concept (Figure 12).
Excerpt 7
Jari: 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 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.
17
Excerpt 8
Mika: What might work well is that for instance Markku makes two [investment
plans] per month and they are presented and discussed together in a group
meeting...
Researcher: Exactly...
Mika: ...and there they get critique and sparring. Because if he prepares them
alone in a dark corner, it will not lead anywhere.
FROM ABOVE
NEGOTIATED
TOTAL
WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
’DRIFTER’;
SWITCHING
INVESTMENT
MANAGERS
INVESTMENT
PLAN/ WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
PLAN
BLACK HOLES,
UNPRODUCTIVE
MASS
SPARRING
FROM BELOW
Figure 12.
‘Sparring’ as a new core of the concept emerging from below
Investment managers also expressed a need for technical help in using new applications
of information technology and in fixing everyday problems with computers, as the
present way of organizing the desk help was not flexible enough to support their work.
This was conceptualized as ‘support’, which, together with sparring, started to give
meaning to the transformation of work as it was envisioned from below (Figure 13).
Excerpt 9
Katri: I think the support that we call data processing support... Maybe we are
pretty old-fashioned, as it is supposedly now called IT. Well, Reuters has a
magnificent system for this. They send to us a person who helps, shows, ”punch
here, do this and this.”
Liisa: Takes you by the hand.
Katri: So, it is much easier to find the logical path when someone shows it to you
once. Most people learn with one demonstration, most people. And everyone
learns after two times.
18
FROM ABOVE
NEGOTIATED
TOTAL
WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
’DRIFTER’;
SWITCHING
INVESTMENT
MANAGERS
INVESTMENT
PLAN/ WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
PLAN
BLACK HOLES,
UNPRODUCTIVE
MASS
SPARRING
SUPPORT
FROM BELOW
Figure 13.
‘Support’ as an enrichment to the idea of ‘sparring’
As these elements accumulated, the researchers and practitioners were able to draw them
together by putting forth a new model for the future work. It was named ‘sparring way of
working’, which seemed to take over from the ‘negotiated total wealth management’. The
sparring way of working was immediately accepted by the unit manager who also
participated in most sessions. In other words, the conceptualization worked out step by
step from below almost instantaneously turned into a concept to be implemented also
from above (Figure 14).
FROM ABOVE
NEGOTIATED
TOTAL
WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
’DRIFTER’;
SWITCHING
INVESTMENT
MANAGERS
INVESTMENT
PLAN/ WEALTH
MANAGEMENT
PLAN
BLACK HOLES,
UNPRODUCTIVE
MASS
SPARRING
WAY OF
WORKING
SPARRING
SUPPORT
FROM BELOW
Figure 14.
Sparring way of working as a new concept of work
However, in the discussion that followed it was pointed out that the initial
conceptualization and hypothesis of negotiated total wealth management was not
completely cast aside but might be seen as the next step that would follow after the
consolidation of the sparring way of working. This was first articulated by one of the
19
participants (Katri, excerpt 10) and later summarized by the researcher leading the
Change Lab process (excerpt 11).
Excerpt 10
Katri: I’d like to add that as we’ve been looking for total wealth management...
Researcher: ...yeah...
Katri: ...so we concluded that if this model [sparring way of working] improves
our performance to a level that one can actually be proud of it, then we will
generate additional components [products and services] when needed. Quite a few
of them actually exist already. It seems anyway that the need for them is fairly
limited, and the development of the totality and the service may be pretty
difficult, especially since we will probably not get much immediate revenue from
that effort.
Excerpt 11
Researcher: We have called this triangle ’negotiated total wealth management’,
but now the name of the triangle will be changed into ’sparring way of working’,
in this phase. That is your first vision: sparring way of working. It may be that the
first triangle we constructed is actually a depiction of the next step. In this
[sparring way of working] we emphasize the careful and comprehensive sorting
out and appropriation of the existing clientele....
Figure 15.
‘Sparring way of working’ and ‘negotiated total wealth
management’ put into a complementary relationship
Figure 16 summarizes our results concerning case 2. The figure was also presented to the
practitioners in the last Change Lab session. The triangles in the figure represent the
generic model of an activity system (Engeström, 1987, p. 178) which was used in several
occasions as an analytical tool in the Change Lab. The three qualitatively different
activity systems of ‘active trading’, ‘sparring way of working’, and ‘negotiated total
20
wealth management’ are now seen as temporally successive forms of the evolution of
wealth management work. The practitioners themselves insisted on putting a fairly tight
time plan on the representation: ‘sparring way of working’ should be implemented and
consolidated by the end of 2004, within a period of 15 months from the last Change Lab
session. Furthermore, Figure 16 highlights the historical shifts of focus in the three
models. In the existing ‘active trading’ model, the focus was on the individual success of
the investment manager him- or herself. In ‘sparring way of working’, the focus should
shift to the collaborative community of practitioners and their shared tools. And in
‘negotiated total wealth management’, the focus should move to the object, that is, to the
customers and to the products or services offered to meet their needs. This representation
suggests that a new type of future-oriented, temporally articulated concept may indeed
emerge if the practitioners see that the conflicting visions may also be complementary
when seen as successive developmental phases.
“Active trading”
“Sparring
way of working”
“Negotiated total
wealth management”
TOOLS
SUBJECT
OBJECT
COMMUNITY
May 6, 2003
Focus on
individual
performance
2004
Focus on
community and tools
inside the unit
2005
Focus on the object
(customer/ service
contract) and
partners outside
Figure 16.
A simplified representation of the three models of work created in
the banking unit change laboratory: a perspectival concept
Such as temporally distributed concept resembles Alfred Gell’s (1998, p. 233)
observations on artists’ works.
21
“Many artists produce works in recognizable series, consciously evolving a distinctive treatment of a
particular motif over the course of their career. (…) In other words, it is frequently the case that works of
art form ‘moments’ of temporal series, not just because they are datable objects (originating at certain
space-time coordinates) but because they form lineages; they are ancestral to and descendent from other
works in the oeuvre. Take together, they form a macro-object, or temporal object, which evolves over time.
To conclude, collaborative concept formation is not necessarily a process that leads to a
well-bounded semantic entity and applies to a single point in time and history. The
articulation of ‘sparring way of working’ shows that multi-level collaborative concept
creation may lead to a temporal-historical perspective of development, which we call a
perspectival concept.
In the first case discussed in this paper, that of the care agreement, the oscillations
between the declared and experienced concepts could be seen as to some extent distinct
efforts, each phase partly replacing and disproving the former one (Figure 3). The
temporal-historical dimension of concept creation means that as perspectives take shape,
emerging concepts may contradict but also complement each other. Indeed, such a multiphase perspectival concept may generate ‘the element of prophecy’ Stephen Toulmin
called for, without sacrificing the down-to-earth groundedness and practical here-andnow consequentiality of the concept.
CONCLUSION
By analyzing concept formation in the multi-organizational work settings of health care
and banking, we showed that complex concept formation is not just about mastering
knowledge in a given domain. The formulation of complex concepts has potential for
building a future of collaborative work activity, which we tried to capture in the idea of
perspectival ‘where-to’ concepts. A future is not to be understood merely in terms of a
more or less abstract vision framing the strategic actions of management. It is a
collectively intended future that practitioners want to realize in their work, be it the
treatment of patients with multiple illnesses or the management of assets of wealthy
customers (for collective intentionality, see Engeström, 2005, Chapter 5).
Perspectival concepts point to the crucial importance of the temporal dimension in the
formulation of complex concepts. Not only do they reach for the future, they are also
constructed stepwise in a tension-laden process of contestation and complementation
from above and from below. As our analysis showed, the outcomes of this process are
hardly ever fully foreseeable.
22
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.
Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Bell, J. (2003). Concept car design: Driving the dream. Hove: Rotovision.
Davydov, V. V. (1990). Types of generalization in instruction: Logical and psychological
problems in the structuring of school curricula. Reston: National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics.
Engeström, R. (1995). Voice as communicative action. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2(3),
192-215.
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to
developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical
reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133-156.
Engeström, Y. (2005). Developmental work research: Expanding activity theory in
practice. Berlin: Lehmann’s Media.
Engeström, Y., Engeström, R. & Kerosuo, H. (2003). The discursive construction of
collaborative care. Applied Linguistics, 24 (3), 286-315.
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. Aarhus: Aarhus
University Press.
Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R. & Punamäki, R-L. (Eds.) (1999). Perspectives on activity
theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y., Puonti, A. & Seppänen, L. (2003). Spatial and temporal expansion of the object
as a challenge for reorganizing work. In D. Nicolini, S. Gherardi & D. Yanow (Eds.),
Knowing in organizations: A practice-based approach. Armonk: Sharpe.
Engeström, Y., Virkkunen, J., Helle, M., Pihlaja, J. & Poikela, R. (1996). Change laboratory as a
tool for transforming work. Lifelong Learning in Europe, 1(2), 10-17.
Fogg, B. J. (2003). Conceptual designs. In B. Laurel (Ed.), Design research: Methods and
perspectives. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Gell, A. (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett.
23
Jensen, U. J. (1987). Practice and progress: A theory for the modern health-care system.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Keil, F. C. (1992). Concepts, kinds, and cognitive development. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Kerosuo, H. & Engeström, Y. (2003). Boundary crossing and learning in creation of new
work practice. Journal of Workplace Learning, 15(7/8), 345-351
Lamberts, K. & Shanks, D. (Eds.) (1997). Knowledge, concepts, and categories. Cambridge: The
MIT Press.
Margolis, E. & Laurence, S. (Eds.) (1999). Concepts: Core readings. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Murphy, G. L. (2002). The big book of concepts. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Regini, M., Kitay, J. & Baethge, M. (Eds.), (1999). From tellers to sellers: Changing
employment relations in banks. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Rosch, E. & Lloyd, B. B. (Eds.) (1978). Cognition and categorization. Hillsdale:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Smith, B. C. (1996). On the origin of objects. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Toulmin, S. (1972). Human understanding: The collective use and evolution of concepts.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Victor, B. & Boynton, A. C. (1998). Invented here: Maximizing your organization’s
internal growth and profitability. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1987). Thinking and speech. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.),
The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. Volume 1. Problems of general psychology. New
York: Plenum.