Creating knowledge and enhancing change in organisations. The contribution of authorship and expansive learning in a case study

This article illustrates a comprehensive analysis of organisational change in an intervention carried out in a multinational engineering company. Starting from the initial top management request to explore the employee dissatisfaction, a participatory and formative intervention is designed, based on the notion of authorship and on the expansive learning approach. Using participative qualitative methods, like questionnaires and focus groups, the initial management request, enriched and reformulated, leads to generate expansive learning. The top management and all the employees (about 200 people) are actively involved in identifying new knowledge about their organizational reality and new forms of practices (159 different ideas are proposed during the focus groups). The process carried out represents an opportunity for reflexivity, creativity and dialogue. It leads to shape a shared object and a common goal between the top management and the employees: to devise a new management method for the company.