Interdependence and Cultural Resources to Mediate Change: What Was Missing in Engeström’s Third Generational Activity Theory

Abstract

Abstract In the present paper, I praise the benefits of organizational activity theory by means of an empirical example. I draw here on my work experience within a pharmacy. A client enters the pharmacy and demands medication for skin issues. The pharmacist wanting to prescribe a standard ointment refrains suddenly from this standard treatment while asking for the specific nature of the problem. The client lifting up his shirt lets him glimpse into his very intimate action field (body) which is the basis for an innovative solution – contacting a befriended dermatologist. The client entering the pharmacy is thus – equally – entering the complex interlocked action sphere of the pharmacist that can be made fertile for specific goals and purposes. Activity theory was able to decipher this complex human interaction while showing innovative solutions on the side of the pharmacy. It is thus doing justice to the complexity of dynamic people moving in time. Yet, activity theory lacks concrete cultural mechanisms of change. Here, I appeal interested readers not to create a new generation of organizational activity theory but to complement the third generation of it. I argue that interdependence and jointly negotiated cultural resources can mediate sustainable change within an organizational system. Interdependence of goals is important for the dermatologist to join the pharmacist in an alternative treatment while client and pharmacist need to negotiate the concrete details of exchanging contacts, sending photos of the skin issues and transferring contact details. I argue that these mechanisms should be the beginning of a research program that pays attention to cultural mechanisms that mediate change within organizational activity theory. The time is ripe.