Hannele Kerosuo, Ph.D, Researcher
Email: hannele.kerosuo@helsinki.fi
Tel.: +358 9 191 44275
Fax: +358 9 191 44579
Postal address:
Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research
P.O. Box 26
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
Personal home page:
www.edu.helsinki.fi/activ...
Project: Boundary Crossing and Knotworking in
Innovative Work Organizations
The study focuses on boundary crossing and knotworking in companies operating
under challenging organizational and business environments. For the purpose
organization design for innovation and innovation activity are researched in 2
Finnish companies. The concept of activity is used as an analytical unit to
depict the emergent innovation activity in practice.
Research questions of the study are (1) How do companies design organization
for promoting innovation, competitiveness and growth in practice? (2) How do
companies carry out innovations in boundary crossing and knotworking in
practice? (3) How are conditions for innovations and growth created through
boundary crossing and knotworking in innovation networks?
The method of the study draws on activity theoretical perspectives and
anthropological methods in the examination of boundary crossing and
knotworking. The data gathered includes recorded interviews and observations,
fieldnotes and documents.
The proposed research will provide companies knowledge on organization design
for promoting innovation, competitiveness, and growth in challenging
organizational and business environments. It will also provide companies
knowledge on actual innovating processes in networks of innovation activity,
and give an opportunity for companies to reflect on the results of the study
during the research process thus enabling the experimentation of new ideas. The
research is carried out in close collaboration with Chemnitz University of
Technology. The project is funded by Tekes as part of WORK-IN.-NET –program.
Dissertation
Kerosuo, H.
(2006). Boundaries in Action
Toiviainen, H., Kerosuo, H. &
Syrjälä, T. (2009). “Development Radar”: The co-configuration of a tool in a
learning network. Journal of Workplace Learning, 21, 7, 509 - 524.
The paper aims to argue that new tools are needed for
operating, developing and learning in work-life networks where academic and
practice knowledge are intertwined in multiple levels of and in
boundary-crossing across activities. At best, tools for learning are designed
in a process of co-configuration, as the analysis of one tool, Development
Radar, aims to demonstrate.
Keywords: Artifacts (artefaktit), Co-configuration, Learning (oppiminen)
Toiviainen, H. & Kerosuo, H.
(2009). Cultivating and enriching a tool in use - Case 'Development Radar'.
In L. Norros, H. Koskinen, L. Salo & P. Savioja (Eds), Proceedings of ECCE
2009 European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, VTT Symposium 258, p.
281-288. This study is a continuation to the analysis, in
which we looked into the co-configurative ways of designing the learning
tool. After the successful implementation, how did the in-house developers
perceive and modify the tool; did they manage to integrate it to their work
and development practices by cultivating and enriching the tool in use? |
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Keywords: Developmental work research (KTT), mediation, work life learning
Kerosuo, H. (2008). Putting the
patient in the middle: managing chronic illness across organisational
boundaries. In R. Sorensen and R. Iedema (Eds.) Managing Clinical Processes
in the Health Services. Sydney: Elsevier. Managing
the boundaries in chronic illness is an urgent task. As advanced medical
technology, pharmacology and treatment help people live longer, they require
care for longer periods of time. How, then, can we improve the organisation
of health care that requires clinicians with different clinical and
professional orientations to collaborate, particularly where care
relationships are characterised by individual clinicians delivering episodic
care to individual patients? This chapter considers the impact of
organisational, professional and practice boundaries on patient care,
specifically the care of patients with multiple and chronic
illnesses.Ameliorating the effect of boundaries means reinterpreting the
outcomes of care, the role of the patient and the responsibility of treating
clinicians that in turn mean creating new ways to conceptualise and deliver
care within the context of organisation and organisations. |
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Keywords: Activity theory, Boudaries in health care, Boundaries, examining boundaries,
boundary crossing
Kerosuo, H. (2007). Renegotiating disjunctions
in interorganizationally provided care. In R. Iedema (Ed.) The Discourse of
Hospital Communication—Tracing Complexities in Contemporary Health Care
Organization, 138-161. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan. The increasing
complexity of work and organization raises new challenges for service
production in traditional organizations. The conventional and familiar
practices of working and organizing work are becoming re-designed. However,
many institutions such as health care are still trapped inside old metaphors
of organizing according to which work and organizations can be thoroughly
planned, broken down into units, and optimized. Organizational interfaces
explore the dynamics related to complexities in health care practice.
Organizational interfaces uncover how discrepancies of organizational
interests, values, power, and division of labor are mediated at critical
points of linkage in patients’ care provision. Interfaces typically occur at
points where different, and often conflicting, life worlds or organizational
fields intersect revealing the ‘gaps’ in the care provision. In these
situations, interactions between participants become oriented towards
problems of bridging, accommodating, segregating, or contesting the everyday
care practices. |
Keywords: Boundaries, examining boundaries,
boundary crossin, Discourse analysis
(diskurssianalyysi),
Object of activity (toiminnan kohde)
Kerosuo, H. (2007). Following my
traces: Exploring the emotional engagement with the research subject through
the researcher’s artwork. Culture and Organization, 1,55-72.
The article
explores the researcher’s emotional engagement in fieldwork through the
researcher’s artwork. Revisiting the emotional engagement is important in order
to make sense of the research subject of the study in complex research sites.
The care of twenty-six patients was followed during a change project that
involved relationships between various clinics and providers. The
organizational complexity became obvious when each patient case created its own
field of study in the health care organization. In the study, it is suggested
that we can gain access to emotional engagement through art and aesthetics in
organizational ethnographies. Emotional engagement with the research subject is
an important part of constituting the research subject in complex
organizations. In future projects, it will be important to discuss aesthetic
experiences raised by the fieldwork with the participants. Discussing such
experiences is part of the co-constitution of the sense and meaning of the
activity that is under change.
Keywords: Boundaries, examining boundaries,
boundary crossin, Ethnography (etnografia), Fieldwork