Thursday, April 5, 2012

Do we need variations of CL for different developmental phases and different historical types of activity?

This question is related to the timing of the intervention. The Big cycle of expansion take several years to take place, while during a CL, there are several smaller expansive cycles.The BIG cycle refers to the expansion of an  activity system under study, while the time of thesmall cycles are much shorter, refering to the learning process taking place within the CL. How are these two cycles related?







In the first CL conducted in the company posti, for instance, it was created a new more expanded concept of the object of post service based on the idea of a sender -receiver customer. Based on this concept, several experiments were launched. The initial analysis of the expansive cycle showed that the activity was in a need state developmental phase. It means that double-bind was not yet expressed. The contradictions were not strongly manifested. The existing conflicts were still possible to be handled without radical change in the logic of production (concept of the activity).

This leads us to sub-questions:

1) Is it possible to jump over developmental phases, e.g. the double-bind phase? The posti case, suggests the need for for variations of CL according to the developmental phase in which a certain activity is. For example, if the activity is in a need-state phase, the CL would have to concentrate in questioning. The lack of a strong double-bind may also request longer term follow-up.

2) How do we take in account the dominant logic of the activity (e.g. mass production logic: standardization, specialization, top-down decisions, hierarchy type of community) to avoid stopping the process of expansion during and after the Change Laboratories? Do we need a variation of CL for different historical type of activity?

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