Aprendizagem organizacional sob a perspectiva da teoria da atividade histórico-cultural : uma intervenção do laboratório de mudança na gestão de resíduos em um hospital-escola

Abstract

My dissertation is about an interventionist research conducted at a public hospital-school. Historically the organization has faced difficulties to carry out the activity of waste management, so that a Change Laboratory (CL) was built - an unprecedented methodology in Brazil - to facilitate a process of learning with the workers. The theoretical basis adopted in the research, derived from the Historical-Cultural Activity Theory (CHAT) understands learning in work contexts as a historical movement, from the search of how the work activity presented itself in the past, as it is today, and what the desired future for it, and still understands a cultural movement, from the consideration of physical and symbolic mediating artifacts, from which the workers are used to develop the work activity. Thus, learners are encouraged to turn work activities into a future model that, when created, is first tested in a small organization environment called the germ cell, before being able to be extended to the rest of the organization. In this sense, my research addresses how a group of twenty (20) hospital workers have built such a learning movement. In order to conceive the narrative, I carried out a research with written and audiovisual documents as well as interviewed eight workers who illustrated the movement during the CL intervention. Through the accesed documents I described the history of the intervention performed at the hospital since the invitation of the management, the ethnography performed by the interventionist researcher, the twelve sessions of the CL, and the first follow-up session in May 2016. The unveiling of the learning movement took into account the phases of the expansive cycle, which began with the questioning of the activity, then with the analysis of the past and the present, the proposal, the examination and the implementation of a new model. The phases of reflection and consolidation of this new model have not yet been experienced. In the learning movement that was built, the workers realized that the organization of waste management activity of the past and present were and still are insufficient to meet the demands of the hospital and external community. Currently, workers are in the implementation of the new model phase. For the future, they proposed the creation of a pilot waste management group to make it a full-time service, supported by work groups set up according to the waste management needs, and multipliers in order to perform the peer orientation of co-workers in the sectors. The implementation of the model in a test form has been suffering resistance in the organization, and also generating conflicts. Nevertheless, through the conducted interviews, the workers realized that the learning built in the Laboratory was an important initiative to raise awareness about the responsibility of waste management. One concrete result recognized by the workers was the obtaining of an environmental manager with exclusive dedication to attend the activity. Therefore, future research will be necessary to follow the realization of this learning movement, and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the CL methodology. Among the questions that can be researched, I first mention the transposition of a methodology created in Finland for the brazilian context, including the adaptations that were necessary to implement the Laboratory in the hospital, and I also mention the purpose of the knowledge produced by the LM, considering the contrasts between the needs of financially efficient management and the needs of workers. For this, I suggest expanding the listening space in the interviews, so that all the workers who participated in the CL are heard.