Interacting Activity Systems Research Articles

“You are you, and I am me”: investigating inter-organisational collaboration between multiple emergency services

PurposeIn the past decade, financial austerity has brought significant pressure upon emergency services in the UK. For the British Government, one approach to alleviate this pressure was to increase collaborative efforts in core functions (e.g. information systems and technology) between multiple organisations. Despite the consensus that collaborations are key in addressing complex problems, the majority fail or become discontinued. This research explores the development of collaborative information infrastructures between one Police Force and two Fire and Rescue Services in the UK, with a specific focus on how the difference in culture, identities and rules and norms, can work in a collaborative emergency service environment.Design/methodology/approachThis study investigated an example of successful development of a collaborative information infrastructure within the context of public safety and, specifically, the technology-based structures that underpin information management. A case study approach was taken, combining semi-structured interviews, document analysis and site visits. The study used activity theory as a theoretical and analytical framework.FindingsThe research revealed that creating a shared identity is not essential in emergency services collaboration, and organisations may maintain their separate identity, given they address other elements of the activity system (e.g. leadership, motivated subjects). However, pursuing this strategy will create multiple tensions throughout the collaboration process.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the information systems literature concerning inter-organisational collaborations in the public sector providing a novel view to the implications of maintaining separate identities, and the significance of misalignment between interacting activity systems.

Prospecting Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems acceptance by road management teams through activity theory – a qualitative study

ABSTRACT This article aims to contribute to the development of third generation activity theorising to explore the future of professional situations following the implementation of a new technology and more particularly the acceptance of this technology. To do this, we describe formally the current work of subjects (road management teams) engaged in a job located at the boundary of several interacting activity systems. We therefore position ourselves in opposition to the classical approaches of acceptability, which focus mainly on the user-technology link at the individual level. We consider that acceptance is the consequence of an evolution of the activity systems. In the first stage, we collect observable dysfunctions in individual actions, which we translate into contradictions within or between activity systems. Secondly, we propose different scenarios of technological implementation, which we use to imagine the future of the professional situation. Our approach is of particular interest in complex professional contexts with interdependencies between employees from different professions and even different organisations.

Elevers formande av arbetsplatsförlagt lärande i svensk gymnasial lärlingsutbildning

The article examines how students in Swedish upper secondary apprenticeship education contribute to the shaping of their education through their choices and actions in relation to work-based learning. Activity theory and the notion of interacting activity systems was used to emphasise the students’ perspective as active subjects. Data was collected through observations and interviews with 15 students in their second year of an apprenticeship. An initial qualitative content analysis revealed a pattern of actions that related to both school and work. The result of this analysis was further elaborated with activity theoretical concepts. Thereby dominating rules/norms and tools they made use of, contributed to identifying three potential objects for students’ actions: grades in vocational subjects, development of vocational skills, and inclusion in the workplace community. Depending on what objects the students held as superior and subordinate different outcomes could be achieved – an upper secondary vocational degree, development of vocational skills, and/or being employed while studying. One object did not necessarily exclude the others. It is concluded that the multiple expectations from students, school, and workplaces that coexist in relation to work-based learning need to be continuously communicated among all participants to strengthen the students’ possibility to achieve their desired educational outcome.

Seeing Complexity: Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) As a Lens for Shared Decision Making.

Shared decision making, a collaborative approach between patient and provider that considers the patient's values and preferences in addition to the scientific evidence, is a complex clinical activity that has not realized its full potential. Gaps in education and training have been cited as barriers to shared decision making, and evidence is inconsistent on effective educational interventions. Because individual agents with their own social and behavioral contexts co-construct a shared decision, the educational approach may need to consider the role of patient agency and sociocultural influences. To address the inherent complexity in shared decision making, the authors identified cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) as a framework for analysis. Although certainly not the only relevant theory, CHAT offers an appropriate lens through which the multivoiced nature of shared decision making can be more clearly appreciated. In this article, the authors demonstrate the application of CHAT as a lens for researchers and educators to examine the complexity of shared decision making. The fictitious case presented in this article describes the use of CHAT with a patient who experiences 2 clinical encounters; during the second, shared decision making takes place. Elements of the case are threaded through the article, demonstrating a sample analysis of the interacting activity systems of the patient and physician and highlighting inherent tensions and contradictions. The authors propose CHAT as a tool for future research around the role of agency in shared decision making and other complex topics and as a framework for design of novel instructional strategies. Although not applicable to all topics and settings, CHAT has significant potential within health professions education.

An integrated analytical framework for analysing expansive learning in improved cook stove practice

Abstract This paper reveals relationships between four analytical frameworks, boundary interaction, reflexivity, transformative agency, and Sannino's reformulated Vygotskian double stimulation model in an Integrated Analytical Framework (IAF) used to analyse expansive learning processes via Boundary Crossing Change Laboratory Workshops in the development of will and volitional actions. I show how transformation emerges from expansive learning processes using two Transformative Pathways in Improved Cook Stove (ICS) practice in Chapita Village case study in Malawi. Introduction of ICSs in the traditional cooking practice generated conflict of motives within subjects of interacting activity systems. I used Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to identify and analyse the conflict of motives using socio-cultural historical analysis and analysis of contradictions around learning, promotion, and utilisation of the ICS. Expansive learning processes triggered and supported participants' development of transformative agency, leading to collaborative decision implementation that transformed their activities via expressions of the IAF. The IAF demonstrates how transformation can also be analysed within CHAT framework beyond transformative agency tools. The paper provides a theoretically informed approach to analysis and recommends testing the IAF with different data sets for theory advancement as it consolidates frameworks, which are key in learning for sustainability and transformation of human activities.

Juggling competing activities: academic staff as doctoral candidates

ABSTRACTThis article explores the experiences of a group of established academic staff in New Zealand and the UK, as they undertake a doctorate in their home institutions. Our interest is in how individuals negotiate this dual status from a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) stance that explores how rules, tools, community and divisions of labour, and interacting activity systems, shape doctoral experiences. The focus in this article, having analysed their detailed narrative accounts, is on how academics experience three interdependent activity systems: those surrounding the thesis, the institutional context, and the home-life spheres. Issues related to time, workload and supervision issues, variability in collegial support and impact on personal priorities and time emerged. There is a range of particularities – from easy access to resources/supervisors to inflexible institutional regulations – applicable to this group of doctoral candidates. Negotiating life as an academic with concurrent doctoral candidature provides positive outcomes in terms of teaching, research confidence and general personal and professional development. However, a range of difficulties can also be encountered, particularly in relation to personal and professional relationships, and workload management.

Transgressing the norm: Transformative agency in community-based learning for sustainability in southern African contexts

Environment and sustainability education processes are often oriented to change and transformation, and frequently involve the emergence of new forms of human activity. However, not much is known about how such change emerges from the learning process, or how it contributes to the development of transformative agency in community contexts. The authors of this article present four cross-case perspectives of expansive learning and transformative agency development in community-based education in southern Africa, studying communities pursuing new activities that are more socially just and sustainable. The four cases of community learning and transformative agency focus on the following activities: (1) sustainable agriculture in Lesotho; (2) seed saving and rainwater harvesting in Zimbabwe; (3) community-based irrigation scheme management in Mozambique; and (4) biodiversity conservation co-management in South Africa. The case studies all draw on cultural-historical activity theory to guide learning and change processes, especially third-generation cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), which emphasises expansive learning in collectives across interacting activity systems. CHAT researchers, such as the authors of this article, argue that expansive learning can lead to the emergence of transformative agency. The authors extend their transformative agency analysis to probe if and how expansive learning might also facilitate instances of transgressing norms – viewed here as embedded practices which need to be reframed and changed in order for sustainability to emerge.

Bridgework: Diversity and Collaboration in an Undergraduate Preengineering Course

ABSTRACTIn this article, we draw on ethnographic findings to examine the meaning of “diversity” and “collaboration” within the context of an undergraduate preengineering course at a large Hispanic-serving institution located on the U.S.–Mexico border. Using bridgework, a new theoretical concept, we analyze interactions and interactivity that occurred within and among jigsaw groups attempting to solve mathematical problems as part of a precalculus review. Our use of bridgework, contributes to cultural-historical activity theory to demonstrate how contradictions and multivoicedness among interacting activity systems can work to change patterns of activity, thus providing a complex view of diversity and collaboration.

Learning clinical skills during bedside teaching encounters in general practice

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how opportunities for learning clinical skills are negotiated within bedside teaching encounters (BTEs). Bedside teaching, within the medical workplace, is considered essential for helping students develop their clinical skills. Design/methodology/approach – An audio and/or video observational study examining seven general practice BTEs was undertaken. Additionally, audio-recorded, semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants. All data were transcribed. Data analysis comprised Framework Analysis informed by Engeström’s Cultural Historical Activity Theory. Findings – BTEs can be seen to offer many learning opportunities for clinical skills. Learning opportunities are negotiated by the participants in each BTE, with patients, doctors and students playing different roles within and across the BTEs. Tensions emerged within and between nodes and across two activity systems. Research limitations/implications – Negotiation of clinical skills learning opportunities involved shifts in the use of artefacts, roles and rules of participation, which were tacit, dynamic and changing. That learning is constituted in the activity implies that students and teachers cannot be fully prepared for BTEs due to their emergent properties. Engaging doctors, students and patients in reflecting on tensions experienced and the factors that influence judgements in BTEs may be a useful first step in helping them better manage the roles and responsibilities therein. Originality/value – The paper makes an original contribution to the literature by highlighting the tensions inherent in BTEs and how the negotiation of roles and division of labour whilst juggling two interacting activity systems create or inhibit opportunities for clinical skills learning. This has significant implications for how BTEs are conceptualised.

The individual in multiple interacting activity systems: IT-supported diabetes management

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine how pregnant women with type 1 diabetes integrate new information technology (IT) into their health management activities, using activity theory as an analytical framework.Design/methodology/approach– The research is a multiple case design, based on interviews with 15 women with type 1 diabetes who were pregnant, considering pregnancy, or had recently given birth. A thematic analysis, sensitised by activity theory, was used to analyse the data.Findings– Health management in this setting involves negotiations and contradictions across boundaries of interacting activities. Participants play an active role in managing their health and using new IT tools in particular ways to support their health management. Using new technologies creates both opportunities and challenges. IT-enabled healthcare devices and other information systems open up new treatment possibilities, but also generate new contradictions between interacting activity systems.Research limitations/implications– The research was conducted with a small sample in a specific context of health management. Further research is needed to extend the findings to other contexts.Practical implications– Healthcare providers need to accommodate a bottom-up approach to the adoption and use of new technologies in settings where empowered patients play an active role in managing their health.Originality/value– The findings highlight opportunities to further develop activity theory to accommodate the central role that individuals play in resolving inherent contradictions and achieving alignment between multiple interacting activity systems when incorporating new IT tools into health management activities.

L2 student–U.S. professor interactions through disciplinary writing assignments: An activity theory perspective

This study aimed to explain the complexity involved in multiple agents’ learning in interaction in graduate disciplinary writing contexts. Adopting activity theory (Engeström, 1999) as a guiding framework, I analyzed interactive experiences between an L2 English student writer and his professor regarding different writing assignments in a U.S. graduate course. Sources of qualitative data through one semester included interviews, a class observation, and written documents. The semilongitudinal nature of the study illuminated both participants’ changes in their writing and teaching practices over time.Activity theory enabled the visualization of the participants’ experiences with each assignment as an activity system. Moreover, the concept of interacting activity systems or activity system network offered a useful perspective to understand concurrent and multi-directional learning between the student and the professor, who mutually shaped and influenced each other's writing and teaching practices. The study's findings provide encouragement for L2 English students in terms of their potential power to bring change to their professors’ teaching practices and their L2 disciplinary communities. Furthermore, through the lens of activity theory, the study offers future possibilities of exploring L2 graduate disciplinary socialization by investigating different genres as activity systems and learning in multiple directions among students.

Sunni-Muslim American Religious Development During Emerging Adulthood

Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in America, with approximately 6 to 7 million Muslims living in America within the past decade. However, there has been little psychological research conducted focusing on the development of the Muslim American self. This inquiry addresses that gap by focusing on how familial religious affiliation during childhood and the everyday environmental activity systems of emerging adulthood impact religious practice and the construction of the religious self among Sunni-Muslim American emerging adults ( N = 63, 18-29 years) via the development of diverse mediational strategies. Utilizing an applied cultural historical activity theory–based analysis, the authors found that participants’ religious development emerged as a diverse and dynamic process developing in relation to the interacting activity systems and sociorelational contexts of emerging adulthood.

Ethics-oriented Learning in Environmental Education Workplaces: An activity theory approach

In the context of increasing national and global environmental challenges and their implications for the working world, new ethics and practices are being introduced into workplaces that take better account of socio-ecological relations. Little is understood, however, about the nature of ethics-oriented workplace learning. Drawing on Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which enables historically and contextually situated relational perspectives to emerge, this paper explores contradictions in the activity systems of two young environmental education learner-practitioners struggling to engage with the ethical dimensions of their professional work and the professional development course they are studying. The study focuses in particular on the environmental values and ethics component of their course – a year-long Learnership in Environmental Education, Training and Development Practices (EETDP). The paper reflects how tensions and contradictions within and between the interacting activity systems of the workplace, the course, and its regulating qualifications authority influence the teaching and learning of the environmental ethics component of the course. Ethics-oriented teaching and learning processes are found to be strongly influenced by the ‘rules’ and ‘mediating tools’ of these interacting systems, but these are often at odds with the ethical perspectives, socio-cultural context and skills of the ‘subject’ and ‘community’. These systemic contradictions can be more fully understood when their cultural and historical origins are made explicit. The analytical process has led to a more nuanced understanding of ethics-oriented teaching and learning in a workplace-based course, and has revealed several areas needing more careful research (particularly the area of environmental discourses) and the explicit and implicit language of ethics.

The critical role of information‐sharing in e‐learning projects

PurposeThis paper reviews the latest management development across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.Design/methodology/approachThis briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.FindingsNo large organization should underestimate the role of information‐sharing systems when implementing enterprise‐wide e‐learning. This article describes the process of introducing e‐learning technology in the case of Norwegian company Telenor. Using Activity Theory as a tool to understand the network of interacting activity systems, the study identifies the underlying causes of the problems, obstacles, and frustrations that arose during the implementation. The interpretation of empirical data aims to provide new insights into the accomplishment of large‐scale e‐learning projects.Practical implicationsProvides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.Originality/valueThe briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

Analysing third generation activity systems: labour‐power, subject position and personal transformation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe how Engeström's “third generation” activity theory, with its emphasis on developing conceptual tools to understand dialogues, multiple perspectives and networks of interacting activity systems, has informed research into professional learning in multiagency service settings in England.Design/methodology/approachResearchers worked intensively with multi‐professional teams in five English local authorities. Through the use of developmental research work (DWR) methodologies, they sought to understand and facilitate the expansive learning that takes place in and for multiagency work.FindingsProvisional analysis of data has emphasised the need to understand activity systems in terms of contradictions, which may be developed through reference to the notion of labour‐power; subject positioning and identity within activities; emotional experiencing in processes of personal transformation. The general working hypothesis of learning itself requires expansion to include notions of experiencing and identity formation within an account that includes systematic and coherent analysis of the wider social structuring of society.Practical implicationsThe paper describes the beginnings of a refinement of DWR methodology, workshop methods and activity theory derived analyses of data generated through DWR.Originality/valueThe analysis offered represents an advance beyond second generation activity theory, which was concerned with single activity systems. The conceptual strands (upon labour‐power related contradictions, subject positioning, emotional experiencing) have been under‐developed in activity theory. This project exemplifies the complexities of the “dual motive” of object‐oriented activity systems.

Expansive Learning at Work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization

Cultural-historical activity theory has evolved through three generations of research. The emerging third generation of activity theory takes two interacting activity systems as its minimal unit of analysis, inviting us to focus research efforts on the challenges and possibilities of inter-organizational learning. Activity theory and its concept of expansive learning are examined with the help of four questions: 1. Who are the subjects of learning? 2. Why do they learn? 3. What do they learn? 4. How do they learn? Five central principles of activity theory are presented, namely activity system as unit of analysis, multi-voicedness of activity, historicity of activity, contradictions as driving force of change in activity, and expansive cycles as possible form of transformation in activity. Together the four questions and five principles form a matrix which is used to present a study of expansive learning in a hospital setting in Finland. In conclusion, implications of the framework for our understanding of the increasingly important horizontal dimension of learning are discussed.