From Teams to Knots: Activity-Theoretical Studies of Collaboration and Learning at Work

by Yrjö Engeström

Overview

Teams are commonly celebrated as efficient and humane ways of organizing work and learning. By means of a series of in-depth case studies of teams in the United States and Finland over a time span of more than ten years, this book shows that teams are not a universal and ahistorical form of collaboration. Teams are best understood in their specific activity contexts and embedded in historical development of work. The book develops a set of conceptual tools for analysis and design of transformations in collaborative work and learning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521865678
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/14/2008
Series:	Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Yrjö Engeström earned his Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki in 1987. He is a Professor of Adult Education and Director of the Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE) at the University of Helsinki. He is Professor Emeritus of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, where he also served as Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition from 1990 to 1995. Engeström applies and develops cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for the study of transformations and learning processes in work activities and organizations. He is widely known for his theory of expansive learning and for the methodology of developmental work research.

Table of Contents

1. Teams and the transformation of work; 2. Disturbance management and masking in a television production team; 3. Teamwork between adversaries: coordination, cooperation, and communication in a court trial; 4. Displacement and innovation in primary care medical teams; 5. Crossing boundaries in teacher teams; 6. Knowledge creation in industrial work teams; 7. Teams, infrastructures, and social capital; 8. From iron cages to webs on the wind; 9. Knotworking and agency in fluid organizational fields.

Editorial Reviews

"...rich in data and conceptual analysis...admirable scholarship..."
—Mike Bonner, PsycCRITIQUES [Vol. 54, Release 32, Article 6]

From the Publisher