Virkkunen and Schaupp 2011 From Change To Development

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From change to development: Expanding the concept of intervention

Jaakko Virkkunen and Marika Schaupp
Theory Psychology 2011 21: 629
DOI: 10.1177/0959354311417486
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TAPXXX10.1177/0959354311417486Virkkunen and SchauppTheory & Psychology
Article
From change to
development:Expanding
the concept of intervention
Theory & Psychology

21(5) 629655
The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0959354311417486
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Jaakko Virkkunen
University of Helsinki
Marika Schaupp
Finnish Institute of Occupational Health
Abstract
The ongoing societal transformation triggered by the information and communication technologies
revolution challenges many established forms of activity and tightens interconnections between
activities. This historical transformation is a challenge for cultural-historical activity theory and
highlights the importance of inter-activity connections. In this article, we claim that the key
ideas of the theory that were first developed in the context of experimental psychology and
education, namely the zone of proximal development, theoretical-genetic thinking, and formative
intervention, should be extended and used in the analysis of developmental processes taking
place in the wild, focusing on how developmental challenges arise within one activity system
and how potential tools are provided by another. In this context, supporting development calls
for a chain of developmental interventions within an evolving inter-activity relationship. As an
example, we analyze the co-development of the competence of an in-house developer and the
work-development activity in a Finnish road-building company.
Keywords
cultural-historical activity theory, double stimulation, formative intervention, theoretical
thinking, zone of proximal development
The changing context of the development of activity

theory
According to many authors (Castells, 1996; Freeman & Loua, 2001; Froud, Johal, &
Williams, 2002; Haug, 2003; Perez, 2002), we are currently living in the midst of a
Corresponding author:
Jaakko Virkkunen, CRADLE, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, P.O. Box 9 (Siltavuorenpenger 3 A), FIN-00014
University of Helsinki, Finland.
Email: jaakko.virkkunen@helsinki.fi
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Theory & Psychology 21(5)
change from a long period of economic growth and social development based on the
principles of mass production to the qualitatively new form of economic growth and
social development of high-tech capitalism in which new information and communication technologies (ICTs) occupy a central place. This ongoing societal transformation
challenges many established forms of activity, restructures the interconnections between
activities, and intensifies the interconnectedness of activity systems. The ongoing
changes also challenge the way activities are mastered through functional specialization
and the knowledge of linear causeeffect relationships, ideas central to the ideal of the
scientific management of the mass production era.
For cultural-historical activity theory this historical transformation of societal activities and their management is a special theoretical and methodological challenge as the
theory maintains that human activities are culturally mediated in historically changing
ways. Changes in the structure of societal activities and the increasing interconnectedness between them challenge the traditional ways of conceptualizing the unit of analysis
and development in activity-theory-based research and call for the study of new forms
and processes of mediation and re-mediation in human activities.
In this article, we will discuss the role of connections between activity systems in three
key ideas of the theory: the zone of proximal development (ZPD), theoretical-genetic
thinking, and formative intervention. We maintain that these ideas, which were first developed in the context of experimental psychology and education, should be expanded over
the boundaries of these disciplines and used also in the analysis of developmental processes in the wild. We want to focus attention on the stimuli that arise and are constructed in the changing relationships between individuals and activity systems and their
roles in the co-development of persons and forms of joint activity. Our empirical data
concern the co-development of the competence of an individual in-house developer and
the work-development activity in an organization. We focus especially on the significance
of the developers connections to scientific research in this developmental process.
We will first present our interpretation of the three theoretical ideas. Then we will
shortly present the cultural-historical context of the case activity, the activity of work
development. We will proceed by describing and analyzing the process of co-development
of the in-house developers competence and her work-development activity in the
Finnish road-building company in which she was working. Finally, we will present
our theoretical and methodological conclusions. Our hypothesis is that in the new
societal conditions, which require mastering of complex, rapidly changing activity
systems, increasing importance will be attached to theoretical-genetic thinking that
focuses on the development of systems as well as the long-term interaction between
research and practice.
Three activity-theoretical concepts that are central in

developing the idea of formative intervention
In the next three sections we will elaborate on the theoretical key ideas that we used to
analyze the development of the in-house developers activity within a network of activities.
These are the ideas of the zone of proximal development, qualitatively different forms of
thinking, and the method of double stimulation as the basis of a formative intervention.
Virkkunen and Schaupp
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Aspects of the concept of the zone of the proximal development

For Vygotsky (1986), a central task in psychological research was to find a unit of analysis that would enable the study of the cultural development of higher psychological functions. He accomplished this task by adding a second stimulus, a cultural sign or tool,
between stimulus and response in the unit of analysis then prevailing in psychological
research. With this insight Vygotsky replaced the study of reactive behavior with the
study of proactive, agentive action, and the study of current behavior with the study of
development and developmental possibilities. According to Meshcheryakov (2007,
p. 167), Vygotskys idea of the original genetic unit of the development of human activity comprised the holy trinity of social, sign, and tool mediation.
According to Vygotskys (1978) famous definition, a childs zone of proximal development is the distance between actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through
problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers
(p. 86) In the context of Vygotskys theory, problem solving refers to the creative use of
cultural signs as psychological tools in the self-regulation of thinking. Culturally developed signs and tools abstract aspects of reality that are important in human activities and
carry generalizations that make purposeful action possible. As a result of cultural development, increasingly general mediational means are acquired that make psychological
processes progressively more independent of the immediate situation and context
(Meshcheryakov, 2007, p. 166). The assimilation of the decontextualized psychological
tools frees the individual from the tyranny of the immediate situation and opens new
possibilities of development for him or her, enabling proactive agency and even countercurrent action in society.
Del Ro and lvarez (2007) have recently suggested that
the accessible and socially distributed functional systems that provide ZPDs not only afford
provisional and subsequently dispensable scaffolding but are also usually permanent social
structures of the distributed functional design of culture. This is because psychological functions
are not always designed in human cultures to operate, in their most developed state, in a totally
individualized way; rather some psychological functions are conceived to operate always in a
shared fashion. (p. 281)
According to del Ro (2002), the idea of independent action overlooks the fact that many
functions remain partially externally distributed throughout the life cycle.
In the view proposed by del Ro and lvarez, the zone of proximal development
always comprises both increasing independent agency and new sustained liaisons to
social and material networks that realize socially distributed functions (del Ro, 2002;
Donald, 2001). The nature and role of social connections, however, probably vary
depending on how near the front line of the socio-historical development of an activity
the individual development is taking place.
Establishing new social connections and access to societal infrastructures affects individual development in many ways. These can be clarified with the help of A.N. Leontevs
(1978) theory of the hierarchical structure of human activity. An important aspect of
individual and societal development is related to changes in this structure. According to
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Leontev, individuals actions are carried out by applying automated operations and/or
operations realized through tools. One aspect of development is thus the automation of
conscious actions into subconscious operations and the development of skill in the use of
tools. These changes free mental capacity for the mastery of broader and more complex
actions. Development owing to the internalization of cultural mediators of self-regulation
and action does not primarily take place as the development of separate psychological
functions but as qualitative changes in their systemic organization and the mutual relationships between them (Vygotsky, 1978, pp. 4951). Nor does the development take
place only within the individual. Operations used in carrying out actions can evolve into
forms of conscious action, and exceptional individual actions can evolve into new forms
of sustained collaborative activity. These changes imply changes in signs and tools as
well as in forms of social division of labor and collaboration. An individuals development means, therefore, on the one hand, an increasing capability to utilize existing social
and material infrastructures in carrying out actions and, on the other, a changing involvement and position in the network of societys systems of collaborative activity.
While highlighting the distributed nature of psychological functions and the role of
new permanent social connections as elements of the zone of proximal development, del
Ro and lvarez do not, however, discuss the role of individuals in changing these structures and the interplay between individual development and personal and systemic codevelopment (Barowy & Jouper, 2004). Yrj Engestrm (1987) has proposed a definition
of the zone of proximal development of a societal system of activity showing how individual development and the development of collective activity are in certain situations
intimately interlinked and mutually condition each other. According to him, the zone of
proximal development of an activity system is the distance between the present everyday actions of the individuals and the historically new form of the societal activity that
can be collectively generated as a solution to the double bind potentially embedded in the
everyday actions (p. 147).
The core question in Engestrms concept of the zone of proximal development is:
who are collaborating in generating the new activity? Engestrm (1987, p. 161) notes
that the new originates not from the old, but from the vibrant movement which leads
away from the old. In the creation of a new form of activity, new social relationships are
needed that differ from those needed in carrying out the activity in its present form.
Establishing new connections is one step in the transformation of an activity. An emerging idea of a possible new object of the activity leads the actors to search for new cooperative relationships, which, when found, later help to elaborate the new idea further.
Forms of generalization and thinking

Vygotsky and his pupils identified qualitatively different forms of thinking and types of
generalizations. According to Leontev (Leontyev, 1933), the true nature of the generalization inherent in a concept or other representation can, in fact, only be revealed by
analyzing the process of generalizing that has led to it. The process of generalizing
consists of the specific, normally hidden, object-oriented actions that lead to the generalization (Davydov, 1984, p. 19). The created generalization becomes an intellectual
instrument for thinking about the object it represents.
633
A.R. Luria and L.S. Vygotsky developed the hypothesis that the prevalent form of
generalizing in a society is related to its prevalent form of production (Luria, 1976).
According to them, a situation-bound perceptual-functional form of generalizing that
produces perceptual-functional action schemes is typical in craft-based societies, whereas
an abstract-empirical generalization that produces hierarchical systems of abstract, classificatory categories is typical in societies based on a money economy and the market
exchange of industrially produced commodities. These two types of generalizations
result from different kinds of processes of generalization.
According to V.V. Davydov (1990), modern science is based on a third kind of thinking that he calls theoretical-genetic. This kind of thinking is oriented towards revealing
the genetic roots of a phenomenon and the system of functional relationships determining its occurrence and development. It is carried out through analyses of the historical
emergence and development of a system and through experiments designed to reveal the
essential elements and functional relationships that make up the system and determine its
development. The generalizations produced are typically models that represent these
relationships. In contrast to thinking that takes each object as a separate entity and
focuses on its properties or the causeeffect relationships between objects, theoreticalgenetic thinking is thinking in terms of developing systems with the help of models
(Davydov, 1990; see also Tolman, 1981). Theoretical concepts embody generalizations
concerning the essential, systemic relationships of functional interdependence between
externally different objects and phenomena. Such concepts question the one-sided views
and self-evidences of everyday thinking based on perceptual-functional and abstractempirical generalizations.
As psychological tools for thinking, theoretical generalizations have more explanatory power than empirical generalizations because they capture the essential relationships and logic of the development of a system. Therefore they also open a
broader zone of proximal development for individual action and collective activity
than abstract-empirical generalizations. Instead of providing an immediate solution
to a practical problem, a theoretical generalization helps to define the origin and
nature of the problem. It then functions as a tool for solving the secondary problem
of interpreting the nature of the problem situation and finding a way to develop a
solution.
In the industrial era, theoretical-genetic thinking has been central both in sciences
and in the development of technical systems as well as in their implementation in societys system of productive activities (Hughes, 1987). The organization and management
of human activities has, however, still been to a great extent dominated by thinking in
terms of the qualities of or causeeffect relationships between objects seen as separate.
In analogy to Lurias hypothesis concerning the difference between craft-based and
industrial societies, we think that the mastery of the increasingly complex and rapidly
changing societal activity systems of our time calls increasingly for theoretical-genetic
thinking. This kind of thinking is not needed so much in the immediate work activity
but in the secondary work of creating new concepts and tools to master the changing
activity. The increasing importance of such secondary work changes the relationship
between research and practice and calls for a new kind of collaboration between
researchers and practitioners.
634
The method of double stimulation as the basis of formative intervention

Vygotsky (1978, pp. 5875) used the method of double stimulation to study how a new
functional system of problem solving evolves through re-mediation of the subjects interaction with the problem situation (for a more detailed explanation of the method, see
Engestrm, 2011). He prompted the experimental participants problem-solving process
by presenting a problem (a first stimulus) that was not solvable with the intellectual tools
available to the participant. Then he brought into the situation an artifact (a second stimulus), initially neutral in view of the problem, which could be used as a tool in solving the
problem. While trying to solve the problem, the participant searches for means and, in
some cases, invents a way to use the other stimulus as a psychological tool in solving the
problem. With this re-mediation of the participants interaction with the problem situation, the whole process of problem solving becomes restructured.
The setting of the double-stimulation experiment can be seen as an experimental
abstraction of a general phenomenon in human life: when encountering a challenging
task and object for which no adequate conceptual and practical tools are at hand, people
typically begin to survey culturally available means that could be used in solving the
problem. When they find a promising concept or artifact, they make it into a tool in their
task accomplishment. This can happen even if the artifact is not perfectly adequate for
the task, in a way that is similar to how people use metaphors when trying to describe a
specific idea for which there is no adequate concept available.
Formative intervention can be seen as a specific form of social collaboration that is
designed to push development further by prompting and supporting processes of remediation. Because Vygotsky stressed the external social origin of higher psychological
functions, intervention can be considered as a process of supporting the internalization of
culturally given generalizations. While this can be one aspect of an intervention,
Vygotskys method of double stimulation also highlights the emergent and creative
aspect of re-mediation: whatever the affordances of the second stimulus are, making it
into a tool in the ongoing problem-solving process is a creative act. This act establishes
a new relationship and gives a specific new meaning to the second stimulus in the context of the problem. Verillon and Rabardel (1995) have characterized this process as
instrumental genesis, in which the actor makes an artifact into an instrument of his or her
action by modifying it and by developing a way of using it to accomplish a specific task.
This creative aspect of re-mediation is especially important in solving complex problems
when no obviously adequate concept or tool is available. This is the case when attempts
to solve problems with old methods no longer succeed because elements of the activity
system have changed.
When the roots of the problematic situation are in the structure of the joint activity
in other words, when there is an inner contradiction between elements of the systema
process of re-mediation is needed that is not confined solely to individual actions but
reconceptualizes and restructures the system of joint activity. A process of co-development
of individuals and the system of joint activity is needed. According to Engestrm (1987,
p. 322), the process of re-mediation in a system of collective activity can take place in the
form of an expansive learning activity, in which the members of a work community
make the structure of their joint productive activity into the object of their collaborative
635
inquiry and development. The methodological cycle of developmental work research

(DWR) specifies the phases of an interventionist methodology to provoke this kind of
learning activity. During such an intervention a theoretical-genetic analysis of an activity
system is carried out in collaboration between the practitioners and the researchers
involved, and the produced knowledge is then used as a tool for creating a new form of
the collective activity (Engestrm, 1987, p. 323).
The practitioners learning activity established in the intervention is a new kind of
temporal activity system located between the instrument-producing activities of science
and art and productive activity. According to Engestrm (1987):
The essence of learning activity is the production of objectively, societally new activity
structures (including new objects, instruments, etc.) out of actions manifesting inner
contradictions of the preceding form of the activity in question. Learning activity is mastery of
expansion from actions to a new activity. ... it is an activity producing activity. (pp. 124125;
see Figure 1).
Learning activity (a) analyzes discrete tasks, problems, and actions and connects them
with their systemic activity contexts; (b) transforms them into contradictions demanding
creative solutions; and (c) expands and generalizes them into a qualitatively new activity
structure within societal productive practice. In a developmental work research intervention, the products of science and art are reworked into economical and stylized representations to make them usable as tools in the practitioners learning activity. Such
representations help the participants dissociate means from ends and explore their mutual
relationships; they help the practitioners to create more adequate instruments for thinking about their productive activity by developing new generalizations, by eliminating
secondary and accidental features, by variation and enrichment, as well as by testing
Figure 1. The place of learning activity in the network of human activities
636
novel connections and disconnections (Engestrm, 1987, pp. 125126). Thus, central
tools of expansive learning activity are models with the help of which the subject of the
learning activity fixes and objectifies the essential relationships in their joint productive
activity, which is the object of the learning activity. The construction of the models is
accomplished with a more general instrument, a methodology. Learning activity can
thus, according to Engestrm, be conceived as expansive movement from models to the
theoretical-genetic methodology of making models and back. This movement differentiates learning activity from the use of normative representations as tools for transforming
an activity. The general model of human activity presented by Engestrm can be used as
a meta-tool for modeling the local activity system. (See as an example the use of this
model later in this article in the analysis of the case in Figures 2, 3, and 4.) The produced
model then becomes a tool for taking the further steps of transforming the activity system
through experimentation with new tools.
A Change Laboratory (Engestrm, 2007; see also Engestrm, 2011) is a method for
carrying out a DWR-based formative intervention in a condensed way. In it, a work community is involved in a process of problem solving that evolves from an immediate
practical search for solutions to theoretical-genetic analysis and a model-based design of
a new general solution. The first stimulus prompting the collaborative problem-solving
process consists of data that make the problematic aspects of everyday action visible to
the practitioners and create the need for a new solution. As a second stimulus the interventionist does not, however, specify an artifact that could be used to immediately solve
the problem. Instead he or she provides a methodology and a general model that can be
used for modeling the activity. The interventionist supports the creation of the model of
the central inner contradictions within the practitioners activity system and its use in
analyzing the everyday problems on the basis of the new understanding of the contradictions, as well as the creation of a new form of the activity. Specifically, the general models of an activity system and a cycle of expansive development are used as tools for
analyzing and modeling the historical and systemic causes of everyday problems and for
creating a new model for the activity in which the problems are overcome. The social
support provided by the interventionist for the practitioners is thus about (a) how to proceed in encountering the current problems, (b) making a theoretical-genetic analysis of
the roots of the problems as inner contradictions in their activity system, as well as (c)
creating a theoretical-genetic generalization about a possible new object of the activity
and the related new logic and structure of the activity that would help to overcome the
current inner contradictions in the activity system.
Engestrms concept of the zone of proximal development of an activity has both a
representational and a processual aspect in DWR interventions. The representational
aspect is realized in the produced model of the systemic causes of current problems and
the possible new form of the activity. From the processual point of view, the zone of
proximal development can be understood as the mastery of appropriate actions for reaching such a generalization and using the generalization in developing the activity.
Vygotskys concept of zone of proximal development implies that a more advanced form
of problem solving is first only possible under guidance or in collaboration with more
capable peers. In a DWR intervention the practitioners can, with the help of an external
researcher, create a model of a new form of their productive activity that would help to
637
overcome inner contradictions in its present form, but they are, however, often not able
to use it independently as a tool for thinking. In such cases, the practitioners incorporate
the created new systemic model into their previous empirical way of thinking when the
collaboration with the interventionist ceases. Such an imbalance between the representation and the process of thinking can later lead to inconsistency in the implementation of
ideas based on the model as well as in the further development of the new model.
Theoretical and empirical generalization in current

forms of the development of production activities
Vygotsky and Luria (Luria, 1976) related the form of generalization and thinking to the
difference between a self-sufficient agrarian economy and an economy based on a money
economy and industrial production. We maintain that an analogous change is taking
place in the industrial society. There is in general an increasing need for theoreticalgenetic thinking. This need is especially prevalent in phases of economic development in
which activities are restructured to harness radically new technologies.
Freeman and Loua (2001) and Perez (2002) have developed a theory that explains
the long waves of economic development in the capitalist world economy, the so-called
Kondratiev waves, and the qualitative differences in the nature of economic activity in
different phases of the waves. According to them, the long waves are connected to technological revolutions. An upswing of a wave starts when new forms of organization,
management, and societal institutions are developed that utilize the new technological
resources to the fullest. The early part of an upswing is a time of radical change and
innovation in all areas of society and is characterized by new kinds ofonly faintly
understoodpossibilities and risks as well as a great need for social innovations.
In previous upswings of long waves of economic development, radically new, innovative forms of organizing and managing production have always emerged. These have
typically been created through a local theoretical-genetic analysis of a business activity
and through experimentation and modeling. A good example of such a process is the
creation of the famous Toyota production concept at a Toyota car production plant in the
years 19451970 (Ohno, 1988). In these cases, theoretical-genetic thinking has, however, been carried out by creative individuals and small groups without general methodological tools and guidance. The results of these innovative processes are often later
diffused, not as generalizations of systemic relationships that could be used in analyzing
the local activity and creating innovative solutions, but rather as normative models and
best practices to be applied directly. That is what partly happened, for instance, when
aspects of the Toyota system were transformed into a normative model of quality management in the ISO 9000 standard.
According to Perez (2002), we are now living in the midst of the creative destruction
of the mass-production-based techno-economic paradigm evolved in the long post-war
period of growth. The new resource of cheap information and communication provided
by the new ICTs has given birth to an extensive search for new ways of organizing and
managing production. The prevailing forms of development of work are, however, still
largely based on the abstract-empirical generalizations that are used to separate aspects
of the production activity as the responsibility of distinct, independently operated
638
functions (HR, ICT, R&D, etc.). The lack of a theoretical-genetic analysis of the whole
system of the production activity leads to a patchy kind of developmental activity that
focuses on solving separate problems through short-term projects designed to extend,
rationalize, and refine current ways of working (Abrahamson, 2004).
There are, however, phases in the development of productive activities in which the
developmental possibilities of an existing form are exhausted. In such cases the persistent application of the old recipes actually aggravates problems instead of solving them,
which is increasingly the situation today as the new ICTs change the cost structures and
range of possibilities in all activities. Instead of the perspective of continuous improvement of the mastery of the current form of activity, the focus should be on developing
radically new forms of activities. Thus, the one area in which the industrial-age concepts
and practices are becoming increasingly inadequate is the management of change and
development in organizations (Hamel & Breen, 2007).
It is traditionally assumed that a new line of development always comes from the
highest levels of management. Although the strategic work of top management is important, research shows that the process is not so unidirectional; in many cases a new strategy is based on the application of a local innovation (Mintzberg, 2007). It is also
increasingly seen that the management of an activity is a shared object of diverse actors.
Thus, the expansive transformation of an activity can in part proceed on different hierarchical levels concurrently. The main difference between incremental and expansive
development is in the nature of the problem definition that guides individual developmental undertakings and the future perspective that binds these individual developmental actions together. In incremental development the identification of a bottleneck or
recurrent problem suffices; in an expansive transformation a deeper analysis of the historically evolved inner contradictions in the activity systemthat is, a theoretical-genetic
analysis of the activityis needed. Development is then conceptualized as a contradictory path on the zone of proximal development of the activity.
To summarize our theoretical argument, we maintain that the current challenge of
development in work activities is the transition from abstract-empirical thinking in terms
of the qualities of separate objects and causeeffect relationships between such objects,
to model-based thinking in terms of developing systems. We further maintain that the
structures and mechanisms modeled in the method of double stimulation function in real
life through changing connections between activity systems. There the problematic first
stimulus is connected to some productive activity, and the potentially instrumental second stimulus is provided through a collaborative relationship to a tool-producing activity. To illustrate these theoretical ideas, we will in the following describe and analyze
the development of an in-house developers work activity in a Finnish road-building
company and the expansion of her actions towards a new form of developmental activity
based on theoretical-genetic thinking. We will especially focus on the inter-activity connections necessary for the development to proceed, highlighting the co-development of
a person and the collective activity.
Four main activities are involved in the development process. These are (a) the activity-theory-based academic developmental work research activity of the authors and
their research community at the University of Helsinki; (b) the internal organizational
development activity in a Finnish road-building company in which Tina, our focal
639
person, acts as an in-house developer; (c) the management of the company; and (d) the
activity of the productive units and teams in the company which become Tinas clients.
We divide the development of Tinas activity into four phases according to (a) the
changes and contradictions in the relationship between the object of Tinas work activity and her tools emerging from the changing challenges in her clients activities and (b)
new connections between the four previously mentioned activities.
Our case description is based on two types of sources: (a) audiotapes, field notes, and
documents concerning the interventions1 conducted by three researchers, the authors,
and another researcher between 2001 and 2006 in the company and (b) recollection data
about events during that period generated through documents, interviews with Tina and
other actors involved in the process in the company, as well as informal discussions
between Tina and the second author. As the following case description is based on data
from many different sources gathered over a lengthy time period, it is impossible to
specify the exact relationships between types of data and elements of the case description. To test our storys validity, we have compared it to official documents. Our main
informant, Tina, has also read and commented on the evolving description throughout
the writing process.
The development of the in-house developer Tinas work

activity and a new way of developing work
The first phase of development: Tina becomes a developer
The road-building company in question constructs and maintains traffic environments
and provides infrastructure services in Finland and the Baltic countries. Until the turn of
the millennium the firm operated as a state agency, the tasks of which comprised public
administration of the road network in Finland as well as the building and maintenance of
roads. In 1998 the productive activities were separated from the public administration,
and in 2001 the production department was transformed into a state-owned road-building
company. The new company entered the competitive markets gradually through a fouryear transition period. At the beginning of 2008 the company became a state-owned
limited liability company. Its activities were organized into business units according to
different business areas. The company management was, however, based on a functional
division of labor. The company currently has about 2,900 employees.
Tina, a process technician, was hired by the organization to carry out chemical laboratory studies related to road building in the 1980s. In the early 1990s the ideas of process
organization, quality management, and a new team structure were adopted in the organization as ways to improve the mastery of the production. Tina was given the task of
creating a quality system with one of her colleagues at their work site. The challenge
inspired her, and the managers noticed the high quality of her work.
Subsequently, the department sent her to a team facilitator and change coach training
course arranged by the company in 1996. The idea was that those trained in the course
would disseminate a set of teamwork tools and techniques and, as facilitators, support
the work teams in using them. Quality control, the introduction of process and team
organization, and the change coach training were all part of the companys preparation
of the organization for the forthcoming transformations.
640
The change coach training encompassed issues of individual and group behavior,
decision-making processes, and collaboration within teams based on what was then the
popular idea of learning organization. For Tina, the change coach training was a new
challenge where she could also indulge her passion for collaborating with different people: There you could get into totally new circles. My thing is to be with people. I got an
opportunity for that. In addition, the courage and open-mindedness she had gained during her former career in sports helped her to make the step into the new field: You dont
know what comes out of it, but you just go and see, and you learn it by doing and
experimenting.
The coaching focused, on the one hand, on individual persons qualities that were
thought to affect the teams performance, such as individual learning styles (Kolb &
Kolb, 2005) and roles in the team (Belbin, 1981), and, on the other, on enhancing collaboration between team members. Structured methods of defining the roles of the team
members and typical behavioral patterns in teams were used. The idea was to help the
team members to identify their characteristic ways of behaving and to design their work
in order to facilitate collaboration and learning. The linkage between the content of the
team coaching and the nature of the ongoing transformation of the organization was,
however, quite weak, as was the connection between the developmental methods and the
substance of the production teams work. Most of the newly trained coaches also found
that the training did not give them the competence or adequate tools to act as coaches.
Eventually only a fraction of the 200 trained coaches truly used their new skills for
coaching in teams. Tina was, however, one of them.
One of Tinas strengths was her familiarity with the people and the work in the field
owing to her prior work with the chemical laboratory analyses at different construction
sites. As a coach she was able put her previous experience to use, and she quickly created
a network of satisfied clients2 among the leaders of production teams. She was also
practice-oriented, as her history was in productive work, not in the centralized training
function, a characteristic that appealed to the leaders of production teams. Her tactic was
to use every opportunity to move around the organization to find interested and development-oriented clients and in this way make sure that her partners in cooperation would
be committed to the development projects:
My method is to walk around and, as far as I can, try to find the collaborators myself. [] Ive
been lucky, this has been a successful idea and Ive been able to get the genuinely interested
people to come along. [] That of course boosts your own enthusiasm and it gives you energy
in a quite different way, when you know that someone else also means business.
The emerging contradiction in the first phase of development

Quite soon after the training, a schism of opinions evolved among the group of coaches.
Some of them were keen supporters of simple team-building methods such as structured
brainstorming or the new trendy method of mutual trust creation in adventure tracks.
They wanted to function as specialists in human relations, which they abstracted from
the content of the work. Tina and some of her coach colleagues, however, regarded the
methods as too loose and oversimplified: Maybe, what started to bug us there then was
641
that [the supporters of the collaborative methods] were so definitive, that they stuck their
methods everywhere and there was no questioning [] the [brainstorming method] was
a way of getting people to think and talk about some specific issues, but nothing else.
Tina saw an emerging contradiction between the challenges the production teams
encountered in their work and the tools that the training in change coaching had provided
them with to tackle the problems. Besides noticing the lack of proper tools, Tina also
realized that her own competence as a developer was still quite thin and that the change
coach training had offered only a start. Thus, she used every opportunity for further training, which made her consider the team-building methods even more critically:
When I gained new knowledge, I realized that [the development activity] cannot consist only
of action exercises. People learn quite quickly to collaborate, so there has to be something else
as well. I noticed that even if you can raise a good spirit, the substance does not necessarily
match it.
Despite the good feedback Tina got from her clients, she kept the door open to her old
job in the laboratory. The internal development activity of the organization was in turmoil, and she could not be sure of her future in that function. Eventually, the situation
was settled as a new functional team of personnel development was formed in the headquarters consisting of in-house developers and leading team coaches, Tina among them.
They started to critically evaluate the role and nature of the personnel development practices in the organization, and came to the conclusion that instead of training individuals
in new skills, their work was about increasing the level of organizational competence.
Consequently, the team adopted a new name, the competence development team, and
started to search for new tools outside the organization by, for instance, participating in
various training programs.
In spring 2000 the team invited a researcher from the Center for Activity Theory and
Developmental Work Research at the University of Helsinki to give a talk about the
Change Laboratory (CL) method as one possible tool for managing and creating new
competences. In contrast to the team-coaching methods, this method focuses on the content of the activity and relates the forms of collaboration to it. The method caught Tinas
attention:
It is hard to remember what it was particularly, but I felt that... if [the researcher] had talked
only about the theory [I would not have been so interested]. There must be something that I can
attach to the practice, because I think that anybody can describe a nice theory, but if I cannot
see it in practice... I think that it was because I could see its connection to the practice.
Tina got a concrete opportunity to get more closely acquainted with the method as her
team leader, a bit unexpectedly, suggested that Tina should develop an application of the
CL method for the team. She accepted the offer, even though she did not know yet what
it would require from her in practice. Together with the above mentioned researcher and
with backup from her team, Tina developed a local application of the CL method. The
researcher evaluated Tinas situation at that time:
I think that Tinas situation reflected a zone of proximal development in its most typical form.
She was a team coach, and very enthusiastic about it, but she lacked a tool, so she was in a way
642
already tuned to the right frequency. Ive understood that she wanted to do that kind of job, but
she didnt have a suitable tool, so this [the CL] kind of got her.
The first pilot processes that utilized the new method were organized very quickly and
Tina boldly accepted the challenge of conducting most of the processes. Only one of the
pilot processes was conducted by Tinas colleagues. After the pilot processes the competence development team experimented with the method by analyzing their own work
with the idea of learning the practical use of the method at the same time. The researcher
from the university conducted this process.
Changes in Tinas activity in the first phase of development

The change coaching was based on methods and models that built upon perceptualfunctional (i.e., trust building in adventure tracks) and abstract-empirical (i.e., the typology of learning styles and team roles) generalizations concerning collaboration and
individuals behavior in a team. As part of the learning assignments in coaching sessions,
the coaches guided the participants in making generalizations of the perceived problems
inductively on the basis of their everyday experiences. The coaching methods included
processual tools that helped the participants conduct these inductive learning actions in a
structured manner and trained them to collaborate and fix problems on the level of
actions. However, the techniques did not include any method for analyzing the development of the activity in question and for modeling essential relationships in it. Thus, they
did not help the participants to understand how the problems they encountered were
related to the structure of the system and the inner contradictions in it caused by changes
in its elements. Therefore the method did not help the teams to restructure their activity
system to overcome repeated problems either.
Some of the developers, Tina among them, saw that the complexity of the challenges
that the teams encountered transcended the developmental potential of the team-coaching
methods. One indication of the problem was the very low number of trained coaches who
were able to make use of the tools. They were also of the opinion that the methods
ignored the substance of the teams work and the professional skills of the team members. Thus, the contradiction between the methods available and the demanding object of
development acted on them as a problematic first stimulus and triggered a search for
alternative methods. A model of Tinas activity system and the emerging inner contradictions in it in the first phase are presented in Figure 2.
For Tina a second stimulus emerged when she became acquainted with the CL method.
It was not the only alternative that was on offer, but it appeared to her as having more
potential and being a more functional instrument in her work than other approaches. That
perception created in her the initial motivation to learn more about the method. As Tina
started to collaborate with the researcher to develop a local application of the Change
Laboratory, she established contact with the research community behind the method,
which gave the social support for her endeavor of adopting the new method and making
it an instrument in her work.
Before the second stimulus emerged, Tina had already been able to create a sound
client base through coaching and had established herself as a developer. This was crucial
643

Learning
organization
approach
Tools
Participatory coaching
methods and action
exercises
Object
Subject
Tina
Rules
A need for a broader,

content-emphasizing
approach to develop the
work in teams
Coaching production
teams carrying out
complex work
Community
The team of coaches
Client
Leaders of
production teams
Division of work
Top management as the

orderer
Figure 2. Tinas activity system in the first phase: Team coaching and the emerging
contradiction between the complex object of development and the existing tools
for the subsequent stages of the development activity that she committed herself to pursue and for her later use of the CL method. The coach training, even if it did not organizationally succeed as planned, had introduced a participatory and collaborative way of
developing work practices to all levels of organization. The production teams in particular learned to plan and develop their own practices instead of waiting for orders from
above. This helped Tinas work with the new method. Two inter-activity contacts evolved
during this phase: Tinas contacts with the clients who ordered development services and
with the researchers using and developing the methodology.
The second phase of development: Tina learns the use of genetic

analysis and modeling in team development
After piloting the CL method, Tina was the only one from the competence development
team who continued using it. The other colleagues either thought that the method was too
demanding and hard to master or did not consider it to be a tool with true potential.
During the years 20022004, Tina conducted a few CL processes where the participant
teams analyzed the development of their work activity. Tina provided them with analytical models to organize the data collected from the daily work activity, to interpret the
problems the team members were facing in their systemic context, and to create a mutual
understanding of the teams pivotal developmental challenges. However, the focus still
remained on the teams internal operations and rules and on short-term fixes done here
and now. The changes made were predominantly solutions to current practical problems
concerning, for example, meeting procedures, ways of communicating with clients, or
decision-making processes, without a broader view of the development of the activity
system. However, the problem-solving actions that Tina supported the team members to
take consisted now of a historical analysis of the emergent and systemic causes of their
644
problems as well as of modeling the activity system instead of making inductive generalizations on experiences.
During this phase, Tina was able to offer the new method to her faithful clients, who
already trusted her expertise, and thereby she gained experience. Especially when the
client was not entirely sure what the problem field was, Tina used the opportunity to offer
the CL method as an exploratory voyage to collectively figure out the nature of the
problems. She also frequently used the activity system model and the model of the cycle
of expansive development of an activity system in her negotiations with team leaders
concerning their forthcoming projects.
One interesting feature in the early CL processes was that a significant part of the
teams that chose to try the method were newly established or reorganized. In those cases
the method was used to jointly piece together the purpose of the teams activity, to define
its tasks, and to understand why the specific team members were brought together as a
team3. According to the participants experience, the method worked well in that respect.
However, it narrowed the object of the CL processes to concern mainly the current activity of the team. Tina was not able to make the method into an instrument for creating a
generalization concerning the zone of proximal development of the teams activity with
the team members.
The emerging contradiction in the second phase of development

One reason for the narrow use of the method was that the work orders that the leaders
of the production teams and the unit managers placed with Tina were still limited to
questions relating to team-building issues. The team leaders concern about the collaboration between team members was sincere, but there was also a deep-seated
interpretation that in-house developers were only competent to tackle problems of
human relations as abstracted from the content and conditions of the activity, a view
that reflected the old division of labor between production and the personnel development function. In the functional division of labor the personnel developers were
not supposed to take part in the development of work and production as a whole but
to focus on human problems abstracted from it. Thus, the CL method was seen
only as an improved version of team building, not as a new way of developing the
whole system of the work activity. Tina describes the competence development
teams role:
[It depends] always on what we have been doing. At first it was the teamworksome
problematic issues relating to it or some problems in getting alongwith which the teams
wanted to have help. Then, after we did some organization-wide coaching projects where the
focus was broader, then people learned to order that kind of stuff.
Another thing that hindered Tina from gaining more experience and devoting more
time to Change Laboratories was that she was the only one on her team using the method
and she also had other obligations in the competence development team. An increasing
part of their work, a parallel object to team coaching, was to organize and carry out
extensive managerial coaching programs that focused on problems in project management defined by top management. The participants in the programs were selected on the
645
basis of their positions and tasks. The objectives of managerial coaching were to harmonize work practices in middle management and project management as well as to develop
managerial and interpersonal skills. Tina, however, used some of her new conceptual
tools also when conducting coaching sessions in managerial training.
In addition, Tinas understanding of the theoretical basis of the CL method was still
quite superficial and bound to her previous experience as a team coach. She was mostly
concerned about how to conduct a CL process and use the tools for analysis in the right
way. From 2002 to 2004 Tina kept in touch with the researchers, but the contact was
irregular. One thing that created opportunities for maintaining the connection was a
learning network of Change Laboratory developers which the researchers established in
2004 to support in-house developers and consultants using the CL method in different
work organizations. However, Tina acted quite independently with the new method and
asked for guidance from the researchers only for some specific questions concerning the
type of CL process that she had learned.
In 2005 two significant expansions happened in Tinas work. Firstly, one manager
whose former team had already in the piloting phase tested the CL method was newly
appointed as head of a business unit. From his new position he asked Tina to help him to
develop the activities in his unit. This time the challenge was broader than before. Tina
recalls that she asked the manager explicitly whether the work order was about change
coaching. He answered: No, it is about developing the business. The manager wanted
to improve the profitability of his unit and to make people more business-conscious. In
addition, the managers concern was how to motivate his employees to participate in
developmental activities. Tina found the task to be more demanding than team development. The order also came from a higher organizational level than the orders from the
leaders of production teams. Previously, the orders from top managers had concerned
managerial coaching, not the development of productive activities or business. A contradiction emerged between the qualitatively new kind of demanding object and Tinas
current use of the CL method for team development.
Secondly, the learning network for CL developers started to arrange methodological
training and network seminars concerning the method. Tina attended a training course
with two of her colleagues in the spring of 2005. The research unit at the University of
Helsinki, which coordinated the network, had since the middle of the 1990s been developing the CL methodology and training in-house developers in organizations to master
the method. However, the need for longer-term support had arisen among the in-house
developers: they knew how to use the method in theory but found it very hard to incorporate it into the existing structures and practices of work development in their organizations, which usually emphasized discrete measures, clear objectives, and rapid
one-time changes. A theoretical-genetic analysis is more demanding and timeconsuming for both the participants and the developers. As the analysis focuses on
understanding the systemic causes of problems and on developing a new form of the
activity, it cannot be managed by exact predefined objectives. This was hard for the
organizations to understand in the light of existing developmental practices. The network provided the developers with methodological support in planning the CL processes and also a forum where they could discuss both methodological and practical
issues concerning the method with researchers and peers. For these reasons the learning
646
network set up a web-based platform for sharing methodological knowledge and getting
support in applying the method locally.
Another factor that affected Tinas methodological understanding was that the second author of this article conducted a CL intervention in the organization for the competence development team and some HR, R&D, and ICT experts as part of her own
research project.4 Tina explained that as the researchers style of conducting the process
differed significantly from what she had previously learned, it gave her an example of
how to break out of the old patterns and encouraged her to apply the method in more
varied ways.
Thus, the CL tools that Tina had already mastered seemed also somewhat insufficient
for the new kind of work order. For this new challenge, with new insight into the possibilities of the methodology, Tina asked the researchers for help in planning the CL process and the tools to match the order. Together they constructed new tools to help the
practitioners analyze the business in question and its logic and to create models of alternative paths for future development of the activity. Previously, Tina had found the modeling of the future activity and the task of concretizing the outcome of the analysis into
practical change experiments to be very challenging. In her former Change Laboratories
these kinds of learning actions had taken place only in a very limited form. After the
methodological training, however, Tina could set broader questions:
[The manager X] did speak about a broad approach then [when he placed the order], but I also
had the tools. Through the training I had gained the means to ask the questions, I was able to
ask him more broadly what the case was there and what they were looking for. I was able to
offer [a more extensive process].
In answer to the challenging order from the business unit manager, Tina accommodated the CL method to the prevailing developmental practices: she incorporated the
learning tasks, assignments, and analyses of the Change Laboratory into more conventional training days that she conducted in the unit, which were events with which the
participants were already familiar. In addition, based on Tinas idea, some of the members from the first participant team took part in the following CL-based development
processes in the unit as tutors. Tina was able to break away from the boundaries of her
former narrow understanding of the method.
Changes in Tinas activity in the second phase of development

During the second phase, Tina learned to use the CL method and the concepts inherent in
it as an instrument of modeling the activity of the client team and using the model in
problem solving. We cannot, however, characterize Tinas initial use of the method as a
form of theoretical-genetic generalizing. The CL processes Tina conducted at first could
rather be described as an embryonic form of learning activity that was not yet genuinely
expansive. A more innovative and expansive use of the method would have required
more methodological knowledge, which Tina did not possess in the initial stage of this
phase. An indicator of expansive learning activity is the movement from models to the
methodology of making models and back. Such movement was for Tina in this phase
647
possible only in close collaboration with the researchers, who knew the methodology
better. For her it was, nonetheless, very important to learn the basic what and how of
the method. The researcher community, which represented the methodology of theoretical-genetic generalization concerning work activities, was a partner to Tina, but the support she sought from the researchers was more related to the use of the method on the
level of actions than as a new form of development activity.
The challenge for Tina was that she faced competing interpretations of the object of
development activity, each of which were related to different communities: the leaders of
production teams ordered team coaching, top management ordered support for the harmonization of managerial and project leadership practices, and the researcher community supported Tina in guiding teams in a qualitatively new kind of analysis about their
object-oriented activity to manage new challenges. Tina was able to negotiate some of
the work orders concerning team coaching into utilizing the new CL method, but the
method was still narrowly seen as team facilitation by most of the clients. The business
unit managers new kind of work order expanded the given object outside the boundaries
of a single team and acted as a real-life first stimulus. The expansion was inherent in the
way the client manager interpreted the nature of his units challenges and in his belief in
Tinas capacity to help. A model of Tinas activity system in the second phase and the
emerging inner contradiction in it due to the new kind of order are presented in Figure 3.
Tina saw the potential of using the CL method, but needed methodological support to
construct the new emerging object as a process of promoting expansive learning activity.
For Tina the second stimulus comprised the concepts and methodological ideas that she
learned in the CL course and by following the work of a more experienced CL conductor
(i.e., the second author). The methodological challenge opened a new zone of proximal
development for Tina in which both the client and the researcher communities were
closely involved in constructing the new object of the activity. Thus, the learning process
Tools
Researchers as
support
The Change Laboratory as a

normative team-bound process
Participatory coaching methods and
action exercises
Subject
Tina
Object
Client
A new kind of
order
Supporting production
teams in carrying out
changes in their activity
Coaching managers
Business unit
manager X
Leaders of
production
teams
Top management
Rules
Community Division of work

The competence
development team in the
central administration
Figure 3. Tinas activity system in the second phase: Supporting production teams in carrying
out changes in their activity and the emerging contradiction between the team-bound use of the
CL method and the new, more demanding object
648
it triggered not only concerned Tinas individual development but also expanded the
communication between activities.
As immediate support from the researchers was not always available, Tina also used
the web platform to acquire knowledge of the uses of the method. She found the descriptions of how to plan and conduct a CL session to be especially useful. The web platform
thus became a repository of second stimuli for Tina. As her own methodological
understanding developed, she saw a broader array of the materials as potential tools. Tina
could now also plan the CL projects together with two of her colleagues, as they also
took part in the training.
A feature new to the process that Tina conducted in the business unit in question,
compared to her former use of the CL method, was the emphasis on creating a more
detailed shared understanding of alternative paths for future development of the activity.
Models for representing the zone of proximal development of the activity were used in
the sessions to discuss which developmental path to follow. There was also a more thorough discussion of the elements and innovations in the new model of the productive
activity that the participants agreed upon. That project could be characterized as a learning activity, not only because it included creating a shared idea of the development of the
activity and a model of an expanded form of it, but also because the developmental activity had more persistence and led to crossing boundaries between the participant teams in
the unit: the participants were, more than in the earlier processes, involved in an activity-creating activity in this Change Laboratory.
The third phase of development: Expansion of the object of

development
The new kind of work order, the new methodological knowledge, and the support from
the learning network and researchers led Tina to see the CL method as a broader and
more demanding instrument than before. As she conducted the CL processes in the third
phase, she no longer related them to problems of team building and solving discrete
problems. Neither was she bound to the one type of CL process only, but instead she
applied the method more creatively. She saw the object of her developmental intervention activity as helping the practitioners to analyze the current contradictions of their
productive activity and to overcome them by developing and implementing a new model.
Later on she conducted, for example, a Change Laboratory where one production team
analyzed with the representatives of tender calculation, financial planning, and procurement activities the boundary-crossing process of how to put the production projects competitively out to tender.
After 2005, the top management of the road-building company started making
frequent changes in the organization, some minor and some more extensive. Also, the
positions of both the development manager, who was responsible for the organizations
competence development practices at the top management level, and the middle manager
in charge of the competence development team changed hands a couple of times. At the
same time some of the members of the competence development team in central administration started to focus more on strategic planning and the administration of competences on a strategic level. Tina began to fear that owing to these changes the direct
649
connection between competence development and productive activities, which she found
so important, would seriously weaken.
Despite the changes, or, in fact, because of them, Tina continued promoting the
Change Laboratory by booking a meeting with every new development manager in order
to introduce him to the method and her collaboration with the researchers and the learning network. Her idea was to connect the CL method to the ongoing change on the level
of developing the business and production. Eventually, she also made a personal decision
to move from the competence development team located in the central administration to
the position of a developer in one of the business units. This seemed to her the only way
to secure her chances of working closely with the people on the production teams and
supporting the development of the production activity.
At some point the top management had made a strategic choice to examine the possibilities of transforming the organizations production concept according to the principles of lean production. The idea of applying lean production to the road-building activity
was first debated in the firm for some time, and eventually some of its principles were
piloted in some building projects in 2007. Thus, in one of the meetings between Tina, the
researchers, and the development manager, the idea emerged of using the CL method to
support local learning and the development of lean production.
The emerging contradiction and a potential new object in the third

phase of development
From the point of view of the idea of double stimulation and re-mediation, lean production was clearly a given second stimulus. It was, however, probable that the production
teams did not have the first stimulus that would trigger the problem-solving process
without collaboratively analyzing the activity. In order to gain motivation and meaning
for acquiring a new way of production, they would have needed the theoretical-genetic
analysis of the challenge to which the lean production offered an answer. For Tina, as a
developer, the first stimulus emerged from the realization that the competence development teams work was (again) about to lose the connection to real life and production
activity, and that her chances of realizing and disseminating the developmental activity
she believed in were being endangered.
Tinas personal decision to move closer to the productive activity expanded her possibilities to engage in developmental projects which encompassed a broader object of
development. She was no longer bound to the prevailing interpretation of the role of the
competence development team as specialists in interpersonal relations. When she acted
in the business unit, the idea of a lean laboratory, a Change Laboratory that would support the learning and implementation of lean production principles, received a more concrete base than the negotiations on the corporate level had offered. Consequently, shared
conversations about a possible lean laboratory pilot began. By introducing her methodological community to the management, Tina brought the developmental methodology
based on theoretical-genetic generalizing into a broader context in the organization as a
potential tool for solving problems related to the transformation of the production concept. At this point a first contact was created between Tinas methodology and the international discourse concerning the production methodology in the industry. A broader
setting of double stimulation seemed to be emerging (see Figure 4).
650
A summary of the changes in Tinas activity, the expansions of her object of development, and her connections over the boundaries of activity systems is depicted in Table 1.
Conclusions and discussion

We argue that theoretical-genetic thinking is important in the management and development of the increasingly complex systems of human activity in our current information
society. Our case organizations activity, road building, is, however, not an exemplary
representative of the information society nor a pioneer of applying ICTs. What is seen in
this case and in most areas of the economy is the increasing pace of changes and problems that cannot be solved through discrete changes carried out without paying attention
to the broader systemic context. Instead, systemic solutions are needed: new concepts
concerning the object and purpose of the activity as well as qualitatively new logics and
structures of activity. This also was the case in the business unit in this study. For these
system-level solutions, analysis and modeling of the development and current inner contradictions of the activity system are needed.
At the beginning of this case most of the in-house developers were content with the teambuilding and coaching work and their role as human relations specialists as defined by the
tools provided for them in the training. Tina, however, was not satisfied with these tools that
abstracted human relations from the activity of the team. She wanted to involve the content
of the production teams work in the development process. She saw that although team
building changed the team members mutual collaboration, it did not help the team to master
the development of its production activity. In Davydovs terms, the team-coaching tools led
to abstract empirical generalizations concerning better internal practices, but not to a generalization concerning the important systemic relationships in their activity system nor to a
vision of its possible future form. Therefore it opened a very limited zone of proximal
Researchers and
learning network as
support
Tools
The Change Laboratory as a
method for supporting learning
activity
(Participatory coaching methods
and action exercises)
Subject
Tina
Object
Creating tools for
business units to
implement a new
production concept
Supporting teams
learning activity in
business units
Client
Business unit
managers
Rules
Community Division of work

The competence
development team in the
central administration
Figure 4. Tinas activity system in the third phase: The contradiction between Tinas object of
supporting teams learning activity and the developer community in the central administration
and the emerging object of creating tools for implementing a new production concept
651

Table 1. The phases of the development of Tinas developmental activity
Tina, an in-house Inter-activity
developer
connections
Object
The first stimulus
1. Tina
becomes a
developer
New client
relationships, Tina
is a well-liked
coach
Coaching
production
teams carrying
out complex
work
The contradiction
between a
complex object
and inadequate
tools and methods
2. Learning
genetic
analysis and
modeling
in team
development,
becoming
a trusted
developer
Contact to the
methodological
community of
DWR, negotiating
and reinterpreting
the orders with
clients in order to
try out the new
method
Supporting
production
teams in
carrying out
changes in
their activity
3. Expansion in New client order

the object of
and support from
development
the methodological
community lead
to a new form
of development
activity
Supporting
teams' learning
activity in
business units
4. Connecting
CL to a new
road-building
concept?
Emerging
object: Creating
tools for
business units
to implement a
new production
concept
Production
management and
designers as clients
and co-developers,
methodological
community as
resource
The second
stimulus
The Change
Laboratory and
the models of
activity system
and expansive
development as
potential tools
The contradiction Methodological
between a broader training, which
object of business led to a new
unit development
interpretation of
surpassing team
orders and the
structures and the tool
prior team-bound
use of the CL
method
The contradiction
between the
object of
supporting learning
activity in the
business units and
the orientation of
her colleagues in
the competence
development team
in the central
administration
Discussions with
the development
and production
managers to
define the object
of development,
CL as a
methodology for
supporting the
transformation of
the production
concept
development for the team. Tinas intuitive orientation to the substance of the teams activity
was strengthened and became structured when she first learned about taking actions of
theoretical-genetic analysis of activity systems as part of the CL method.
Vygotskys double-stimulation experiment can be regarded as a germ-cell model of the
re-mediation of human action. In a social context the re-mediation process can be supported by other persons. A persons readiness to capitalize on the social support defines
his or her zone of proximal development. In Vygotskys studies of the zone of proximal
development, the emergence of the challenging first stimulus was, however, not problematized. In Engestrms theory, an important prerequisite for an activity-system-level
652
re-mediation is the transformation of individuals problems into a hypothesis concerning

a system-level contradiction behind these problems. In the developmental process of
expansive learning as Engestrm describes it, development consists of a series of re-mediation situations. New contradictions emerge as a result of previous steps of development,
and each contradiction produces the actors problem situations that function as first stimuli, which call for finding new second stimuli that can be made into new mediators in
the activity. The contradictions are, however, not immediately given empirical facts, but
have to be specified through an analysis of the development of the system.
In our case, Tinas developmental activity was re-mediated several times. The
double-stimulation situations leading to re-mediation always emerged through new
inter-activity connections. Because of these relationships, the development process cannot be adequately described as Tinas individual development only. It was at the same
time a process of network development in which Tina occupied a key position and was
therefore able to create the double-stimulation situations herself. For these situations to
emerge it was important that Tinas individual zone of proximal development and the
collective ZPD of the production activity in the company were interlinked so that new
challenges that called for new tools emerged and so that Tina could utilize the new tools
she had internalized to meet the challenges. As we have described, the challenges and the
new tools originated from different activity systems that Tinas work linked together.
Table 1 gives a summary of the changes in Tinas activity and in particular the expansion
of contacts over boundaries of activity systems.
In working life the elements of re-mediation, the first and the second stimulus, evolve
as new connections between activity systems emerge. The first stimulus can emerge, for
instance, from the new needs and demands of customers. The second stimulus can be
obtained through connections to research and development activities or to the activity of
more developed colleagues. Intervention is traditionally understood as a specially
arranged, formal process that has clear boundaries in time and place and a specific subject. In our case example the first CL process conducted in the competence development
team was one such formal intervention process; another was the CL training that Tina
and two of her colleagues took part in. The first intervention did not lead to a change in
the competence development teams activity, but gave a new direction to Tinas individual development and triggered her to take new and different actions that led to a
continuing process of development. The continuation of the development would, however, not have been possible had Tina not had the support from the researchers. The
second formal intervention process, the CL training, was important in moving the
development one step further. If we look at the developmental process that we have
described (which is still continuing), we see a process of stepwise development of a
broader object and stepwise assimilation of new concepts and methods as instruments of
the activity. In each step there was a qualitatively new kind of contact between activities
and social support in the form of consulting and co-design.
We suggest an interpretation of a formative intervention as a process of structuring a
real-life double-stimulation setting from the real-life challenges and cultural artifacts
potentially usable as tools to meet these challenges as well as of supporting the participants process of remediation. When intervention is understood this way, we can see that,
in many cases, for development to occur, instead of one prestructured intervention
653
p rocess, a chain of interventions is needed that corresponds to an escalating series of

situations calling for re-mediation.
In school a teacher can follow the development of a pupil and make interventions in
his/her learning process according to the curriculum. In the relationships between activities in working life, the interventionist is not in a position to predict or provoke the challenges. Actually, there seldom is one single interventionist. The process of re-mediation
has to be constructed on challenges and contacts that arise naturally in the clients activity.
In many cases, a one-time formal intervention does not help the client to move from one
form of activity to another, but a continuous interaction like the relationship between pupil
and teacher is not possible either. Rather, a collaborative relationship is needed in which
a chain of small interventions can be carried out in the middle of unpredictably changing,
real-life conditions. Intervention is then a knot between activities in a conceptually sustainable developmental process that is realized in conditions that do not sustain.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. The interventions comprised methodological training and guidance for Tina (and some of
her colleagues) given by the researchers, the formation of a network of in-house developers
from different organizations using the CL method (Tina among them), negotiations with the
management, and two CL interventions conducted by the researchers for the competence
development team (Tinas team) in 2002 and for the competence development team together
with some HR, R&D, and ICT experts in 2005.
2. Throughout the article the term client is used for the development practitioners internal
customers in the organization, i.e., the team leaders and managers.
3. Some of the consequences of the CL processes were even quite radical. One team came to
the conclusion that the organizational decision to put that team together was based on wrong
assumptions on the connecting factors between the team members work tasks. In other words,
they could not find a common object, and soon after the CL process the team disbanded.
4. It should be noted that, besides becoming close colleagues, the personal research project, the
aim of which was to prepare a doctoral thesis, provided a long-standing motivation for the
second author to stay in contact with Tina and the organization during these years.
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Jaakko Virkkunen is Professor Emeritus of Developmental Work Research in the Institute of

Behavioural Sciences at University of Helsinki, Finland. His work has been focused on developmental interventions and expansive learning in work organizations. Address: CRADLE, Institute
of Behavioural Sciences, P.O. Box 9 (Siltavuorenpenger 3 A) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki,
Finland. [email: jaakko.virkkunen@helsinki.fi]
Marika Schaupp is Researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, where she has
conducted research and development projects in many lines of work in Finland and studied the
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in the doctoral program of the Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning at the
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Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland. [email: marika.schaupp@ttl.fi]

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