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This paper aims to present a transnational research intervention that relies on the qualitative monitoring of disadvantaged people’s work integration program. In particular, the paper adopts the concept of networking and knotworking to intercept and describe the ways in which organizational payers shape knowledge in their contexts of work inclusion.

The research is based on a developmental ethnographic research to detect meaningful, situated knowledge related to the activities for work integration of disadvantaged people. Two main techniques, “at home ethnography” (Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Hansen, 2006) and participant observation (Alvesson, 2009), were used for gathering data.

The paper highlights the existing contradictions within and between the multiple activity systems. The advantages of using the activity theory’s lenses are underlined together with two main approaches related to the assumption of a networking and knotworking orientation. The findings also refer to some new paths professionals identified for their daily activity.

The paper provides a better understanding of the contemporary challenges of working, that is extremely helpful to policy makers and other practitioners, including researchers.

Building on the existing literature and on a series of interviews conducted in very diverse coworking spaces, this article attempts at analyzing coworking by focusing on the historical evolution and heterogeneity of its interpretations, as well as the plurality of its realization in practice and prospective developments.

The theoretical framework adopted is Cultural Historical Activity Theory – a dialectical approach which allows the study of human activities as historically evolving and complex systems which change under the impulse of their inner contradictions. The analysis presented here starts with an overview of the history of the theoretical elaborations and discussions of coworking. The authors then focus on the experiences and interpretations of this phenomenon as conveyed by coworkers and coworking managers in the north of Italy – one of the most active coworking areas in Europe.

Coworking first emerged as a way of promoting forms of work and organization that require simultaneous, multidirectional, and reciprocal work, as understood in contrast to forms that incorporate an established division of labor, demarcated communities, and formal and informal sets of rules. However, with time, coworking has evolved toward novel directions, giving rise to heterogeneous interpretations of it. Inquiry constitutes a deeper investigation of the heterogeneity of coworking. The take-away message here is that the prefix co- in coworking can be interpreted, through a play of words, to evoke multiple positions and views conveying internal contradictions.

The historical overview of coworking shows a strong differentiation and multisided interpretation of this phenomenon along two dimensions of historical development, namely, social and business, and outward and inward. The qualitative analysis of the interviews traces the different lived interpretations and conceptions of coworking. The analysis confirms, on the one hand, the complexity and heterogeneity described in the literature, and on the other hand, it enriches the literature by depicting the contradictory nature of the phenomenon, including how the historical and inner tensions of coworking are dynamically evolving in the concrete experiences reported by the managers and users in the coworking spaces.

This paper aims to address the relevance and impact of the fourth industrial revolution through a theoretical and practical perspective. The authors present both the results of a literature review, highlighting the new competences required in innovative workplaces and a pivotal case, which explores challenges and skill models diffused in industry 4.0, describing the role of proper organizational learning processes in shaping new work cultures.

The paper aims to enhance the discussion around the 4.0 industrial revolution addressing both a theoretical framework, valorizing the existing scientific contributes and the situated knowledge, embedded in a concrete organizational context in which the fourth industrial revolution is experienced and practiced.

The findings acquired through the case study endorse what the scientific literature highlights about the impact, the new competences and the organizational learning paths. The conclusions address the agile approach to work as the more suitable way to place humans at the center of technological progress.

The paper explores a specific organizational context, related to a high-tech multinational company, whose results illustrate the empirical evidence sustaining transformations in the working, professional and organizational cultures necessary to face the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. The research was conducted with the managers of an international company and this a specific and limited target, even though relevant and interesting.

The paper connects the case with the general scenario, this study currently faces, to suggest hints and coordinates for crossing the unfolding situation and finding suitable matching between technological evolution and the development of new work and professional cultures and competences.

Due to the acceleration that the COVID-19 has impressed to the use of digital technologies and remote connexion, the paper highlights some ambivalences that the quick evolution of the new technologies entails in relation to work and social conditions.

The opportunity to match both a literature analysis and an in-depth situated case study enhances the possibility to achieve a more articulated and complex view of the viral changes generated in the current context by the digitalization process.

The paper aims to analyse a specific configuration of coworking space that emphasises the production of social value in the territory (resilient/welfare-oriented coworking). This kind of space represents the current evolution of coworking that recovers the original meaning of coworking space to promote social changes, questions the role of the physical space and brings to the fore its connections between the internal (space) and the external (territory).

The paper presents an action research on a rising network of coworking spaces. The action research was based on qualitative interviews of the founders and main stakeholders of the network and monthly meetings discussions with the steering committee of the coworking spaces.

The paper provides some key elements that highlight different meanings related to the value produced by the coworking spaces and related interpretations of the material and immaterial characteristics of the spaces. The results also highlight different managerial challenges connected with these interpretations.

The main results of the study shed light on the fact that it is not enough to focus on material aspects of the coworking space, such as the design and the dispositions of furniture and the curatorship of the relationships among coworkers, if the desired outcome is a reinterpretation of work against the consolidated individualistic paradigm. Rather, the boundary work is the condition that permits to sustain and maintain the evolutionary trajectory of coworking in the most innovative direction. Inside a network of different stakeholders, aimed at integrating individual and collective needs, the constant crossing of boundaries between people, relationships and contexts is the process that permits to generate new meanings and possibilities of action (affordance), holding a transformative potential.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the process of “germ cell” formation by framing it as an opportunity for promoting organizational learning and transformation. The paper aims to specifically answer two research questions: Why does the “germ cell” have a pivotal role in organization’s transformation? and Which conditions facilitate the formation of the “germ cell” in the management of complex and uncertain problems?

The paper answers the research questions first by presenting the literature related to knowing and learning inside organizations, and second by introducing the concept of “germ cell” and connecting it with the metaphors of “waiting experiment” and “anchoring forward”. Finally, the paper analyzes the steps by which the “germ cell” is shaped, thus owing to the exploration of problematic situations, underpinning the “germ cell’s ” role to open perspectives for multiple applications and development. Two research interventions are presented by focusing on the construction of the “germ cell” moving from the problematic situations to promote organizational learning and change.

The paper describes the formation of the “germ cell” as a process that opens possibilities for subjects to recognize and reflect on the recurrent and taken-for-granted practices and concepts and give sense to them by making the inner contradiction and the ways for managing it visible.

The unfolding and challenging inceptive configuration of the germ cell sheds light on the discursive/conversational/language processes and the activities entangled in socio-material instrumentalities and environments in which people are involved.

Since new digital micro-credential technologies emerged a decade ago, there has been a rapid rise in micro-credentials in the education landscape. Much has been promised about these educational technologies, yet there is much confusion by key stakeholders in the digital micro-credential ecosystem. This confusion has led to significant efforts globally to define micro-credentials to ensure quality learning and generate beneficial impacts to learners, employers, education providers and edtech organisations.

This commentary reviews relevant literature on digital micro-credentials and other alternative credentials to determine how these educational technologies can meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to nurture lifelong learning for working learners.

Universities are being challenged to address the changing needs and uncertainty being introduced by the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions, particularly with implications for workforce upskilling and lifelong learning. To adapt, universities will need to rethink their roles and shift their institutional mindsets in how they may approach the challenges through mechanisms such as digital micro-credntials.

This paper focuses on the analysis of five policy statements about micro-credentials. While these policy statements represent a sample, there is a representation of Western education-related systems. Thus, they skew the findings towards Western education systems thinking.

Understanding how micro-credentials are being positioned within education-related systems is useful for applying the educational technologies by, for example, universities, learners and employers.

Provides an overview of how these educational technologies may provide beneficial impacts for society as it plans to adapt to economic uncertainty and change.

The commentary provides a policy context for the emerging use of micro-credential technologies to examine demands for workforce upskilling.

The aim of this invited paper is to explore how more complex epistemic environments generate opportunities and challenges for organizational learning in professional realms. Based on these explorations, a second aim is to discuss whether there are specific conditions in Nordic working life that facilitates or restricts such learning opportunities.

The paper discusses conditions for organizational learning in terms of changing knowledge practices and relations. Examples from studies of knowledge work in the Norwegian education and health sectors are provided to illustrate how professionals become involved in epistemic practices as part of their work and how these practices are changing in relation to evolving knowledge cultures.

The paper conceptualises and discusses how knowledge practices are changing in relation to specific and increasingly complex epistemic environments. It is argued that features such as low power distance, high levels of higher education participation, well-developed digital infrastructures and a general trust in professionals are conducive to learning. At the same time, taking advantage of learning opportunities are increasingly depending on individuals’ agency and capacities to cope with new demands.

To better account for the complexity of epistemic environments, organisational learning can be seen as a matter of connecting epistemic practices in the local work organisation to wider knowledge circuits.