Moving Violations: Pairing an Illegitimate Learning Hierarchy with Trainee Status Mobility for Acquiring New Skills When Traditional Expertise Erodes

Abstract

We explore how members of a community of practice learn new tools and techniques when environmental shifts undermine existing expertise. In our 20-month comparative field study of medical assistants and patient-service representatives learning to use new digital technology in five primary care sites, we find that the traditional master-apprentice training model worked well when established practices were being conferred to trainees. When environmental change required introducing new tools and techniques with which the experienced members had no expertise, third-party managers selected newer members as trainers because managers judged them to be agile learners who were less committed to traditional hierarchies and more willing to deviate from traditional norms. This challenged community members’ existing status, which was based on the historical distinctions of long tenure and expertise in traditional tasks. In three sites, the introduction of this illegitimate learning hierarchy sparked status competition among trainees and trainers, and trainees collectively resisted learning new tools and techniques. In the other two sites, managers paired the new, illegitimate learning hierarchy with the opportunity for trainee status mobility by rotating the trainer role; here, trainees embraced learning in order to exit the lower-status trainee group and join the higher-status trainer group. Drawing on ideas of status group legitimacy and mobility, we suggest that managers’ pairing of an illegitimate learning hierarchy with the opportunity for trainee status mobility is a mechanism for enabling the situated learning of new techniques when traditional expertise erodes.

Mobilizing landscapes of practice to address grand challenges

“…Ultimately, our study reinforces the recent debates which observe situated learning as having considerable potential for adding value to organizations, but it has to be observed carefully as it can easily become 'derailed' and unproductive (Beane, 2019;Kellogg et al, 2021). 34 Furthermore, our paper advances the situated learning area by bringing to this literature the concept of phronesis.…”

Resourcing a Technological Portfolio: How Fairtown Hospital Preserved Results While Degrading Its Older Surgical Robot

“…The stream focused on disruption (Trist and Bamforth, 1951;Barley, 1986;Edmondson, Bohmer, and Pisano, 2001) has shown that a great deal of costly and uncertain experimentation occurs just after an organization acquires a new technology, that most alternatives are discarded, and that usage patterns often quickly settle down or the technology is rejected (Orlikowski and Gash, 1994;Tyre and Orlikowski, 1994;Leonardi, 2009). For instance, Kellogg's (2021) study of the introduction of a clinical decision support system in a hospital showed how managers addressed this disruption through an approach characterized by experimentalist governance. Likewise, Tyre and Orlikowski's (1994: 98) research found early ''windows of opportunity'' for technological change, and that production pressures, usage habits, decreased expectations, and the erosion of team membership then impeded adaptation.…”

Local Adaptation Without Work Intensification: Experimentalist Governance of Digital Technology for Mutually Beneficial Role Reconfiguration in Organizations

“…Studies of digital innovation in incumbent organizations suggest several barriers to mutually beneficial role reconfiguration. Professionals may resist digital technology altogether if the technology challenges their professional logics (Berente and Yoo 2012, Berente et al 2016, Lifshitz-Assaf 2017 or jurisdictions (Barley 2015, Pine and Mazmanian 2015, Kellogg et al 2020b, or if the technology's material properties offer limited affordances for their desired actions (Beane 2019, Christin 2017, Leonardi 2011. Professionals may also embrace digital technology but unintentionally drive uncollaborative role reconfiguration by neglecting to solicit input from less powerful actors in the implementation of technology simply because they overlook subordinates' activities (Hinds and Bailey 2003, Hinds and Mortensen 2005Mazmanian et al 2013, which often constitute backend invisible work (Star and Strauss 1999).…”

“…A second area of contribution concerns how the emergence of new triangles of power in our contemporary economy affords the possibility for novel coalitions that could help to avoid loss of autonomy and work intensification for less powerful actors during digital technology introduction and integration. Theorists have demonstrated several facilitators of mutually beneficial role reconfiguration during technology introduction and integration including: formal worker protections (Batt 1999, Gittell et al 2004, Kochan et al 2013, a dual structure of workplace teams combined with functional level bargaining teams (Litwin 2011(Litwin , 2015, high performance work systems (Adler 1992, Batt and Colvin 2011, Ranganathan 2018, Kelly and Moen 2020, Myers and Kellogg 2020, peer training (Adler et al 1999, Karunakaran 2019, Kellogg et al 2020b), the support of powerful professionals (Beane 2019, Galperin 2020, and the inclusion of less powerful actors in the initial adoption and ongoing local troubleshooting meetings related to modifying digital technology and related routines (Barrett et al 2012, Sergeeva et al 2020). However, in recent decades, declining union membership and bargaining power has reduced the use of formal worker protections (Kochan et al 2019).…”