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The purpose of this paper is to study the conditions of the building information modelling (BIM) implementation in facility management (FM) specifically from the point of view of different groups of FM practitioners, and the FM infrastructures already in use.

A literature review on the gap between the uses of BIM in design and FM has been done. The key professional groups of FM in the Premises Centre of the City of Helsinki were interviewed on the information tools they use, and the needs and impediments of the BIM implementation in the FM. Cultural–historical activity theory is used as a theoretical framework.

The literature discussing the BIM implementation tends to omit the analysis of the existing FM information systems and software tools in use. The challenge in the BIM implementation is in which ways the relevant information included in the BIM models could be integrated with these systems. No well-articulated problems or developmental contradictions came up that would demand the investment in the BIM implementation.

The results call for experimenting with incremental implementation of BIM in different FM activities and in the FM information infrastructures in use.

This paper studies empirically different FM activities and information systems used by the professional groups. Such studies are needed for a realistic view of the potential integration of the BIM information to the FM information systems.

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 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 research a critical transition from individually‐experienced double binds to collaborative change. To this end an early phase of a change process in a central surgical unit is studied in detail.

The study uses an interventionist and ethnographic methodology to research the shift from individual to collective during organizational change. Organizational change is studied as a resolution of evolving contradictions. In this early phase, contradictions can emerge as individually‐experienced double binds and crisis.

The findings of the study describe a transition in which individually‐experienced double binds and crisis become a driving force for organizational change. The dissolution of contradictions as double binds and crisis is strongly connected to emotions. When emotions are unveiled and collectively worked out, they become shared and can be understood critically. A change process is usually conceptualized as proceeding through sequential phases. This study demonstrates, however, that some phases can emerge almost coincidently in organizational change. Researchers can accelerate change with interventionist and ethnographic methodology.

A challenge for change management is how to manage contradictions and emotions to enable change to happen. Emotions have an important role in change processes, which is also a challenge for further research.

An alternative and complementary approach to studying the process of change as a transition from the individual experience of contradictions to collaboratively created change is introduced in the paper.

This paper seeks to take a patient‐centred perspective in exploring the treatment of multiple and chronic illnesses in inter‐organizational care practice in Finland.

The theoretical approach of the study is based on the sociology of translation and on cultural historical activity theory. The methodology of multi‐locale ethnography is used to research the translations in one patient's healthcare procedures in multiple care settings.

The care procedures emerge as unintegrated for the patient in the study. The patient has to take responsibility for his overall care since the medical professionals involved have only limited knowledge of other providers' care procedures. Despite their efforts to collaborate, professionals are lost in translation across healthcare boundaries.

Single cases are problematic for advancing generalizations on a research topic. The case of this study presents an example of the translations in the care procedures for a patient with multiple and chronic illnesses.

Unintegrated care organization poses a difficult challenge to patient‐centred care if the ideals of consumerism are followed in the health care system. A patient, with limited medical knowledge, may not be able to master an overall pattern of chronic illness care in a sustainable way. Better management and coordination of specialized knowledge are required for patients with chronic illnesses.

In contrast with the many studies that report on patients' experiences of illness, the paper provides new insights into the patient experience of health care organization.

This paper aims to study the visibilization of learning in the context of developing a new collaborative practice, knotworking, in building design. The case under study describes the process of learning from the initiation of knotworking to its experimentation. The implementation of new building information modeling tools acted as an impetus for this development.

The research is based on activity-theoretically oriented ethnographic research. The four analytical steps created by Engeström (1999) for analyzing the expansive visibilization of learning are applied in the analysis.

The envisioning of the idea of knotworking involved the first and the second steps of visibilization. First, a flowchart made the ideal process of design visible and triggered a discussion on the problems and requirements emerging in the project members’ work. Second, an idea for a new type of collaboration was introduced as a solution to these problems and requirements. Planning the knotworking experiment and explicating the associated design instruments involved the third step of expansive visibilization. The fourth step of visibilization took place during the experiment of knotworking in a design project.

Two other knotworking projects have already been conducted, and plans have been made to commercialize knotworking in building design. New technical tools have been developed for energy calculation and the comparison of alternative design requirements.

Knotworking can improve the collaboration between designers with positive implications on the quality of a building design process.

Development and learning are studied as a longitudinal process in the construction industry.

The construction industry is one of the least automated industries. In the aspect of automation, the technical understanding is very dominant. Focus has mostly been on tools, robots and industrialisation. sociomaterial design shows us that what may first appear technologically deterministic can be replaced and actually call for reinvisioning the traditional focus. The purpose of this study is to introduce the agency of a sociomaterial designer in construction.

This is a conceptual paper with an empirical example. To understand the sociomaterial complexity and dynamics of automation, practice theories are applied. To test this approach, the authors give an example from a Danish (global) supplier engaged in a development project about technical aid (tools) in mounting and assembling gypsum walls.

The sociomaterial-designer can help to understand and make innovation happen when doing automation in construction; as the centre of innovation in construction processes, she works all day with practice, together with practitioners, focusing on material arrangements as located not only in practice, but also in the artefacts. She can help the supplier of construction materials in understanding different professional practices and the transformation to use smarter tools.

This research is within a new practice domain “sociomaterial-design” and it has to follow up with an empirical study that covers a development project with a sociomaterial-design approach.

Developing competences (agency) as a sociomaterial-designer when linking the sociotechnical understanding of Automation with practice.

This research showcases how sociomaterial perspectives can inform automation in construction.

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.

The “Development Radar” narrative offers a way to analyse what co‐configuration might mean in the development practices of the learning network. The data consist of the researchers' and participants' tool‐related actions in planning and running a workshop of the Forum of Workplace Development, for which Development Radar was created. Analysis draws from cultural‐historical activity theory by including cultural sources of knowledge beyond the immediate pedagogic interaction.

Metaphors seem to be facilitative in the early phase of co‐configuration of a tool but not enough for sustainable workplace learning. What is needed is opening up the core concepts for all parties involved and providing ongoing negotiations and elaboration concerning their potential and meaning.

Expansive learning is supported by co‐configuration of tools that simultaneously provide a generic orientation basis of learning and are open to contextual knowledge creation in and across the levels of developmental activities.

The visual co‐configuration of tools may be crucial for understanding learning, development and the implementation of tools in a specific context, and even have an effect on the professional identity of users.

The significance of tools for the quality of workplace learning is generally acknowledged but the investigation into the pedagogical dynamics and material co‐configuration of tools needs more attention.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new insights into the implementation of large‐scale learning projects; thereby better understanding the difficulties, frustrations, and obstacles encountered when implementing enterprise‐wide e‐learning as a tool for training and organization transformation in a complex organization.

Information‐sharing disturbances, one of five categories of disturbances that emerged from a grounded theory open coding procedure applied to empirical data collected through a longitudinal field research, are in focus. Third generation activity theory, specifically the notions network of activity systems, disturbances, tensions and contradictions, is used as an analytical lens through which to understand the role of information sharing in a large‐scale implementation.

The study has identified how information sharing disturbances became a critical factor in the implementation of e‐learning in a large company. A number of tensions that point to potential contradictions have been identified. Ways in which to deal with such tensions in future implementations of e‐learning have been suggested.

Activity‐theoretical discussion of e‐learning in a large organization, identifying underlying tensions, is of relevance to large organizations introducing new technologies for working and learning.

The study has identified the causes of an important type of problem that can slow down or hinder e‐learning adoption in an organization, and thereby pointing out shortcomings of standardised e‐learning applications.

Empirical studies of enterprise‐wide implementations of e‐learning have rarely been reported on in the research literature.