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Building on the existing literature and on a series of interviews conducted in very diverse coworking spaces, this article attempts at analyzing coworking by focusing on the historical evolution and heterogeneity of its interpretations, as well as the plurality of its realization in practice and prospective developments.

The theoretical framework adopted is Cultural Historical Activity Theory – a dialectical approach which allows the study of human activities as historically evolving and complex systems which change under the impulse of their inner contradictions. The analysis presented here starts with an overview of the history of the theoretical elaborations and discussions of coworking. The authors then focus on the experiences and interpretations of this phenomenon as conveyed by coworkers and coworking managers in the north of Italy – one of the most active coworking areas in Europe.

Coworking first emerged as a way of promoting forms of work and organization that require simultaneous, multidirectional, and reciprocal work, as understood in contrast to forms that incorporate an established division of labor, demarcated communities, and formal and informal sets of rules. However, with time, coworking has evolved toward novel directions, giving rise to heterogeneous interpretations of it. Inquiry constitutes a deeper investigation of the heterogeneity of coworking. The take-away message here is that the prefix co- in coworking can be interpreted, through a play of words, to evoke multiple positions and views conveying internal contradictions.

The historical overview of coworking shows a strong differentiation and multisided interpretation of this phenomenon along two dimensions of historical development, namely, social and business, and outward and inward. The qualitative analysis of the interviews traces the different lived interpretations and conceptions of coworking. The analysis confirms, on the one hand, the complexity and heterogeneity described in the literature, and on the other hand, it enriches the literature by depicting the contradictory nature of the phenomenon, including how the historical and inner tensions of coworking are dynamically evolving in the concrete experiences reported by the managers and users in the coworking spaces.

This contribution investigates methodological questions concerning Change Laboratory interventions. It contemplates the research questions: To what extent the Change Laboratory can be situated within the panorama of qualitative inquiry? If so, to what extent can the methods and strategies of inquiry help improve a Change Laboratory intervention?

To answer the first question, this paper makes an overview on key terms of qualitative research; subsequently, it presents the characterising features of the Change Laboratory. Then, it takes a historical perspective and compares the Change Laboratory firstly against action research, and secondly with design experiments. To answer the second section, it examines a case study of Change Laboratory with teachers that the first author facilitated. Next, it displays how trustworthiness was ensured through a thick description and member checks.

The paper argues that the Change Laboratory is a strategy of inquiry; it aligns with the characteristics of qualitative research, and it follows the agenda of a participative paradigm. Furthermore, the methods and strategies of inquiry such as thick descriptions and member checks, not only can improve rigour and validity of the intervention but also strengthen the outcomes of the Change Laboratory itself.

The Change Laboratory is well defined as a formative method, but not fully understood as an investigative method. Although scholars discussed methodological issues of Cultural Historical Activity Theory in diverse articles, the relationship between the Change Laboratory and qualitative inquiry has remained unclear.

The purpose of this paper is to operationalise and apply a three-level analysis of double stimulation in a Change Laboratory with teachers.

Within qualitative inquiry, this Change Laboratory intervention was conducted as case study, by way of an intensive analysis of an individual unit. The macro-level deals with the societal problem and the collective solution found to tackle it. An intermediate level looks at the Change Laboratory as a methodology able to boost expansive learning through chains of first and second stimuli. The micro-level analyses the participants’ interactions during the sessions and traces the terms connected to the first and second stimulus.

This analysis suggests that the conflicts of motives experienced by the participants at the micro level refer to the aggravated contradiction identified at the macro level. Conflicts of motives seem to be superior in number during the first block of sessions, when the first stimuli are analysed. The micro analysis indicates the 6th session as the turning point of the intervention, when the participants take the auxiliary stimulus and turn it into and effective and meaningful sign. The intermediate level helps to trace the third transition from the formation of the second stimulus to its implementation, reflection upon and further development and generalisation.

Vygotsky’s method of double stimulation is crucial to develop one’s agency and to explain how individuals deliberately influence events. Yet the literature is fragmented and made of brief accounts, and this paper for the first time inspects double stimulation on different levels within a Change Laboratory intervention with teachers.

This study aims to depict how a change laboratory (CL) promotes sustainable professional practice at the workplace to tackle unequal access to educational success.

The empirical findings are from a CL focusing on school professionals’ agency and a follow-up study one year after the CL.

The study shows how the staff gained insight that professional agency is a collective and relational practice. Furthermore, the staff explored how to make a difference with viable means to create new workplace models for students’ success despite experiencing a conundrum.

This study examined participants’ perspectives in workplace change and provided support for further research examining how professionally and collectively designed models gain sustainability in schools.

This study provides empirical data of how professional agency for change driven by collective visions can be accelerated with the interventionist method CL among school professionals.

This study emphasizes the value of professional collective learning at the workplace, driven by several professional groups in school, and the need to follow up to detect sustainable change.

This study emphasizes the value of professional collective learning at the workplace, driven by several professional groups in school, and the need to follow up to detect sustainable change.

This study aims at presenting an analysis of a Change Laboratory conducted with the personnel of a youth supported housing unit for clients with a history or at risk of homelessness. The analysis is centered on how the workers’ expansive learning process was supported ensuring that they would be in the lead of their workplace transformation process.

The data were collected in six Change Laboratory sessions facilitated by interventionist-researchers and were analyzed with a specific method of discourse analysis devised for tracing expansive learning at work, the method of analysis of expansive learning actions and deviation from instructional intentions. The purpose of this method of analysis is to present in a detailed and structured manner how workplace expansive learning unfolds.

The results of the analysis indicate that the contribution of the practitioners participating in this Change Laboratory was such that the undertaken transformation resulting from the expansive learning process was actually owned by them. These results contribute to ongoing discussions on workplace expansive learning, which question the extent to which the Change Laboratory is truly a participatory intervention method in which the participating practitioners’ agency becomes visible without the interventionists necessarily dominating.

This study addresses existing gaps in the literature on workplace expansive learning, by opening up a novel perspective for detailed empirical enquiries that demonstrate the role workers may play in supported expansive learning processes and ensuing transformations of their workplaces.

Hospitals are labor intensive facilities based on highly skilled employees. A merger of hospitals is an effort to increase and rationalize this production. Decisions behind a merger are made at the top leadership level. How this might be done is demonstrated by examples from a 36 bed acute psychiatric facility. The aim of the study was to calculate the hidden costs of fragmented destruction of parts of a total hospital supply to patients after a merger. Fragmented destruction is the deliberate stopping of activities deemed not part of the core activities of the hospital without due consideration of the impact on core activities. The proposed changes to operational expenses at a single acute psychiatric hospital were materials for the study. The changes included activities as a reduction in local laboratory service, cleaning services, closure of physiotherapy unit, closing of cultural activities and reduced productivity. The selected activities are calculated as giving an imputed gain of € 630,000 as indicated by the leadership. The not calculated costs of reducing or removing the selected activities are estimated at € 1,955,640. The cost of staff disappointment after a merger is difficult to assess, but is probably higher than assumed in the present calculations.

Imputed cost containment is not attained. The calculations indicate that implemented changes may increase cost, contrary to the belief of the leadership at both the hospital level and further up in the hospital trust.

Arguments in favor of a merger have to be scrutinized thoroughly for optimistic neglect of uncalculated costs of mergers. Future hospital mergers and selected fragmentation of productive tasks at ward or hospital levels should include calculations of unavoidable costs as shown in the present paper.

Climatic extreme events are predicted to occur more frequently and intensely and will significantly threat the living of residents in arid and semi-arid regions. Therefore, this study aims to assess climatic extremes’ response to the emerging climate change mitigation strategy using a marine cloud brightening (MCB) scheme.

Based on Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 2-Earth System model simulations of a MCB scheme, this study used six climatic extreme indices [i.e. the hottest days (TXx), the coolest nights (TNn), the warm spell duration (WSDI), the cold spell duration (CSDI), the consecutive dry days (CDD) and wettest consecutive five days (RX5day)] to analyze spatiotemporal evolution of climate extreme events in the arid Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula Zone with and without MCB implementation.

Compared with a Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 scenario, from 2030 to 2059, implementation of MCB is predicted to decrease the mean annual TXx and TNn indices by 0.4–1.7 and 0.3–2.1°C, respectively, for most of the Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula zone. It would also shorten the mean annual WSDI index by 118–183 days and the mean annual CSDI index by only 1–3 days, especially in the southern Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula zone. In terms of extreme precipitation, MCB could also decrease the mean annual CDD index by 5–25 days in the whole Sahara and Sahel belt and increase the mean annual RX5day index by approximately 10 mm in the east part of the Sahel belt during 2030–2059.

The results provide the first insights into the impacts of MCB on extreme climate in the arid Sahara-Sahel-Arabian Peninsula zone.

Mumbai needs to be transformed into a world-class city as stated in the 2005–2025 development plan of Municipal Corporation. For this initiative, hospital management information system (HMIS) has to be implemented across 400+ health facilities in the city.

A case study methodology was adopted to study HMIS implementation. Wave 1 of Phase 1 implementation of HMIS is carried out as a pilot project at Film City’s Hospital, Mumbai, which “go-live” on 21st June 2018. The work for hardware and software implementation was awarded to HardSystems and Solutions Limited and SoftSolutions India Private Limited, respectively, through e-tender.

Provision of inadequate quantity of hardware, slowness of network or system, non-satisfactory training after observation confirmation and sign-off process, lack of data entry operators, mismatch in numbering systems in blood bank and many other challenges concerned with the specific departments had become a major impediment in the efforts to maximize number of patients registered into HMIS.

Even after providing many clinical and managerial benefits, being the first cloud-based centrally located HMIS in any of the hospitals in the city, it imposes a major challenge for the management in terms of resistance of employees toward technology and need for the adoption of theoretical models for implementing change for the overall organizational development.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other teaching case study is conducted to study the HMIS implementation in large-scale public health-care services. This is a dummy case study for teaching exercises. The identity of the stakeholders, organizations and events has been masked to maintain confidentiality.

The intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) is a major outcome of the Paris Agreement on international cooperation to reduce emissions, and is likely to be the future scenario for carbon emissions. This paper aims to obtain the fine spatial pattern of carbon emissions in 2030, identify hot spots and analyze changes of carbon emissions with a spatial grid method.

Based on the integrated quantified INDCs of each economy in 2030, the authors predict the population density pattern in 2030 by using the statistics of current population density, natural growth rates and differences in population growth resulting from urbanization within countries. Then the authors regard population density as a comprehensive socioeconomic indicator for the top-bottom allocation of the INDC data to a 0.1° × 0.1° grid. Then, the grid spatial pattern of carbon emissions in 2030 is compared with that in 2016.

Under the unconditional and conditional scenarios, the global carbon emission grid values in 2030 will be within [0, 59,200.911] ktCO₂ and [0, 51,800.942] ktCO_2, respectively; eastern China, northern India, Western Europe and North America will continue to be the major emitters; grid carbon emissions will increase in most parts of the world compared to 2016, especially in densely populated areas.

While many studies have explored the overall global carbon emissions or warming under the INDC scenario, attention to spatial details is also required to help us make better emissions attributions and policy decisions from the perspective of the grid unit rather than the administrative unit.

The purpose of this paper is to assess causal relations between the implementation of the 5S approach and the reduction of patients’ waiting time at out patient departments (OPDs) of hospitals in Tanzania.

Patients’ waiting time was measured under the cluster randomized control trial (c-RCT). In all, 16 hospitals were chosen and divided into treatment and control groups using block randomization. Before the intervention, a baseline study was conducted at OPDs in all 16 hospitals. After one year of the intervention, the end-line study was carried out in both the groups. A comparison of the average waiting time reduction and Difference-in-Difference (DID) analysis was carried out to see the effect of the 5S approach on the reduction of patients’ waiting time.

Statistical significance in reduction of patients’ waiting time was seen in the medical records sections (p=0.002) and consultation rooms (p=0.020) in the intervention group. The same trend was also seen using DID analysis (−15.66 min in medical record, −41.90 min in consultation rooms).

This study has the following limitations in terms of the data. The data were collected for only three days at the time of baseline survey, and again for three days at the time of the end-line survey from 16 hospitals. Moreover, piloted areas for the implementation of the 5S approach vary from hospital to hospital. There might be a bias in the measurement of a patient’s waiting time. Caveats are therefore needed in extrapolating the study results to other settings. Despite these caveats, the findings will provide important insights for implementing quality improvement programs in Tanzania and in other African countries for improvement of time factors.

This study used c-RCT, and has proven the effectiveness of the 5S approach in improving the working environment and reducing patients’ waiting time at OPDs in several hospitals at district level in Tanzania.