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The purpose of this study was to explore important elements involved in interorganizational learning (IOL) in the complex context of integrated health care.

The study applied concept-driven content analysis of qualitative data collected from documents, protocols, reports, reflection circles and interviews related to an improvement initiative in Norwegian integrated health care for elderly and fragile patients.

The analysis supports the applicability of Engeström’s activity system model to better understand the local contexts of IOL in integrated health care. However, the study also identified an essential additional contextual element in the case under study: an organizational network structure binding all involved parties together. This structure was crucial for facilitating the IOL process, indicating potential for further development of Engeström’s model to address the complexities of integrated health care.

This study tested and extended a long-standing model – the human activity system – within the context of integrated health care. The authors propose introducing leadership as a distinct element, organized as a network structure that connects all stakeholders. Implications for leaders and policymakers include the importance of developing network structures and conducting contextual analysis before designing IOL processes in integrated health care. The study opens new avenues for research on IOL in integrated health care.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how principles from variation theory can contribute to the planning of teaching and learning beyond learning study.

We study whether and how principles from variation theory contributed to a group of teachers’ planning of teaching and learning about decimal numbers in Grades 4 to 7 working in Subject Didactic Groups – a collaborative arrangement suited to daily teaching. A theoretical thematic analysis approach was used when analyzing eight audio-recorded meetings and written documents.

The study shows that variation theory principles contributed to the teachers’ planning of teaching and learning. Two themes were identified: the theory contributed to the teachers being able to (1) specify what their students needed to learn and (2) design tasks that they anticipated would afford the opportunity to learn what was identified as being necessary to learn.

The paper demonstrates how variation theory can contribute to teachers’ planning of teaching and learning when used in a collaborative arrangement other than learning study. This leads into a discussion about variation theory being used separately from learning study and the benefits and limitations this other collaborative arrangement can have for gaining knowledge of what is to be learned and taught.

Previous research on the impact of coopetition on innovation performance has provided contradictory results. Thus, this study aims to fill the gap by gathering data to explain the impact of coopetition on service innovation, considering the partners’ geographical proximity, innovation focus of the firm and cooperation with customers.

A logistic regression model is applied, and four hypotheses are tested using data from the Eurostat Community Innovation Survey 2018. The cross-sectional data set consists of 13,723 firms innovating services in selected European Union countries.

The findings verify the importance of coopetition for service innovation. However, the coopetitive partners’ nationality does not have a significant impact. Furthermore, the integration of customer cooperation with coopetition enhances service innovation. Hence, competing partners seem not to avoid cooperation in output functions near the customers. To coopete in innovation is risky, but the findings reveal that partners develop novel services through coopetition, intended to produce a higher return to compensate for the risks.

Presumably, this is one of the first large-scale studies examining the impact of coopetition on service innovation in a European context. This study indicates that coopetition amplifies service innovation, thus reducing the divergent views on the impact of coopetition on innovation performance. It responds to the request for more research on the context of coopetitive innovation by explaining how the firms’ geographical proximity, innovation focus and cooperation with customers impact their service innovation performance.