ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the challenges of expansive learning in and for work. 1 In today’s society and working life, expertise activities involve complex boundary-crossings and a readiness to integrate multiple fields of professional work into the production of goods and services. The customers and end-users are actively contributing to production activity, which calls for new ways of societal interaction and new media of communication. By adopting the cultural-historical activity theory approach, we claim that the object of work in expertise work is radically expanding socially in collaborative networks; materially by integrating complex knowledge; and temporally by involving long-term partnerships and products that learn over time. The key points made in this chapter are:
Expansive learning in and for work means working on the changing and expanding object of activity and taking mastery over the future challenges of collaborative production.
Co-configuration is one way of conceptualizing the future mode of production that may answer the challenges.
The hypothesis of co-configuration needs to be analyzed in concrete, historical work activity. The empirical case presented emphasizes the fact that the creation and implementation of new tools are crucial in the transformation to more advanced modes of collaboration and production activity.
The major transformations and expansive learning in and for work do not take place spontaneously. They need to be carefully analyzed and supported by deliberate learning interventions in close collaboration with the workers. The Change Laboratory is a method designed to support such development of work activity.
To put the important points to work, we present as a case study the Change Laboratory that was carried out with a group of investment managers providing services to exclusively rich customers while facing major changes in wealth-management activity.
