Charlotte Wegener

The concept of innovation as perceived by public sector frontline staff – outline of a tripartite empirical model of innovation

This article investigates the innovation concept in two key welfare areas where the demands for innovation are substantial, namely vocational education and elder care. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews on the collaboration between an educational institution and elder care services, the article develops a tripartite empirical model of innovation. The model suggests that innovation requires levers (understood as methods and management contexts) as well as craft (understood as professional skills and rootedness), if it is to be integrated into the core services of a specific context. The article also discusses how innovations value-creating aspects should be understood in a public sector context. The proposed innovation model yields recommendations on issues that should be considered in establishing successful innovation in a public, cross-organizational context.

Borrowing brainpower – sharing insecurities. Lessons learned from a doctoral peer writing group

Academic writing is a vital, yet complex skill that must be developed within a doctoral training process. In addition, becoming an academic researcher is a journey of changing sense of self and identity. Through analysis of a group session, we show how the feedback of peers addresses questions of structure and writing style along with wider issues of researcher identity. Thus, peer learning is demonstrated as a process of simultaneously building a text and an identity as scholarly researcher. The paper advocates ‘borrowing brainpower’ from peers in order to write better texts and, at the same time, ‘share insecurities’ during the development of the researcher identity. Based on a distributed notion of peer learning and identity, we point to the need for further research into the everyday activities of doctoral writing groups in order to understand the dynamic relationship between production of text and creation of researcher identity.

Writing with Resonance

In this article, we explore what organization and management scholars can do to write with resonance and to facilitate an emotional, bodily, or in other ways sensory connection between the text and the reader. We propose that resonance can be relevant for organization and management scholars in two ways. First, it may facilitate a better understanding of the research we are attempting to convey in our papers, an understanding that draws on the reader’s prior experiences, and their embodied, embedded knowledge. Second, resonance may foster an inclination in the reader to engage with, contribute to, and thus bring forward the field of research in question. We propose that writing with resonance may be a way to further the impact of academic work by extending the modalities with which our readers can relate to and experience our work.

Why novelty is overrated

Based on two empirical studies on education in health and elderly care, this paper reflects on the possible role of ‘old ideas’ involved in creative innovation. Most researchers agree that creativity and innovation are the results of a combination of what is new and valuable. What tends to be paid less attention, however, is the fact that many creative activities and everyday innovations in modern-day organisations actually build upon what is already there. Creative products and processes are often the result of some kind of learning from or even re-creation of existing processes and materials. The paper argues that there is excessive enthusiasm towards the novelty aspects of creativity and innovation, which overshadow the potential of old ideas and past experience as drivers of change.

Everyday innovation – pushing boundaries while maintaining stability

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how vocational teachers’ everyday practices can constitute innovative learning spaces that help students to experience engagement and commitment towards education and thus increase their possibilities for completing their studies despite notable difficulties. Design/methodology/approach – Based on two ethnographic field studies, we analyse vocational teaching situations in which teachers and students engage in daily remaking of the vocational educational training practice. It is argued that these everyday situations can be understood as innovative transformation of participation and practice. Findings – The exploration of teachers’ practicing new learning spaces sheds light on innovation potential embedded in everyday educational practices. The paper thus challenges the celebration of radical innovation and argues that innovation emerges from everyday activities in which teachers succeed to balance continuities and discontinuities. Studying innovation as a...

A situated approach to VET students' reflection processes across boundaries

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the intersection between institutional requirements for reflection and students’ actual reflection initiatives in the social and health care education programmes. A situated perspective makes it possible to illuminate individuals’ commitment, curiosity and uncertainty as bases for understanding reflective actions, which can be either supported or constrained by the social environment in which they are enacted. The analysis is based on an ethnographic field study of boundary-crossing activities at a social and healthcare college and the elder care centres where students work as trainees. The paper adds to the creation of a shared language among educators by suggesting a model based on four factors labelled: (i) ‘salient experiences’, (ii) ‘reflection objects’, (iii) ‘reflection zones’ and (iv) ‘reflection facilitators’. A key finding is that students initiate reflection in a range of ways. Yet, these reflections can be overlooked if they do not fit into the required methods. When educators pay attention to these reflective starting points, they can expand their role as reflection facilitators, and the students’ potentials for learning through reflection can be enhanced. The paper adds to previous research on boundary crossing in vocational education and highlights the notion of visible reflection.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ Using the researcher's insider and outsider positions as a sensitising concept

This article uses the notion of a ‘sensitising concept’ in order to understand insider and outsider dynamics in cross-organisational field research. The analysis is based on a study of learning and innovation in the social and health care educations in Denmark. As these educations combine classroom training and workplace internships, the students and educators frequently cross organisational boundaries as part of their training and educating. In my attempt to understand the boundaries as learning and innovation resources, I reflect on my own shifting insider and outsider positions as a field researcher. It is argued that the researchers experience of changing insiderness and outsiderness in cross-organisational field studies can serve as a starting point from where to investigate emotional and material aspects of boundary-crossing.

Kicked Out and Let Down: Breakdown-driven Organizational Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a model and some practical considerations for breakdown-driven organizational research. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based on a two-case narrative from two studies of innovation in public welfare organizations. Inspired by Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy, the paper abductively builds a model for reflective practice when research plans break down. Findings – A breakdown-driven approach to organizational research can open up to new insights about both the empirical field and organizational research methodology. In the present paper, breakdowns serve as pivotal points for reflective practice that not only offer new perspectives on innovation, but also the paper makes use of innovation theory to inform research methodology. Originality/value – This paper advocates more narrative self-reflecting research that reveals processes of confusion and uncertainty. These narratives are worth sharing as research in its own right as they hold the power to in...

Writing with Phineas: How a fictional character from A. S. Byatt helped me turn my ethnographic data into research texts

This article describes a collaborative writing strategy when you are alone. It is the story of how I came to bring Phineas, the protagonist in A. S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale, into my writing process as a third voice in my dialogue with my data. It is a self-reflective text that shows how co-writers are always present, even when you might feel that you are writing all alone. In The Biographer’s Tale, the academic Phineas renounces his post-structural dissertation project in literature to search for “things” and “facts.” He decides to write a biography. However, Phineas discovers that “facts” are slippery and not easily “pieced together.” Phineas writes about his struggles, and so do I. Through co-writing with Phineas, I gradually found a voice of experience, which helped me to transforming my ethnographic data into research texts.

Writing My Way Home

This chapter is made up of pieces written to my writing friend and the co-editor of this book, Ninna Meier. It spans a detour of three decades and takes off (or rather, arrives) just at the point where our co-authored text, The Secret Book, is ready for publication under a new name: The Open Book. We have a mission. There are too many neat texts out there, and we know that people are suffering, celebrating, laughing and crying as they write. Some of all that life out there is definitely valuable, too. We advocate ‘open’ texts, and we are absorbed in the creation of a new playground for academic writing, which we call Open Writing. Meanwhile, life goes on. Or rather, life strikes back.