Renewing the object of work as a trigger for inter-organizational learning

What is it about?

The study refers to a healthcare organization engaged in adopting “home health care” as a new object of activity. The research explores how the reconfiguration of the object influences the transformative perspective affecting not just a service but a broader approach and meaning behind patient care. It also investigates the main contradictions at play and the levers to support inter-organisational learning while facing the new challenges and change processes. The work is based on a qualitative and ethnographic methodology directed to examine cultural, practical and socio-material aspects. The activity theory is assumed as a powerful approach to understand collective learning and distributed agency processes. The renewal of the new object of work is analysed as a trigger for shifts in representations, cultural processes and collective support implemented by the organization. Three agentic trajectories – technical, dialogical and collaborative agency - were cultivated by the management to deliver home health care through joint exercises of coordination and control, dialogical spaces and collaborative process. The contribution provides a practical framework for healthcare organizations aiming to navigate and explore the physiological tensions and contradictions emerging when there is the puch to a change affecting intra and inter-organizational dimensions.

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