The new social theories of practice have been inspired by Wittgenstein's late philosophy, phenomenology and more recent sociological theories. They regard embodied skills and routinized, mostly unconscious habits as a key foundation of human practice and knowledge. This position leads to an overstatement of the significance of the habitual dimension of practice. As several critics have suggested this approach omits the problems of transformative agency and change of practices. In turn classical practice theories, activity theory and pragmatism have analyzed the (...) mechanisms of change. Pragmatism suggests that a crisis of a habit calls for reflection. Through working hypotheses and experimentation this leads to a transformation of a practice. Activity theory introduced the concept of remediation. A collective elaboration of shared mediational artefacts is needed to transform an activity. (shrink)

The paper compares John Dewey's pragmatism and cultural-historical activity theory as epistemologies and theories of transformative material activity. For both of the theories, the concept of activity, the prototype of which is work, constitutes a basis for understanding the nature of knowledge and reality. This concept also implies for both theories a methodological approach of studying human behavior in which social experimentation and intervention play a central role. They also suggest that reflection and thought, mediated by language and semiotic artifacts, (...) serve the reorientation of activity and is vital in the development of new, alternative ways of action. That is why Dewyan pragmatism and activity theory supply means of understanding organizational behavior and change in human activities better than the concepts of practice based on rule following, routines or embodied skills. (shrink)

Contrary to common belief, IT systems often disappoint the expectations to increase productivity and flexibility of work and value creation processes. Moreover, most IT design and implementation projects still fail or burst time and cost budgets to a high extent. After presenting significant empirical evidence for these phenomena, the paper reflects on the reasons for their persistence by developing a semiotic perspective on the processes of dealing with computer artifacts in organisations. This semiotic view allows understanding the processes of designing, (...) implementing and using IT systems as efforts of structuring social practices in organisations. A typical case of enterprise resource planning system implementation illustrates this. Finally, a number of guidelines for an improved practice of designing and appropriating IT systems for effective use in organisations are derived from the theoretical reflections. (shrink)

New Labour's approach to partnership working in the United Kingdom has emphasized a technical rationalist approach to achieving partnership between social work and its partner agencies. While endeavoring to provide an organizational environment in which partnership can be successful, less focus has been given to addressing differences in professional cultures that are crucial for ensuring successful partnership working. This article argues for the importance of considering different professional identities, values and ethics within partnership arrangements. The developing research literature will be (...) investigated to show how the absence of a serious engagement with different professional identities has hampered successful partnership working. It will suggest that by drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas and his theory of communicative action that different professional identities can begin to be reconciled. It does not suggest that Habermas's approach is unproblematic and considers the critique of communicative action and its emphasis upon building consensus by Seyla Benhabib. What the article suggests is that communicative action and the ethics that underpin it point toward a possibility for ethical communication between different professional groups. (shrink)

Among the latest trends in moral educational theory, several authors have suggested that a sociocultural approach to moral education is an improvement over the dominant cognitive-developmental and character educational paradigms. This approach draws its inspiration from the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. In the 1920s, Vygotsky attempted to reconstruct psychology to overcome the false dichotomy psychologists had posited between the individual and the environment. This genre of sociocultural theory has come to be known as activity theory. Despite its (...) aims, however, activity theory never overcame the dualism of individual and environment. My contention is that Dewey's moral psychology is more adequate to that task, and thus is a more appropriate foundation for developing moral educational policy and practice. (shrink)