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The purpose of this paper is to examine the generation of innovations by employees and the creation of initiative paths, and to discover which factors contribute to the implementation of an initiative.

Based on longitudinal qualitative research, the study explores the profiles of initiative paths and the types of innovations and relationships among the generated innovations.

It was found that, to become an innovation, an initiative followed different paths along which the processing and outcomes varied, as did the time needed for experimentation. The creation of initiative paths required the transformative agency of the actors involved. Power relations had an impact on the generation of initiatives and implementation of innovations.

Innovations research has concentrated on the generation of ideas and the implementation of innovations. This study focuses on the process path along which ideas become innovations and on the role of power relations in the innovations process.

The following theoretical challenges concerning learning in organizations and at work are examined in the study. First, organizational learning is not only the formation of collective routines; it is also tool‐creation and implementation. Second, tools evolve as they are implemented. Third, tools become powerful when they become an interconnected instrumentality and constellations. Tool‐creation and implementation are examined when a new set of tools is being appropriated for collaboration between primary and secondary health care. Boundary crossings in the interaction of the multiple providers are focused as an essential context of tool‐creation during implementation. The findings concerning the tool‐creation during implementation process include the productivity of the resistance, the importance of turning points, the formation of the new instrumentality, the discovery of gaps, and the necessity of stabilization and maintenance in organizational learning. Finally, conclusions about learning in the creation of work practice will be proposed.

The paper aims to examine organizational authoring understood as a longitudinal, material and dialectical process of transformation efforts. The following questions are asked: To which extent can a Change Laboratory intervention help practitioners author their own learning? Are the authored outcomes of a Change Laboratory intervention futile if a workplace subsequently undergoes large-scale organizational transformations? Does the expansive learning authored in a Change Laboratory intervention survive large-scale organizational transformations, and if so, why does it survive and how?

The paper develops a conceptual argument based on cultural–historical activity theory. The conceptual argument is grounded in the examination of a case of eight years of change efforts in a university library, including a Change Laboratory (CL) intervention. Follow-up interview data are used to discuss and illuminate our argument in relation to the three research questions.

The idea of knotworking constructed in the CL process became a “germ cell” that generates novel solutions in the library activity. A large-scale transformation from the local organization model developed in the CL process to the organization model of the entire university library was not experienced as a loss. The dialectical tension between the local and global models became a source of movement driven by the emerging expansive object. Practitioners are modeling their own collective future competences, expanding them both in socio-spatial scope and interactive depth.

The article offers an expanded view of authorship, calling attention to material changes and practical change actions. The dialectical tensions identified serve as heuristic guidelines for future studies and interventions.

Literature has recognised entrepreneurship education as the main conduit through which entrepreneurial behaviours, attitudes and actions can be built, enacted and delivered. Since the founding of new ventures is largely a resourceful founder-driven enterprise, entrepreneurship education has largely centred on galvanising and shifting the mindsets and cognition of the entrepreneur. Yet, despite over 60 years of delivering entrepreneurship education programmes, hard evidence of the generation of high-growth-oriented and sustainable ventures has been scarce as student entrepreneurship intentions do not always translate into successful venture creation. This is largely because of the complexities of the practicality of entrepreneurial education particularly, the dissonance between acquired education in business schools and the knowledge and competencies needed in the entrepreneurial field. Such dissonance can be attributed to the lack of clarity on the pedagogical approach that most resonates with entrepreneurial action, the diversity in assessment methods and the scholarly illusion pertaining to how pedagogical approaches can be channelled to the generation of growth-oriented ventures. Drawing on Girox's concepts of transformative critical pedagogy (including pedagogy of repression), Socratic dialogue, Hegelian dialectic and Yrjö Engeström's transformative expansive agency, I demonstrate how a flipped transformative critical pedagogy can be harnessed in digitally enhanced learning environments to create new entrepreneurial possibilities for facilitating critical inquiry, complex problem-solving, innovation for the market and fostering tolerance for failure in ambiguous entrepreneurial contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to show how activity theory transcends the boundary between workplace learning and organizational learning.

Activity‐theoretical analyses examine collectives and organizations as learners. On the other hand, activity theory is committed to pedagogical and interventionist actions to change and learning characteristic of workplace learning.

Activity‐theoretical studies put an emphasis on the object, i.e. on what is done and learned together in inter‐organizational networks, instead of studying only connections and collaboration of networks. The theory of expansive learning enables a longitudinal and rich analysis of inter‐organizational learning and makes a specific contribution in outlining the historical transformation of work and organizations by using observational as well as interventionist designs in studies of work and organization.

The paper shows that activity theory and the theory of expansive learning provide useful analytical tools for the enrichment of studies in workplace learning, as reported in the articles included in this special issue.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how Engeström's “third generation” activity theory, with its emphasis on developing conceptual tools to understand dialogues, multiple perspectives and networks of interacting activity systems, has informed research into professional learning in multiagency service settings in England.

Researchers worked intensively with multi‐professional teams in five English local authorities. Through the use of developmental research work (DWR) methodologies, they sought to understand and facilitate the expansive learning that takes place in and for multiagency work.

Provisional analysis of data has emphasised the need to understand activity systems in terms of contradictions, which may be developed through reference to the notion of labour‐power; subject positioning and identity within activities; emotional experiencing in processes of personal transformation. The general working hypothesis of learning itself requires expansion to include notions of experiencing and identity formation within an account that includes systematic and coherent analysis of the wider social structuring of society.

The paper describes the beginnings of a refinement of DWR methodology, workshop methods and activity theory derived analyses of data generated through DWR.

The analysis offered represents an advance beyond second generation activity theory, which was concerned with single activity systems. The conceptual strands (upon labour‐power related contradictions, subject positioning, emotional experiencing) have been under‐developed in activity theory. This project exemplifies the complexities of the “dual motive” of object‐oriented activity systems.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special themed section which explores the relationship between contradiction and organizational change.

This paper analyzes the four papers included in this special themed section, drawing links between the different texts.

A review of the papers shows that they contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of organizational change by focusing on how contradictions manifest themselves and how they are managed in various change contexts.

This introduction provides readers of the themed section with an overview of the four papers.

Focuses on the theories and study of organizational and workplace learning. Outlines the landscape of learning in co‐configuration settings, a new type of work that includes interdependency between multiple producers forming a strategic alliance, supplier network, or other such pattern of partnership which collaboratively puts together and maintains a complex package, integrating material products and services. Notes that learning in co‐configuration settings is typically distributed over long, discontinuous periods of time. It is accomplished in and between multiple loosely interconnected activity systems and organizations operating in divided local and global terrains and representing different traditions, domains of expertise, and social languages. Learning is crucially dependent on the contribution of the clients or users. Asserts that co‐configuration presents a twofold learning challenge to work organizations and outlines interventionist and longitudinal approaches taken.

The chapter makes an attempt at hybridization between three relatively separate fields of inquiry: (a) theories and studies of collective intentionality and distributed agency, (b) theories and studies of social capital in organizations, and (c) cultural–historical activity theory. Employees’ collective capacity to create organizational transformations and innovations is becoming a crucially important asset that gives a new, dynamic content to notions of social and collaborative capital. In philosophy, sociology, anthropology and cognitive science, such capacity is conceptualized as distributed agency or collective intentionality. The task of the chapter is to examine the possibility that current changes in work organizations may bring about historically new features of collective intentionality and distributed agency. The understanding of these new features is important if we are to give viable content to the emerging notion of collaborative capital. After a conceptual overview, the chapter will first analyze a fictional example of distributed agency, then findings from the author's fieldwork in health care settings. In conclusion, the chapter will propose the notions of ‘object-oriented interagency’ and ‘collaborative intentionality capital’ as characterizations of important aspects of agency and intentionality currently taking shape in work organizations.