*Another perspective* to be considered is the human digital twin, i.e., the representation of humans in the virtual world. Following the basic functionality of the digital twin in a technical context and applying it to humans, then such information is required which refects the human's role embedded in the production system. The objectives pursued there – increasing overall quality, avoiding errors, and reducing time to market – apply here as well. This means that the human digital twin contains the human's specifc tasks, their abilities, and probably such information that allows to tailor assistance systems to humans for a better job execution (Gräßler and Pöhler 2017). To capture real-time information, work activities performed by humans have to be recorded; to compare real-time data with historical data, these activities have to be stored. Information that describe human characteristics, abilities, and activities have to be put into a form that the digital twin can work with. Ideas are therefore needed here as to how this can be achieved. As mentioned above, human abilities undergo signifcant change over time; ideally, they grow. Here too, a way must be found to take account of this growth in skills, the deepening of expertise, and human creativity in the digital twin, so that the virtual human grows along with its real counterpart. Therefore, learning activities are to be planned with the help of the human digital twin. Here, the digital twin serves to help compensate for lacking skills or for qualifying purposes in order to prepare for new planned tasks for which humans do not yet possess the knowledge, skills, and expertise. Another way of enabling humans to effectively take part in the virtual world – considering "their current schedule, preferences, skills and experience" (Graessler and Poehler 2017, p. 293) – is an interactive design of the digital twin, e.g., not all decisions by the human digital twin are made autonomously, and some decisions are to be approved or even corrected by the physical human. The human digital twin is supposed to learn from this interaction and fnd a pattern in the human's behavior in order to emulate it and ultimately take over with autonomous decisions. The integration of humans via their digital twin is rooted in the effort to enhance the production system by leveraging valued human skills (Graessler and Poehler 2017). Which valued human skills these are is not described in detail. But if the digital twin is to emulate humans, this creates demands on the digital twin to deal with ambiguous human behavior as well. From an educational perspective, ambiguity tolerance is a central human characteristic enabling them to successfully work even with conficting, vague, and incomplete information. As of designing a suitable digital twin in this respect, the binary logic does not suffce; algorithms are necessary that allow an ambiguous attribution of computational elements (Ansari et al. 2018).

#### *6.3.4 Conclusion*

The digital twin is a key technology for the further development of cyber-physical systems by aggregating the data into consistent relevant information and making it usable to control, manage, and advance the cyber-physical system. To unfold its full potential, the design of the digital twin takes the complex interrelations within the cyber-physical system into account. The specifcation of clear objectives and purposes is furthermore necessary in order to decide which data have to be processed for which purposes and in what manner. Thus, it has the potential to make the system as a whole more fexible and better manageable. The question as to how the digital twin may support human learning – whether as *operators* of machines controlled by digital twins and whether as *controllers* of their own digital twin or *controlees* by their digital *self* – will be discussed below.

#### **6.4 Learning with the Digital Twin**

Organizational learning depends on human learning. Humans learn continuously, not only in purposeful structured learning situations but also all the time. They are constantly engaged in perceiving their environment as well as their own internal processes and relating both of them to each other. In this way, they make sense of the environment and of themselves being part of it and to seek to exert infuence on both. A learning organization supports individual learning and encourages team learning. It creates the necessary freedom for change as a result of individual and team learning and allows this change to affect the organization itself, its structures, processes, and self-conception. The digital twin is expected to signifcantly advance cyber-physical systems, but will it bring the learning organization to the next level as well? Tynjälä's (2013) 3-P model of learning at the workplace (see Fig. 6.1) takes into account the above-elaborated characteristics of a learning organization; specifes preconditions (presage), activities (process), and results (product); and considers surroundings (sociocultural environment) infuential to learning. It is therefore an appropriate foundation for the discussion whether and how the digital twin infuences human learning.

Following the idea that learning and working ideally should be intertwined, we will frst look at the *activities* assigned to the *process* phase, namely, *doing the job itself*:

The idea of how the digital twin may support informal learning while working is pursued, for example, when its potential for meaningfully structuring an otherwise unmanageable and overwhelming data volume is discussed, even if this feature is not explicitly described as benefcial to learning (Tao et al. 2019). Reducing external or ineffcient cognitive load (which occurs when dealing with irrelevant tasks) in favor of relevant or effective cognitive load – which activates cognitive resources, helps retrieve knowledge from the long-term memory, and enables to recognize

**Fig. 6.1** The 3-P model of workplace learning from Tynjälä (Tynjälä 2013) Reprinted by permission from Springer Nature: Toward a 3-P Model of Workplace Learning: a Literature Review by P. Tynjälä, 2013, *Vocations and Learning, 6*(1), p. 14. Copyright 2013 by Springer.

patterns and build routines – fosters learning and expertise development (Paas et al. 2003a, b). The core question here is whether the logic of aggregating and structuring the data by the digital twin corresponds to the human mental model or deviates from it and how the one or the other is to be viewed. Also of interest is the extent to which the digital twin is able to respond to the varying human capability to cope with cognitive load depending on various infuence factors: Attention, emotions, and environmental stimuli can exert a positive or a negative effect (Pekrun 2018; Schwarz 2019).

For developers of the concept or a framework of the digital twin in the felds of mechanical engineering, systems engineering, or computer science, it can be assumed that working on the digital twin enables learning. For the following reasons, defning the appropriate mathematical models and algorithms for the digital twin to combine the huge amount of data into meaningful, suffcient, and relevant conclusions is a task that requires both deep expertise and creativity on the designer's part. The digital twin offers a task rich of learning. Once the architecture has been defned, the question arises as to how much freedom the digital twin offers to its user.

*Refecting and evaluating one's own work experience*: The digital twin is supposed to enable humans to participate in the cyber-physical system, to control, and to manipulate it in order to ensure high data quality, to give one example (Graessler and Poehler 2017). Regarded as an integral part of the cyber-physical system, humans should be given the opportunity to manipulate their own digital twin and to work with their own performance data in order to refect on it and to evaluate it. This would extend the notion of the human's role by providing them extensive control over their own learning and by actively working with their digital counterpart. Such a feedback feature, in fact, collides with the defnition of the digital twin where data is exchanged automatically in both directions. In addition, refecting on one's own learning on the basis of objective data only – e.g., task performance, results, and comparative data – does not consider the whole picture if emotional states and reactions – such as (dis)satisfaction, relief/stress, joy/nuisance, etc. – are left out. If and to what extent it is possible to accurately express human feelings in computable data is one question; if and to what extent expressions on feelings can be computed is the other question. Developing and working with fuzzy sets in algorithms or fnding ways to combine machine and human learning are research directions that may fnd adequate solutions here (Ansari et al. 2018; Wang et al. 1999).

Learning also happens when errors are made. Refecting upon errors paves the way for learning. Learning from errors enables – provided it is valued as a chance for correcting unsuitable practices and structures – the construction of negative knowledge that provides information about what does not lead to the intended outcome. Negative knowledge has the important function of protecting positive knowledge (Oser et al. 1999). However, it is a challenge to represent negative knowledge in its epistemological function for human's competencies in the digital twin.

*Tackling new challenges and tasks*: The possibility to run simulations with the digital twin may also be considered as a learning facilitator, as it creates room for experimenting. Thereby, space is given for choosing new challenges, fnding creative solutions, and making own experiences on the way. However, the objectives of reducing the volume of data on the one hand and enabling simulations on the other hand are in confict. A too restrictive provision of data in the sense of a lean model of the digital twin can limit potential simulations. The ability to create something new, to experiment, and to rethink old practices, however, is a central characteristic of the learning organization, of learning per se. Tackling new challenges, advancing personal mastery, creating, and innovating create competitive advantages and improve the market position (Garvin et al. 2008; Senge 1990; Tynjälä 2013).

*Collaborating and interacting with other people*, *participating in networks*, and *participating in formal training*: The use of the digital twin for formal training purposes is conceptualized for learning factories where the digital twin's potential to support human learning, interaction, and collaboration is researched (Brenner and Hummel 2017; David et al. 2018; Uhlemann et al. 2017).

*Product* phase, *decision-making and problem-solving/understanding/identity*: In the case of computer-generated decisions, humans face two challenges. First, the task of monitoring, correcting, or overriding decisions made by the computer system demands that humans understand on what the decision is based, what triggered it, and to what consequences it leads. They must understand the processes of the otherwise autonomously running operation and be able to classify deviations from normal operation in order to take appropriate action; in short, they must know and understand the context. There is a danger that the complexity due to an increasing degree of automation becomes overwhelming (Ahrens and Gessler 2018). Second, if humans are entrusted with the task of controlling their own digital twin, for example, to set their own preferences, to assess their own learning progress, to recognize learning potential, this presupposes that humans are aware of their own learning. However, learning is not always conscious to the learner: Implicit mental models infuence learning, as well as established routines may be applied without having to think about it deliberately (Harteis and Billett 2013; Senge 1990). Learning also encompasses the unplanned, unintended, and unforeseen, which is of particular importance for the development of procedural knowledge. How a digital twin can support here is to indicate possible learning goals – presupposing that the digital twin appropriately represents the individual's stock of knowledge.

*Team work*: With the objective of operating along the entire value chain, the digital twin covers a wide scope and acquaints the humans involved in the production process with corresponding far-reaching teamwork. However, how team learning is fostered – be it by handling the digital twin of machines or be it within the human digital twin – is widely neglected in current research. With Senge's sense of team learning in mind, where there is no organizational learning without team learning, this is an aspect that needs to be addressed. Successful teamwork is essential for overcoming limitations in thinking and is a source of creativity, innovation, and change that should not be underestimated. Teams are empowered to make decisions. Joint decisions create a higher level of commitment and a shared understanding of what needs to be achieved. A shared vision is co-created (Senge 1990; Watkins and Marsick 1993). To comprehend and to virtually model the digital twin of machines is one thing. It is challenging to fnd approaches how to model humans within cyberphysical systems, however, particularly if these models comprise data on learning. It is necessary to distinguish the challenge of modeling individual learning within a digital twin and the challenge of utilizing the digital twin for the support of individual learning within a learning organization. From today's perspective, it seems particularly challenging to include team learning with its characteristics and possibilities in the concept of the digital twin. Finally, inherent in the concept of the digital twin is the idea of enabling human creativity, a quality of which computer systems, at least at present, are not capable.

*Sociocultural environment*: The problem of a lack of context also arises when collaboration transcends corporate, national, and legal boundaries. Different learning cultures come together, which is not a new phenomenon. It has been the case for some time that global teams work together. However, if the digital twin is also supposed to support learning, the question arises as to which policies with regard to learning and which learning culture should be built in its logic. This includes different aspects that foster learning, e.g., providing feedback, error tolerance, the freedom to set individual preferences, critical thinking, etc. The underlying learning culture also determines whether these features are accepted or not and whether their specifcation is perceived as restrictive or lack of guidance. The learning organization is characterized by systems thinking and an awareness of its own complexity,

as mentioned above; this complexity increases when different learning cultures need to be re-negotiated. To address this problem, the digital twin may provide different features depending on the specifc learning culture. Whether such an approach is technically feasible, cannot be fully discussed at this point.

*Presage* phase: The greatest challenge, however, for designing a digital twin benefcial to learning pose the pre-conditions of learning, especially the *learner factors* and the *interpretations* and the *learning context* to a certain extent as well. Data handling within a digital twin poses a particular challenge. What data are to be considered relevant with regard to the digital twin of a machine as opposed to that of a human? Data on the geographical position, the exact performance, the physical features of a machine, or a product are certainly to be considered useful in order to avoid idle times, to perform maintenance work, etc. They are easily obtained – compared to data on humans. Data of comparable quality on humans may be in violation of privacy which should not only be considered from a legal point of view. It also raises questions relating to learning, namely, regarding the freedom of choice, psychological safety, and dealing with errors (Garvin et al. 2008; Senge 1990; Watkins and Marsick 1993). Automatic data collection with the help of sensors may be perceived as monitoring and are easily to be misused and exploited; in certain work environments with dangerous or intense work activities, this monitoring may be considered helpful and therefore be accepted. In all cases, however, serving a reasonable purpose or not, data on employees needs to be protected.

The digital twin serves the idea of increased productivity by optimizing the whole production process and reducing time to market. This requires a certain degree of standardization. The need for determination and standardization within cyber-physical systems on the one hand and the challenge of appropriately representing individual knowledge and development within a digital twin on the other hand represent another confict of objectives. From a technical point of view, it is possible to defne functions and variables of a digital twin that determine an individual's role within a cyber-physical system. However, from an educational point of view, it is impossible to determine it in the real world – except by exerting compulsion and reducing human learning and growth to behavioristic aspects. Hence, the implementation of a human digital twin within the virtual model of an organization opens up opportunities to solve a problem within the virtual model that cannot be solved in reality. In this respect, the characteristic of the digital twin of realistically representing its real counterpart – the mirroring aspect – is not given.

#### **6.5 Discussion and Outlook**

Whether and how the digital twin can support human learning is a question that is challenging to answer. Learning depends on so many factors that cannot be easily mapped in the digital twin. Of course, measurable and observable information may be taken as indicators for learning. For example, the quality of results and the time needed to complete a task may be able to indicate a learning level. An analysis of work results over time will allow to state a progress or a decline in learning.

However, the digital twin should not only measure learning but also support it. With this objective in mind, the digital twin will have to be able to work with *invisible* but relevant learning factors such as autonomy, beliefs, cognitive processes, and emotions. Challenges can also be identifed in terms of team learning. How may learning in general and learning with others be translated into computable data? Further research is needed to deepen the understanding of the interrelations of cognitive processes, emotions, social interaction, and learning.

In terms of technological complexity, the digital twin seems to be just the adequate technology. It serves to bring order into a great amount of diverse data and opens up new ways of designing the production process by combing these data in multi-variable simulations. In terms of the complexity of the learning organization, the main concern here is that the digital twin shall not violate it. The following applies to the digital twin of machines and technical systems: The more data of the physical object is available, the more accurate is its virtual counterpart, the better the mirroring. The only question here is how much effort it takes to collect the amount of data, to decide upon their relevance, and to bring into consistency. The opposite applies to humans: A most accurate and thorough representation of humans in the virtual world can show a counter-effect, since humans may perceive working conditions where extensive data on their actions and behavior are collected and stored as restrictive and controlling. Ironically, there is a risk that an excessive collection of learning-relevant data may not lead to a more accurate picture of human learning but to the *disappearance* of it. Humans may withdraw and disengage. In this regard, further investigations of what might be the right balance between human-made and computer-based decisions seem to help fnd promising answers.

With the potential of computer systems in general – and with the digital twin in specifc – of taking over tasks formerly executed by humans, a thorough assessment is due as to what human skills are confdently replaceable. Humans are more and more expected to monitor an automated operation, not execute it themselves. The skills that they needed for operation and that they have refned over time are no longer used, but are they in fact dispensable? This is especially true in the event of a malfunction. These thoughts refer to an effect that is widely discussed as *Ironies of Automation* where skills are disused because tasks are operated by machines but then still needed for monitoring the machine-run operation, for stepping in in the event of failure and over-ruling the computer system.

In general, interdisciplinary approaches are due to fnd adequate solutions to the compelling questions that arise with the concept of the digital twin.

#### **References**

Ahrens, D., & Gessler, M. (2018). Von der Humanisierung zur Digitalisierung: Entwicklungsetappen betrieblicher Kompetenzentwicklung. In D. Ahrens & G. Molzberger (Eds.), *Kompetenzentwicklung in analogen und digitalisierten Arbeitswelten* (Vol. 9, pp. 157– 172). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54956-8\_11.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Chapter 7 Individualizing Workplace Learning with Digital Technologies**

# **New Learning Cultures in Swiss Apprenticeship Training**

**Antje Barabasch and Anna Keller**

#### **7.1 Introduction**

*Digital change will arrive, also at workplaces, how we cope with change will be important in the future*. (Workplace trainer, login)

Workplace learning in the context of vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland takes place in companies, VET schools and training centres. The major part of the apprenticeship is practical learning facilitated by companies and they are the most important pillar within the VET system (Gonon 2007). Often innovations in learning are transferred from workplaces into schools (Pfeiffer 2015). For enterprises, the ways in which they develop young adults for the world of work are crucial, not least to maintain frm competitiveness, because vocationally educated employees are the backbone of the economy (Häfeli et al. 2015; Finegold and Wagner 1997).

Switzerland's large majority of young adults between 15 and 17 years old (about 70% of each cohort) enrol in VET (SBFI 2019). They earn a salary that increases over the 3–4 years of apprenticeship training until the Federal VET Diploma is acquired. The dual structure of training, which can be found in Germany and Austria as well, provides early labour market experience and employment opportunities after graduation (Wettstein and Gonon 2009). Usually, hiring apprentices pays off for enterprises based on the productive work that apprentices are able to provide (Wettstein and Gonon 2009; Schweri 2019). Companies and labour market organizations proft from providing career prospects for young people, because this

A. Barabasch (\*) · A. Keller

Eidgenössisches Hochschulinstitut Für Berufsbildung (EHB), Zollikofen, Switzerland e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS><EMAIL_ADDRESS>
<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2021 115

D. Ifenthaler et al. (eds.), *Digital Transformation of Learning Organizations*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55878-9\_7

secures the supply of skilled workers needed in a branch (Rupietta and Backes-Gellner 2019; SBFI 2017).

While domain-specifc knowledge and skills are highly relevant and need to be acquired during apprenticeships, the relevance of personal competences, such as creativity, taking initiative and working autonomously, is increasing (Barabasch and Keller 2019a). Self-organization of work is more and more requested of workers and needs to be trained early. Regulation and control activities that originally were in the responsibility of management are handed over to workers (Heinz 2009). According to Filliettaz (2010), the organization of workplaces is a decisive factor for enabling workplace learning. Usually, learning is strong when the content is challenging, if the employees can take over responsibility and increasingly selforganize their work, and if they are hereby adequately supported (Nyhan 2009). Innovation-oriented enterprises do adapt their VET training according to these requests, for example providing fexibility and individuality in workplace training, project-based learning or new forms of learning accompaniment.

The use of digital technologies in vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland has been reinforced by the 2020 Corona crisis. Although, education at all levels and research had strongly focused on a wide variety of issues related to digitalization (SBFI 2020), the requirement to competently work with a number of digital tools became even stronger now. Digital technology integration or adoption has become crucial not only for communication, administration and management, but it is also a meaningful asset to support learning and teaching in VET. Modern learning cultures take approaches to successfully integrate technologies in their internal processes, and in this way support autonomy and fexibility in work and learning, lifelong learning as much as intergenerational learning. They further contribute to connecting different learning sites, such as school, workplace and intercompany-training course (branch-course). While digital technology is promising to facilitate such connections, today, the facilitation of the connection of the learning sites by digital technologies is not a general standard (Cattaneo and Aprea 2018; Schwendimann et al. 2018).

The enterprises Swisscom, Login and Post in Switzerland have integrated various digital technologies in their apprenticeship training. These technologies ease administration of work hours, work tasks, evaluations or log book remarks; they support communication with peers, co-workers and trainers; and they come in handy for idea development and creative work. Overarching trends in terms of changing learning cultures in apprenticeship training, such as individualization, fexibilization, self-organized learning, project work or coaching, support the introduction of these technologies and also beneft from them (Barabasch and Keller 2019a, b; Barabasch et al. 2019). Based on three in-depth case studies in these three Swiss enterprises (Yin 2014), results on the usage and impact of digital technologies will be presented. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with apprentices, workplace trainers, coaches and VET management.

This chapter addresses the following research questions: Which digital tools are used in workplace training? What are potential benefts and extended justifcations for the use of digital tools? How are modern learning cultures impacting the use of digital tools? We will outline how and where digital technologies are used at the workplace in apprenticeship training, why management has introduced them and how apprentices and their trainers beneft from it. Based on our fndings, we will draw conclusions about how learning cultures are infuencing the use of technologies and vice versa how the introduction of these technologies shapes innovative learning cultures in VET.

#### **7.2 Theoretical Foundations**

The use of digital technologies shapes individual as well as work-related learning and competence development and plays an important role in VET. Next to the introduction of digital technologies in formal learning, increasingly, informal learning becomes an incremental feature of digitalized work (Dehnbostel 2020). Especially, the current reinforced policy to work at one's home offce may support this fusion of different life spheres. Not least, the increasing amount of mobile technologies being available enables the more fexible use of time and space (Tubin 2006). However, the fexibilization of work itself as much as the extensive work with technologies may cause various work-related troubles, such as various health and psychological problems.

Digital technologies usually rise up in different contexts and for different aims that are not necessarily educational ones. Most of the times, they are then adapted for educational purposes (Januszewski and Molenda 2008). At this time, digital technologies have entered workplace learning in many different forms, especially as production or design tools (e.g. numerical control machines, electronic measurement devices and computer-aided design software), but their use as a training tool within VET remains under-exploited. The usage of media in vocational education and training can take various forms, for example, the usage of presentation media, exchanges among students in group learning or self-study in digital learning environments (Euler and Wilbers 2020). A quite common use of technologies is to develop learning platforms or collaborative online learning spaces (Sonntag et al. 2004; Willey and Gardner 2012). Within these environments, apprentices can experience, practice, refect and improve their ability to work with various forms of learning.

They further open up opportunities for new ways of designing and enacting learning. Research focused on location-based (or place-based) learning (Jones et al. 2013), "all the time, everywhere" learning (Norris and Soloway 2013), learning 'on the move' (Sharples 2013) and in "multiple contexts" (Mifsud 2014) (see Schuck et al. 2017). Especially using handheld devices to explore "seamless learning" tasks (Hedberg and Stevenson 2014; Rushby 2012; Toh et al. 2013) has been intensely explored, because of its possibility to support a transition of learning across contexts, often between formal and informal learning spaces. Of interest has been the "breaking away from text, time and place" (Hedberg and Stevenson 2014, p.17), connecting learning in and out of class, in and out of school, connecting learning across curricular and extra-curricular activities, learning that is social or personal, academic or recreational, that exists in physical or virtual contexts and across times and locations (Wong and Looi 2011). "Seamless learning" helps to connect learning between school and excursion sites and provides a bridge between classroom-based tasks and more realistic feldwork settings, or providing a transition from a personal, informal learning episode at home to learning at a later time at school.

Using digital technologies may support more independent or autonomous learning as much as cooperative learning. It is important that a general learning ability is established within apprentices so that lifelong learning is easier and individuals are inclined to keep up with new innovations (Schüller-Zwierlein and Stang 2011). Teachers are working more in the background, are less concerned with teaching domain-specifc knowledge, but rather advise and coach individually (Kozma and McGhee 2003; Mandl et al. 2003; Schulz-Zander and Riegas-Staackmann 2004; Schulz-Zander 2005).

A change in learning-related values and norms can already be observed (Sonntag et al. 2004). Digital natives are quite familiar with a variety of digital tools (Prensky 2005) and develop different habits to work with them. In VET, this changing behaviour of learning on- and offine makes it easier but also advisable to accommodate teaching, workplace coaching and learning with digital technologies. This paradigm shift is an important characteristic of innovative learning cultures.

The term learning culture can be used to characterize the embeddedness of learning in the interaction among context, concept and reality (Brown et al. 1989), which refers to learning as truly being embedded within cultural settings and the utilization of cultural resources (Bruner 1996, as cited in Hodkinson and James 2003). Components of a learning culture include the learning environments as well as the practices and procedures of working and learning. In addition, it includes the study of attitudes, values and beliefs among the practitioners involved in training and of the apprentices themselves. Both are constantly infuencing each other.

Culture further consists of variables, such as values, beliefs and attitudes that are common within a community and tend to perpetuate themselves, sometimes over long periods of time. It includes collective memories, long-held assumptions, common expectations and defnitions (Ai-Tzu 2015). In an enterprise context, according to Sonntag et al. (2004), the learning culture is an expression of the importance of learning within the enterprise, which targets the development of competences and innovation. The learning culture is shaping individual, group- and organizational learning processes in connection with relevant framework conditions.

To summarize fndings: At a normative level, learning culture is expressed through values, norms and attitudes related to learning. At the strategic level, learning culture is related to framework conditions and support for lifelong learning. At the operational level, learning cultures fnd their expression within the manifold forms of individual, group-based learning and organizational learning. Learning cultures are an orientation for the members of the organization in providing expectations towards the results of learning and they can be actively shaped (Barabasch et al. 2020a). Considering the usage of technologies at the normative level, questions about the ways in which technologies are used may be raised. At the strategic level, the concern lays on work and learning conditions in respect to the usage of technologies, and at the operational level, one can analyse how technologies are used or adapted in various learning settings. All of it is not necessarily prescribed by an organization, but within innovative learning cultures would rather be shaped by its members, including the apprentices.

#### **7.3 Method**

To research the usage of digital tools in VET, three case studies (Yin 2014; Yin and Davis 2007) in Swiss enterprises that train apprentices in an innovative manner have been conducted. The three enterprises represent different sectors of the economy. The frst one operates in the telecommunication industry. In Switzerland, it is the largest provider for traditional telecommunication services as well as in the provision of software solutions. The second enterprise provides VET training for apprentices that work in the public transportation sector. It cooperates with 50 partner-enterprises of the sector, for which they organize their VET training. The third enterprise is the national postal service, which entails also the two departments fnance and transportation (bus).

Participants in the case studies represent the main stakeholders in workplace training at the three enterprises: Apprentices, workplace trainers, personnel that directly works with apprentices such as coaches, as well as persons representing different levels of VET management. The main data source were semi-structured interviews with persons representing all groups of people involved in workplace training (case one 25, case two 60, case three 60). Furthermore, site visits at different working (and learning) venues were conducted (case one 7, case two 18, case three 18). Data collection was completed by document analysis of VET-related documents of the enterprises. Participants for the interviews and locations for site visits were selected by the team of researchers together with a VET manager at each enterprise. The cooperation in the selection of interview partners led to a fexible continuing enlargement of the sampling in a function of theoretical sampling, leading to data saturation, respectively, to a profound understanding of the cases. The interviews followed a general interview guideline aimed at fnding out about daily work, regular tasks, successes and diffculties, the organization of VET programmes, support by workplace trainers, as well as attitudes, values and beliefs regarding the workplace training. Data were analyzed by a content analysis (Kuckartz 2016). Two coders coded the entire material, supported by the software MAXQDA. The material was structured according to individual cases and categories representing different research topics (Kuckartz 2016). In an iterative process, the narratives were coded according to emerging themes and regularly discussed by the research team to ensure the reliability and validity of the data. In this way, a comprehensive and detailed system of categories was derived. The analysis of the coded segments led to a display of how digital tools are used in the workplace training at the three workplaces.

#### **7.4 Findings**

The enterprises Swisscom, Login and Post in Switzerland have integrated different digital technologies in their apprenticeship training in order to facilitate processes of workplace training. Some tools used in the specifc learning and working environment of the different enterprises are developed for the training of apprentices, others are adapted to meet the specifc needs in this respect. Due to large numbers of apprentices, developing digital tools for training is an economic and valuable option for these enterprises. They became particularly useful throughout the Corona crisis. All three enterprises have managed to change their working modus to digital work and home offce within a few days. Login was able to move from classroom instruction to digital lessons within 2 days. Students responded very positively to it, so that the enterprise is planning to have more digital instruction in the future. The following section will frst summarize the tools used in the three enterprises, then report on the experiences using communication tools, and in the third section, we explore three particular benefts of using digital tools that emerged from our data.

## *7.4.1 Digital Tools Embedded in the Specifc Work and Training Structures*

Within the Swisscom learning environment, the tool "market place" has been specifcally developed for training and is a vital element of the workplaces learning culture in VET (also see Barabasch and Caldart 2019; Barabasch and Keller 2019a, b; Barabasch et al. 2019, 2020b; Keller and Barabasch 2019). Apprentices at Swisscom do not work together solely with one workplace trainer or only one internal department over the duration of their apprenticeship, as this can be the structure in other Swiss apprenticeships, but instead, they work and learn in different projects. All departments, where workforce is needed, can advertise projects for apprentices on the market place. In this way, the workforce of apprentices can fexibly be integrated where there is a need for them, an organization of workplace training that fts well with todays' fast-changing workplaces (e.g. frequent organizational and personal changes) in dynamic industries, such as the telecommunication sector (Barabasch and Caldart 2019). Today, according to VET managers of the enterprise, the market place is not only used in the VET training but serves as inspiration and is used for work organization (distribution of tasks) also for regular workers on other levels. Next to this organizational tool, the tool "eNEX" serves as a platform for the documentation of the competence development of apprentices and provides an overview about development progress, which is the base for the interaction with coaches. It further is a navigation tool for projects, that accommodate the acquisition of competences as outlined in the requirements of the training ordinance.

Login is a training provider for apprentices of the transportation sector. Apprentices work and learn at different partner frms to develop skills in various contexts. The training enterprise hires apprentices and manages all main organizational tasks, such as communication with vocational schools or monitoring the overall development of apprentices. They also provide additional courses for developing specifc competences needed in the transportation sector. At the partner frms, workplace trainers supervise and accompany apprentices by working with them on a daily basis. Partner frms proft from this organization, they have VET training outsourced to some extent, but still give the apprentices and possible future workers in their frm the possibility to gather work experience in a real workplace environment. Of course, they also proft from apprentices' productive work-outcome (also see Barabasch and Keller 2020). The organization of courses for the different occupations, the changes of workplaces between different partner frms and the accompaniment by different workplace trainers are quite complex to oversee. Login uses the tool "time2learn," which helps to cope with this complexity. It is used to document the learning progress of the apprentices and their school grades and manage their course planning, which they discuss and oversee together with their trainers. The tool is also used for communication with trainers and access to course content.

Apprenticeships at Post do not follow a common structure, but instead there are different designs and logics in the various programs. For example, in some occupations, apprentices internally change workplaces during their apprenticeship and get to know different departments of the frm; in others, the apprentices remain in one department. For some apprenticeships, it is possible to work at another enterprise for some months, to acquire certain competences, that cannot be developed internally; in other apprenticeships, it is foreseen that apprentices travel abroad for some weeks, to enhance their language skills (see Barabasch and Keller 2020).

The structural organization of training at Post calls for a specifc selection and development of tools. A didactic model has been developed internally and is continuously adjusted. It builds the foundation for training courses within the enterprise aiming at a digitalization of learning. Some of the courses are already entirely digitalized; other courses remain analogue, as requested by the ordinances and curricula (the legal basis of the structure of apprenticeship training in Switzerland). The main learning platform is "Moodle." It provides access to online courses and needed digital materials and tools, but also lists presence courses, such as compliance courses. If an apprentice starts his/her apprenticeship, he/she is assigned to a class and receives an overview over the 3–4 years of training, views dates, rooms, as well as "nuggets," modules of self-study and presence-modules. There are also modules for the acquisition of additional competences, for example, in the feld of leadership or project management.

The central documentation of information is one of the main reasons that digital tools are used in VET in the researched enterprises. Usually, a member of human resources (e.g. coach or trainer) advises a group of apprentices, while for the technical training, apprentices work with (different) specialists in the feld. Digital tools, such as the mentioned platform "time2learn" or "eNEX," provide the possibility to oversee learning progress among the apprentices. With the overview provided online, supervisors can react quickly, if unforeseen developments occur or if a project manager or a specialist working with apprentices reports a problem.

Next to these major platforms, each enterprise operates with a number of applications throughout their apprenticeships. Apprentices use "Real Time Management RTM, SAP" to report working hours and absences or survey tools, such as "Forms" or "360 Feedback." "Offce 365" is frequently used, with programs, such as "Word," "Excel," "OneNote," "SharePoint," "Planner" and "PowerPoint," for data storage, exchange of information and planning purposes. The following table provides an overview about the most common digital tools used in apprenticeships at the three enterprises (Table 7.1).

Internal IT departments are keeping up these tools, take care of upgrades and of data security. The latter can be a constraint for the usage of certain tools. For example, in the enterprise Post, the VET department is part of the human resource department and due to the sensitivity of the information processed and issues around data protection related to "Teams," this program cannot be used there. A member of the organization of the training for ICT apprentices stated:

*We would really like to include them (the apprentices) in using Teams, but until know, this is not possible, because Teams is out in the cloud… That's diffcult in our department regarding collaboration* (VET manager ICT, Post).

The example shows how internal organizational processes are not digitalized due to the lack of data safeguarding. The challenge may prevent the theoretical possible ease of communication and collaboration expected by the usage of these tools.

Above and beyond these internal complications, when it comes to the collaboration between vocational schools and enterprises via digital tools, developments are slow. Too often, information on absences of students or behavioural issues are reported in paper booklets, which apprentices, trainers and teachers have to sign. The organization and usage of digital tools is either a question of individual schools

**Table 7.1** Digital tools used at Swisscom, Login and Post in Switzerland

or the organization of the canton in Switzerland. While it can be expected that the current Covid-19 crisis may speed up developments, the likelihood of enterprises reaching out to schools in their interest to ease processes, is just as high.

## *7.4.2 Tools Easing Communication in a Modern Learning Culture*

Digital technologies facilitate and structure forms of communication in the enterprises. Chat functions are used for rapid informal exchanges ("WhatsApp") among apprentices and between apprentices and their coaches or trainers, or for offcial communication ("Skype for Business," "Teams"). Emails ("Outlook") are still used, although participants at Swisscom state that mail is continuously being replaced internally by "Teams." Call and video tools (Skype or "telepresence" rooms) enable conferences and help to safe on travelling. In "telepresence rooms," the communication resembles face-to-face interaction due to the use of large displays, differentiated cameras and high-end microphones. It also became obvious that there are no enforced restrictions as to which tools need to be used for communication. Apprentices can fexibly contact their trainers and coaches via phone, email or just placing an appointment for a coffee break in their calendar. Due to these spontaneous interactions, trainers and coaches can react timely and provide the support needed. However, for the trainers, the communication with different tools can be challenging, since one needs to keep track of the communications and requests on the different channels*.*

*I use the phone much more than two, three years before… and there are different channels. There is SMS, WhatsApp, than we have Slack- that's another channel through which we communicate, where I have a group chat with the apprentices, about different themes. And, that is a new challenge. In the sense, that I am "bombarded" on different channels and have to handle that. When questions arrive… I sometimes don't remember, on which channel was that again? Where did I read that?* (Coach, Swisscom)

If apprentices have diffculties and need support, they can easily get in touch with individuals of their choice, such as other apprentices, experts in certain felds, external business contacts or coaches. In the enterprise Post, apprentices (as well as regular workers) use "Starmind," where open questions can be placed "in the cloud." This makes it visible for the entire network and is assigned to the department, which thematically best fts the question. The members of the corresponding department may further assign the question to a specialist who can answer it. In the enterprise Swisscom, employees have internal profles, on which their competences are displayed and on which it is also visible, with which technologies he/she works. Apprentices, as well as regular workers can contact them, if needed.

In todays' workplaces, networking is a central element for success. Tools such as Yammer or Teams allow to establish one's own network in the frm. Building groups for exchanges regarding technologies and for the organization of project work is, for example, also possible on the portals "Azure Defops" or "Jira," which are used for software development at the enterprise Post.

*WhatsApp and WhatsApp class- chats are popular. Everything else often takes too much time: opening the laptop, going to a certain website, and then again opening the chat-tool on this website… everyone has a smart phone on hand, everyone responds immediately, that's easier!* (Apprentice, Post)

Some communication tools are also questioned in terms of data protection, especially "WhatsApp." Whether a tool is useful or not lies in its practicality; tools have no value in themselves. At different workplaces, it was reported that communication platforms have been established and then not used as much as expected, while other informal tools are commonly used by apprentices. Also, having a tool readily available on the smartphone increases the chances of being used by apprentices.

Apprentices, during their apprenticeship, are prepared to communicate, work and learn with digital technologies, for example using E-Learning and Web-Based Training in internal courses. Enterprises are also rolling out administration and organization of workplace training digitally as far as possible. Learning to work with digital technologies may take place "spontaneously," since apprentices learn to work with new technologies while working in an increasingly digitalized world of work. Effects of digitalization can be seen in almost every occupation, for which an apprenticeship is available in the three enterprises.

Apprentices in ICT occupations are especially confronted with high innovation dynamics and often in their work use (the always changing) newest technologies. They need to be highly adaptable and open. Also working with customers in various felds requires the development of digital skills. At train stations, for example, customers are accompanied in buying tickets on their mobile phones. In branches of the Post- Bank, customers are introduced to how to use online banking tools.

The internet as well as online research and learning is frequently used at Swisscom. In some cases, workplace trainers advise apprentices on the following issues: which online tutorials to learn from, how to access relevant sites and courses and which sites to use for further information. In the department of ICT training at Swisscom, there are, for example, several lists of useful links available through which further information can be easily accessed. Besides that, autonomous research to fnd solutions and missing information to work with new technologies is a popular way of learning and also expected from apprentices.

*So, independent does not actually mean that one does everything on ones' own, it just means that one can acquire knowledge on ones' own. In the sense, that I can acquire more knowledge through internet resources, or that I independently approach people. And also, in some cases talk with people that I don't know, and look at the topic with them or just ask them.* (Apprentice, Swisscom)

Many interviewees reported that there is a difference in how easily change is coped with: It differs from generation to generation. Apprentices are considered to be open to use new tools and also bring in their creative ideas on how work processes can be facilitated or how tools could be optimized. Digitalization does not only bring about new tools but also calls for new processes, new ways of thinking and a different organization of work. As to some extent older employees struggle with changes, at Swisscom, apprentices may function as "ambassadors." They provide tutorials to older employees.

What also became evident in the interviews is that the impulse to consider "digital natives" as competent users or even developers of software is often not matching reality. They are indeed at ease using their mobile phones and navigating through social networks, but this does not mean that they do know, for example, how to use Offce components. There are a large variety of competences that someone needs to have to work with computers and while some apprentices start with little prior knowledge and need to learn a lot, others have had experience, but need to build up extended knowledge and expertise.

#### *7.4.3 How Learning and Competence Development Change*

Working with digital tools throughout their apprenticeships offers a number of advantages. Among them is a higher fexibility in terms of time and space. Many apprentices, especially in the felds of informatics and mediamatics, in the three frms have fexible working hours; some also have the opportunity to work at different company locations, in co-working spaces, hubs or even from home. This supports their autonomy in the way they organize themselves, requests from them to work independently, structured and self-organized and manage their fexibility wisely to be productive.

*My boss tells me what he expects from me, what my main tasks are. Then, I have to look for what I need by myself and have to search for more information. We are completely free and can think for ourselves, 'how do we get as fast as possible to the solution that we fnally need?' And then, we have the different aids that we can use. Of course, there are the internal tools that help us. One is for example Skype for Business, with which working together and being mobile is made easy. Also, with the laptop that we receive, this enhances our mobility and I have the opportunity to work from home, for example. And, there my boss really says: 'Look, you have this time-span, and you have to work on this project during this time-span. How you do it, I leave it up to you. The result just has to be right.'* (Apprentice, Swisscom)

Flexibility also accounts for individuals' adjustment to constantly changing tools. Apprentices realize throughout their training that their attitude of openness is vital to successfully work in this work environment, because it requires a constant updating of one's skills and competences. Lifelong learning has become a panacea for successfully working with digital tools, which in itself is the precondition for apprentices' adjustment to the new organization of work. Constant software and hardware changes, but also changes in work processes, make apprentices realize how important constant learning and new skills acquisition is.

*Of course, to be successful, one has to believe in it. One should not go to work and say: 'Yes, another workday, like the others, like the one before'. One has to be always curious. Every day one has to be attentive to news… because Swisscom, for example the sector of mobile*  *telecommunication is a huge sector, every day there are new developments… One has to be curious, one has to inform oneself.* (Apprentice Swisscom)

*The apprentices are aware, that this targeted acquisition of knowledge does not end with graduating from the apprenticeship, but that they have to continue to learn. This attitude is specifcally important under todays' premise of lifelong learning. The apprentices develop the perspective, already throughout their apprenticeship, that the acquisition of domain specifc knowledge is a continuous process, because the working world constantly changes.* (Apprentice Swisscom)

Although, technologies are changing fast and updating oneself is a given precondition for working successfully, the apprentices realize some intergenerational differences. Openness, attitudes towards change, approaches to work and work organization and the usage of new technology often differ between older and younger employees in the company. Some older employees struggle to keep up with technology developments and are supported by apprentices. There are apprentices who prepare tutorials, provide instruction or individually accompany older employees to help them understand new technological tools. Intergenerational learning and teaching can be an aspect of a project at Swisscom.

*Older employees, or people that work since a longer time, they look at it from a very different perspective than the young. For the young, technology is extremely important, and how one can do things quickly. The older try to do it so it's really nicely and completely done… they look at things from one step to another. Young people always try to fnd short ways, so that it works more quickly, so that one can do it in a way that saves time. Older people prefer to make a step more, in the way, they are used to do it from the beginning.* (Apprentice login)

*I think the older generation profts from the fact, that the young can explain them how today's technologies function. I think they do not have a big problem with that. Maybe they rather have troubles with the fact that what they have known earlier increasingly is pushed in the background. But besides that, I think they are really happy if the young can help them with these things.* (Apprentice login)

Digital technologies not only provide the opportunity to work or communicate more effciently, they also change the ways in which apprentices learn and work. While they are supportive of autonomous work and enable a fexible use of time and space, they also require constant learning and updating of one's skills. Since the young generation tends to be faster in learning in this respect, intergenerational learning lets older employees beneft from it. This trend also contributes to a change in how apprentices are integrated at the workplace and questions traditional ways of viewing the development of expertise.

#### **7.5 Conclusion**

Modern learning cultures in apprenticeship training are characterized by an individualization of learning pathways, more autonomous work often supported by digital tools, new team work organizations, new approaches to teaching and learning and trustful relationships between apprentices and their supervisors, coaches or trainers. Enterprises in Switzerland have made it a commodity to work with a large variety of technological tools to ease learning and work, an asset that helped them to cope successfully with the move to home offce during the Corona crisis. Many of the tools are particularly helpful in easing communication within teams, across locations and in different work settings. Apprentices are often quick in learning how to use these tools and do help older employees in understanding and mastering them as well.

When it comes to technology learning, the novice-to-expert paradigm (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1987) seems to be reversed. Fast technological developments enforce the need for lifelong learning, which apprentices are aware of. For many of them, undertaking an apprenticeship is the frst step into working life, but the willingness to engage in further vocational education and training as much as in a variety of options for adult education is high among young people. They know that innovation requires a confdent handling of technologies and a disciplined self-organization. The Corona crisis certainly has put a test to that. It strongly indicated that the much conjured digital transformation has taken place for many in VET suddenly and rapidly. Within VET from now on, it will be about manifesting the chosen pathways, further qualifying teachers and trainers and to establish a learning culture that accommodates new approaches to teaching and learning at VET schools and at enterprises. We are at the rise of a major change process that will involve all actors and be an intergenerational learning process (also see Heinen and Kerres 2017).

The new learning culture requires a new understanding of roles in terms of teachers and apprentices, where both can learn from each other and interact in many new forms. Coaching and advising students in their learning process will become more relevant in order to help apprentices to individually navigate their learning process and grow from making mistakes when curiously trying out new things. Digital technologies may support this pathway as much as they support new forms of collaborative team work. While they make travelling time less necessary, they may also support a new balance of life and work.

Based on the fndings from the three case studies, it becomes evident that enterprises are encouraging the use of technologies at all levels. VET schools are also responsive to digital trends and need to quickly learn how to work with different tools due to the Corona crisis. Further research is required to investigate the state of teacher preparation for working with new tools, new approaches to teaching and learning as well as to connect the learning between different learning sites. For enterprises, this chapter may provide an up-to-date overview about the tools currently used and how they can be applied within workplace training.  More research is needed to fully understand how the majority of enterprise-based learning places respond to digital change and which lessons can be learned from that for VET schools.

**Acknowledgements** We thank the representatives from Swisscom, Login and Swiss Post for their contributions to this book chapter.

#### **References**

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# **Chapter 8 Responsible Digital Transformation of Social Welfare Organizations**

**Birte Schiffhauer and Udo Seelmeyer**

### **8.1 Introduction**

In recent years, the debate on digitalization played an increasingly important role in welfare organizations. However, the term digitalization is used to describe a variety of different things (Hess 2019): (1) A narrow use of the term refers to the binary coding of analogue information and thus to make it available for data processing in computer systems, for example, when scanning a paper document. (2) A broader term refers to the processes and procedures that change in the course of using digital technology, for example, in organizations. (3) In a comprehensive sense, digitalization describes a social and societal transformation process described in terms such as the "network society," the "knowledge society," the "information society," the "control and surveillance society," the "digital capitalism" or the "culture of digitality." In the following, we take the second defnition of digitalization as a basis. We do not understand digitalization in a narrow technical sense, but rather focus on aspects of social and organizational embedding and contextualization of sociotechnical systems.

Digitalization is already an integral element of social welfare organizations: Information systems support professionals during anamneses, planning, accounting, administration and documentation (Gillingham et al. 2020; Ley 2012). Digital technology supports communication in the social sector, communication between professionals, but also between professionals and clients (Döring 2019; Seelmeyer 2018). Some organizations use online counselling, and even the usage of chatbots to support social services is debated (Waag et al. 2020). Another technology strongly

B. Schiffhauer (\*)

U. Seelmeyer

© The Author(s) 2021 131 D. Ifenthaler et al. (eds.), *Digital Transformation of Learning Organizations*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55878-9\_8

Catholic University of Applied Sciences of North Rhine – Westphalia, Paderborn, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Bielefeld University of Applied Science, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
discussed is the application of decision support systems (Bastian 2017; Schneider and Seelmeyer 2019; Gillingham et al. 2020). Those systems are algorithm-based and make use of big data analysis. In addition, assistive technologies support social services (Klein 2010; Schiffhauer 2020). Using those sorts of technology can have great impact on organizations, professionals and clients (Kutscher et al. 2014) as well as on society.

Digitalization should be handled and refected by social welfare organizations in respect of four dimensions: risk, chance, responsibility and necessity (Schiffhauer 2019): Digitalization poses multiple social and ethical challenges (like substitution of employees or surveillance), which must be observed and evaluated in terms of the goals of social organizations. Chances of digitalization present themselves in opening up opportunities for the employees and addressing social services (e.g. supportive innovative technology). Social organizations need to take the responsibility of actively monitoring and constructing the effects of digitalization for the beneft of the people and to enhance social compensation, as counteracting discrimination is one of the major tasks for social welfare (BAGFW 2017). Finally, digitalization is a necessity as it is essential to reduce costs or improve services and disruption of traditional social services can already be identifed (e.g. offering different kinds of social services through a single platform, Faiß 2018). These four dimensions elucidate the importance for a responsible digital transformation of social welfare organizations understood as a continuous organizational process of change. Thereby, the integration of innovative technologies has to be considered, which transform products, services, business processes and business models.

However, there is no blueprint on how social welfare organizations could go through this digital transformation process. Common innovation and organizational development processes cannot be applied easily as social welfare organizations differ from industrial companies (Eurich et al. 2018, p.3; Parpan-Blaser 2018, p.262). Accordingly, there are hardly any models for social services to initiate, design and implement social innovation processes (Parpan-Blaser 2018, p.262; Schöttler 2018, p.157, Eurich et al. 2018, p.1). Furthermore, there is a lack of systematic concepts for the evaluation of technologies for usage in welfare organizations (Buhr et al. 2016) and for social services (Becka et al. 2017). In this respect, it is necessary to adapt procedures from the context of technology development to the requirements and general conditions of social welfare organizations and at the same time to develop suitable models for introducing and anchoring digital technology as a social innovation in the organizations. How this challenge can be encountered will be illustrated by means of a case study that describes a corresponding procedure at the German social welfare organization Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund; Workers' Samaritan Federation North Rhine-Westphalia registered association (ASB NRW e.V.) Without recapitulating the scientifc discourses on organizational change processes, at least a well-founded classifcation of the case study outlined below should be made. The procedure developed there is based on refexive approaches of technology development, characterized by a strong emphasis on user-centricity and the inclusion of ethical aspects. These approaches are not limited to the aspect of technology development but are extended by elements of organizational development as well as critical success factors of change processes. As a basis for this, fundamental aspects for a successful organizational development in social welfare organizations will be worked out in the following in order to link this in a next step with existing frameworks and methods from the context of technology development such as Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Design Thinking and Human-Centred Design (HCD) for interactive systems.

## **8.2 Organizational Development and Innovation in the Context of Social Services**

Discussions about and management of transformations in welfare organizations should involve organizational-theoretical considerations. Different disciplinary approaches – from sociology and psychology to business administration and management – differ both in their focus on content and in whether they primarily provide analytical or practical knowledge. Classical organizational models in the tradition of Max Weber assume that organizations are essentially structured by rationality of purpose. However, recent approaches in organizational sociology point out that such rationalities of purpose have a legitimizing rather than an instrumental function in the control of the organization (Grunwald 2018). This leads to a shift towards informal logics and practices in organizations, which can complement, irritate and overlap formal processes and structures (Büchner 2020). These fndings can be used as analytical starting points for the processes of organizational learning and organizational development in the context of digital transformation. Out of the broad spectrum of organization-related theories, analyses and concepts, those dealing with organizational change processes are of particular relevance to the following considerations (cf. as an overview, e.g., Schreyögg and Geiger 2016, 357 ff.). There are many fndings on barriers to organizational change, as well as on the prerequisites, principles, phase models and methods for successful change. Approaches such as organizational development (Cummings and Worley 2015) – in the diagnostic and dialogical variant – organizational transformation, organizational design, change management (Doppler and Lauterburg 2019) or organizational learning (Huber 1991) can be roughly distinguished and described with their respective focuses and emphases. However, usually, they are not clearly defned and show some overlaps. These more basic approaches are complemented by more limited and focused concepts such as quality development, quality management, knowledge management or – currently popular – innovation management.

Core elements of almost all models of organizational development and at the same time critical success factors of change processes are employee participation and transparency of communication about the process (Frey et al. 2008). Frey and colleagues point out that change processes can lead to uncertainty among employees. They suggest that employees should participate at the change process, so that they can (re)gain control over the situation. This could lead to a stronger identifcation of the employees with the project and further on motivate and encourage their involvement. In addition, there should be a clear goal and vision set up and communicated in a transparent way to everyone involved. A common mutual awareness is seen as a basic principle for a successful change management process. A close connection between technology and organization is also central to concepts such as innovation management (cf. Hauschildt et al. 2016). However, the methods developed there, which are usually designed for the corporate context, cannot be easily transferred to the feld of social work and welfare organizations.

There are three types of organization that predominate in the feld of social work in Germany: (1) state agencies and administrations, which can act both as funding partner and provider of services, (2) welfare organizations and (3) social economy enterprises, whereby in practice, different hybrid forms of the latter ideal types occur. The organization Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund referred to in the case study can be assigned to organization type "welfare association," but also has elements of the type "social economy enterprise." Social welfare organizations can be determined as "professional organizations" (Klatetzki 2012), which combine bureaucratic structures within team structures based on professional values (Klatetzki 2012, 175 f.). Besides bureaucratic and profession-related rationalities, Schöttler refers to economic, socio-political and association-specifc religious or ideological objectives and logics as supplemental rationalities (Schöttler 2019, p. 90). In order to connect these multiple rationalities productively, additional communicative spaces are needed. Those enhance the "discourse capacity" of the organization and lead not only to technical but also systemic innovations (Schöttler 2017, 2019). The characteristic of social welfare organizations as pluralistic or hybrid organizations is important for the design of innovation and transformation processes: In contrast to routine and projects, innovations are characterized by the fact that neither path nor goal is clear and must be developed frst. Therefore, the mindset for goal development associated with the term "open innovation" (Chesbrough 2003) is evident in the entrepreneurial context (Schöttler 2019). Nevertheless, innovations are always risky as well as the resources used for them. Hence, Schöttler proposes a "state-gate process" (Cooper 1990) as a multi-stage decision-making process with increasing resource input.

As social work can be defned as "a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people" (IFSW 2014), social welfare organizations base their work on specifc norms and values. The importance of specifc norms and values lies in the interaction with often vulnerable or marginalized groups and/or individuals. The goal is to help, to empower them and to increase their well-being (Homfeldt 2012, p. 499). Therefore, it can be stated that working with those people implies moral and legal components (Klatetzki 2010, p. 10). Social services in particular have a moral component, since clients are often affected by social problems, which are anchored in the social structure of a society. These can change depending on the current norms and values of a society, so social services also require analytical refection (Kessl and Otto 2012, p. 1310ff.) For example, in their work, professional social workers refer to a code of ethics that includes human rights and social justice (DBSH 2016, p. 2; Staub-Bernasconi 2009, p.133ff).

Thus, social welfare organizations have to focus on the social and ethical aspects of digital transformation and innovation processes. Innovations in this feld are always to be conceived as social innovations in the sense that they are "innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly diffused through organizations whose primary purposes are social" (Mulgan 2006, p.146). Although systematic concepts for a responsible and reasonable ethical and digital transformation for social welfare organizations are missing "Responsible Research and Innovation" (RRI), Design Thinking and Human Centred Design (HCD) for interactive systems offer frameworks for responsible innovations and therefore are discussed in the following chapter. RRI is a rather open framework for an ethically oriented design of research and development processes and has its roots in the context of European research policy and funding. Design Thinking is a methodological approach that aims at the development of useroriented, innovative problem solutions by combining different creativity techniques and a high degree of interdisciplinary cooperation. HCD in turn represents a process model especially for development of interactive technical systems, which also includes standards for this. The three approaches thus have a different focus on the levels (1) framework/orientation, (2) process/method and (3) content standards.

## **8.3 Frameworks for Responsible Development and Implementation of Digital Technologies**

The core problem of responsible innovations and digital transformation is that the effects must be anticipated in advance, but the consequences cannot be predicted with certainty until the innovation is developed and used. At the same time, it is diffcult to alter the innovation, when it is widely distributed, so-called path dependence (Collingridge 1980). Using the framework of RRI is one way to anticipate the impacts before and during the innovation process. Although there is no widely accepted defnition of RRI (Bogner et al. 2015; Lindner et al. 2016), the idea is that "Responsible innovation is a collective commitment of care for the future through responsiveness, stewardship of science and innovation in the present" (Owen et al. 2013, p.36). RRI is an iterative and multi-actor-integrating approach to direct and control research and innovation in a normative way, for example, based on sustainability or social desirability (Lindner et al. 2016, p.10). Thus, the integration of such a process is suitable for social welfare organizations, as they aim "to motivate people to work for the common good and […] to follow the idea of social justice as advocates for people in need of help" (https://www.bagfw.de/ueber-uns/freie-wohlfahrtspfege-deutschland/selbstverstaendnis). For the implementation of the RRI framework, four dimensions are proposed (Owen et al. 2013; Lindner et al. 2016): refexivity, deliberation, responsiveness and anticipation. Being refective means rethinking one's own activities, goals and motivations and assign to codes of conducts and regularities (Owen et al. 2013; Stilgoe et al. 2013). Deliberation includes an inclusive approach, transparency of the project in the organization as well as in the public, open discussions and debates with stakeholders. Responsiveness refers to a collective and "open process of adaptive learning" (Owen et al. 2013, p. 38) in order to adapt the innovation process iteratively. The dimension anticipation encompasses the description and the analysis of potential (un-)intended impacts, including methods like technology assessment (Owen et al. 2013).

Design Thinking is an approach that can be used for developing and implementing innovations of teams and organizations especially for "wicked" problems (Beckman and Barry 2007). The innovation approach Design Thinking can be applied to any area and any organization in order to increase innovative magnitude; it focuses on the user's point of view and an interdisciplinary co-development with iterative circles to improve the outcome of the project (Carlgren et al. 2016). This approach is therefore also suitable for identifying innovation potential in social welfare organizations. Human-Centred Design for interactive systems (HCD) according to ISO 9241-210 provides a framework for orientation. HCD is a tool for the development of hardware and software to enhance human-machine interaction focusing on human factors. It proposes that the activities for designing humancentred (digital) products are divided into different phases: Impulse & Planning, Specify Context of Use, User Requirements, Design Solution and Evaluation and Testing (DIN EN ISO 9241-210). These two processes can be combined well with each other.

Although Design Thinking and HCD focus on human factors, the ethical evaluation and the focus on responsible innovation is not given enough attention. As it was stated before, ethics and responsibility should be the focus of innovation management in social welfare organization. Thus, Design Thinking and HCD could be combined with methods like RRI for a responsible development and integration of innovations in social welfare states. Therefore, even if there are no specifc models of innovation processes for social services, innovative methods such as Design Thinking (Hartmann 2018, p. 144) and HCD together with RRI can be a useful starting point for social service organizations. Based on a project of technology development and implementation, a case study at the "Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund" (ASB) combined these approaches in order to guide the welfare organization through the process of digital transformation.

#### **8.4 Practical Experiences: A Case Study**

The social welfare organization Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (Workers' Samaritan Federation) is a non-proft organization offering services to people's needs like care for the elderly, rescue services, frst aid, assistance for children and support for people with disabilities, as well as support for refugees. The organization has more than 1.2 million members and is divided into 16 regional organizations. One of them is the ASB NRW e.V., where the conducted case study took place. Due to its special responsibility for vulnerable people, the ASB NRW e.V. aimed to innovate and integrate digital technology responsibly. As systematic concepts about the assessment of technology usage and how to integrate technology in social welfare organizations were missing, different concepts like RRI, Design Thinking and HCD were adapted and used to develop a concept for the digital transformation of the ASB NRW e.V. Thereby, important insights of change management processes were included like participation of the team and transparency about the process (Frey et al. 2008). Of course, it has to be mentioned that digital transformation is a process and never is completed. In addition, processes in reality are never conducted as an ideal type.

Participation and transparency are important elements of successful change management processes (Frey et al. 2008; Werther and Jacobs 2014). Therefore, in 2019, the digitalization strategy for ASB NRW e.V. was developed on a participatory, human-centred and scientifc basis. First a literature research and a qualitative organizational diagnosis were conducted. The qualitative organizational diagnosis was based on the results of a previous organization development process: all relevant documents were analysed regarding to their importance for digitalization. This was done to ensure that all association-specifc religious or ideological objectives and logics were taken into account as suggested by Schöttler (2019, p. 90). Thereof a preliminary digitalization process was conducted.

In accordance with the RRI dimensions "refexivity" and "deliberation," fve workshops were realized. Participants were all associated to the ASB NRW e.V., including volunteers, employees and managers. In all workshops, the preliminary digitalization process and – relating to the RRI dimension "refexivity" – the goals, motivations and possible consequences were discussed. After each workshop, the digitalization process was adapted following the RRI dimension "responsiveness" and the idea of iteration of the HCD and Design Thinking (for detailed procedure: Schiffhauer 2019). These workshops also opened up additional communicative rooms, as it is needed in social welfare organizations for the development of a discourse (Schöttler 2017/2019). Because of these discussions, the following goal for the ASB NRW e.V. was defned as a *guideline for the digitalization process*: "On the one hand, the ASB aims to further develop its services and establish innovative service areas through digitalization and further technical and medical progress. On the other hand, it is also the aim to maintain and further develop values such as humanity, solidarity and respect as the supporting pillars of our society – in the face of accelerating technological development" (Schiffhauer 2019).

Based on this guideline, two medium-term strategies were developed to achieve the stated goal. The *frst medium-term strategy* is "Including the own expertise in the debate on digitalization in society as a whole." It contains the constant and active participation of the ASB NRW e.V. in meetings, workshops and conferences on the topic of digitalization and society to contribute to the guideline. This strategy also includes creating transparency about the digitalization process within the ASB NRW e.V. Therefore, the digitalization process was presented at academic conferences as well as at workshops for professionals and peers. Beneath transparency,

this also enhanced collaboration and communication between academics and society, congruent with the RRI approach (Lindner et al. 2016). Transparency was also created via the website "asb-digitalisierung.de," where information was provided about the process, all talks and participations at conferences, discussions and activities in society.

The *second medium-term strategy* was the deployment and implementation of a process for the "human-centered development of the social services of the ASB NRW e.V. through digitalization" (see Schiffhauer 2019). The HCD approach (DIN EN ISO 9241-210:2010–01) was used as a basis for the process, and methods of Design Thinking, RRI and ethical evaluation of socio-technical arrangements (Manzeschke et al. 2013) were integrated. The testing and application of this strategy are described in the following.

*First Phase: Impulse and Planning* Impulses are often an important prerequisite for innovations (Guldin 2004). After a visit to the virtual reality (VR) time travel through the historical Cologne, the idea emerged to use the immersive experience of VR in the frst aid training. This approach fulflled the function of opening up employees to the later process of integrating such technologies and arousing their interest, as described early on by Lewin (1947) as the frst phase of Unfreezing for change processes. Afterwards, the planning of the project began. For this purpose, an interdisciplinary project group was formed.

*Second Phase: Specify Context of Use* In the second phase, the context of use was determined (DIN EN ISO 9241-210). A scientifc research and a market analysis took place to generate an overview of the current state of research in the feld of "VR in frst aid training." To specify the context of use, it was agreed to develop a "Virtual Reality Learning Environment" (VRLE) as a 360° movie, which is supposed to support the learning of frst aid and can be used in the context of frst aid training.

*Third Phase: User Requirements* The third phase focuses on determining the user requirements of the product. For this purpose, a workshop involving all stakeholders (e.g. experts in frst aid training) was conducted, following the recommendations of the HCD approach and the dimension deliberation of RRI. The previously considered context of use was put up for discussion (RRI-dimension: responsiveness) and expanded by the group of experts. The selection of the training units to be implemented in VR was carried out in a participatory manner with Design Thinking methods such as brainwriting, clustering and brainstorming. In order to extract the usage requirements for the VR application, the most important points were collected and written on maps in a brainstorming session. These points were then discussed and clustered in categories "beneft" and "concerns" in the plenum using a metaplan technique and a further category "challenge" was added. In particular, this discussion was accompanied by a lively debate on the goals, motives and consequences (RRI dimension: refexivity). In addition, an ethical evaluation scheme was developed and sent to the working groups to extract possible negative and positive effects of the VR application and thus to integrate the RRI dimension "refexivity" and "anticipation." The evaluation scheme was developed from an adaption of the MEESTAR model (Manzeschke et al. 2013) with reference to the "Challenges of social work through digitalization" (Kutscher et al. 2014). In a joint web conference, the further development of the scenarios including the ethical evaluation scheme was discussed.

*Fourth Phase: Design Solution* In the fourth phase, the prototype was developed. Working groups (including experts and other stakeholders) wrote the storyboard for the 360° flm. The flm was shoot in a Kindergarten and the application was programmed.

*Fifth Phase: Evaluation and Testing* In the ffth phase, the prototype was tested and evaluated. A frst usability and user experience (UX) evaluation with the method thinking aloud (Nielsen 1994) was realized with ASB members as participants. Thinking aloud is a method often used in Design Thinking processes and for the evaluation of usability and UX, where the user is thinking aloud when working on the tasks. It has the advantage that possible obstacles or annoyances of the prototype can be identifed directly (Nielsen 1994). The aim was to identify the most serious usability problems and frst UX aspects in order to report them to the company quickly. In addition, the participants were also asked to fll out the ethical evaluation. Based on the results of the frst UX study, the application was adjusted (RRI dimension: responsiveness).

Throughout the whole process, the success factors of change management were kept in mind (Frey et al. 2008). In order to ensure transparency, for example, a highquality designed mailing was sent to all ASB state associations and to the ASB federal association. The mailing contained a cover letter informing about the digitalization process at the ASB NRW e.V. and inviting further discussions on the opportunities and challenges and encouraging questions, ideas and suggestions.

#### **8.5 Conclusion**

This description of the practical example aimed to give an insight into ideas of how social welfare organizations are dealing with digital transformation processes. Just as the visit to the virtual reality time travel through the historical Cologne initiated the unfreezing phase for the VR Project, the VR Project can be understood overall as an unfreezing phase for a broader organizational development process. It has to be evaluated in the future how the developed strategy and the VR Project works into the organization and could transform the organization socially and ethically. Although this is just a beginning, the described strategy and the project enhanced the communication about digitalization. Often it is not clear what people are referring to when speaking of digitalization. The workshops created a common understanding about what digitalization is and even more important which goals and values the ASB NRW e.V. is aiming to proceed in a digitalized future. Digitalization was no longer a fuzzy cross-section topic but a tangible project one can refer to as an example for digitalization. At the ASB NRW e.V., the communication about digitalization was enhanced due to the specifc reference to the VR Project – like the naming of extreme weather phenomena improves the communication about them among the population (National Weather Service 2014).

The project also served as a lighthouse project to provide a model on how digitalization projects or the development and implementation of innovative technology can be carried out. Because of its high relevance, great importance was given to planning and refecting the process in detail, involving and motivating people to participate and training the team in evaluation of ethical aspects of innovative projects. This was very time consuming and sometimes, it was diffcult to motivate people to participate in a further evaluation as this project was in addition to their regular work. It is questionable whether it is possible for an organization to provide the time resources. Further projects should be able to be implemented more quickly as existing knowledge about the process is already available. Nevertheless, it seems feasible to reduce the workload of the experts. Although participation is needed and appreciated, it was realized that working on the storyboards for the 360° flm in the working groups was too much work for the experts in addition to their timeconsuming main work. A task force could prepare, for example, the storyboards and then ask the experts for feedback. Participation of experts has to be weighed carefully against the time and fnancial resources available.

However, this process fulflled the goal of organization development to be a process of "facilitating change and development in people (e.g. styles, values, skills), in technology (e.g. greater simplicity, complexity), and in organizational processes and structures (e.g. relationships, roles)" (Friedlander and Brown 1974, p. 314). The expertise of the experts in frst aid training and broad-based rescue service training was needed in the development of innovative technology, which could be used to improve their teaching. This integration of employees is also a strategy to improve the motivation of participation and to reduce anxieties towards digitalization (Frey et al. 2008). As suggested by Frey and colleagues, this was a way that employees could gain control over the situation. However, uncertainty is immanent in the process of digitalization and its effects cannot be anticipated in advance overall (Collingridge 1980). Nevertheless, this process helped to recognize the expertise of the experts. In addition, it was important that all experts agreed on a mutual procedure of development and integration of the technology. Since the implementation of the VR application in frst aid training will be on voluntary basis, the commitment of the experts is important for the success of the project.

With the described project, the essential guidelines that Schöttler (2019, 94f.) developed for innovation processes in welfare organizations could be addressed: (1) By means of the exemplary examination of the possibilities that VR technologies offer for a classic service process such as frst aid training, the project was able to establish an overall openness and language ability with regard to aspects of digital transformation in one's own association. (2) Due to the broad composition of the groups of people involved in the workshops, new communication spaces were created, which promoted the ability to discourse even across different disciplines, professions and company divisions. (3) Through an appropriate design of the development process, these different environments and rationalities could be included at an early stage. (4) The intended fundamental examination of the organization with the chances, risks and challenges of digital transformation was concretized in the form of a practice-relevant project. However, this presupposed that the necessary free space and resources could also be made available for this. It was shown that it is useful for social welfare organization to use, adapt and combine the different methods RRI, Design Thinking and HCD to go through the digital transformation. But they need to be refected on the needs of the organization and the process has to be adapted after each project, as digital transformation processes are learning processes. Future research should address the needs of social welfare organizations in digital transformation processes in specifc regarding the time issue, as negotiation processes and iteratively discussions are very time consuming.

#### **References**

Bethel, Dissertationsschrift, 2017 (1. Auf.). *Management – Ethik – Organisation: Band 004*. Göttingen: V&R Unipress. https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737007467

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **Chapter 9 Leading Transformation with Digital Innovations in Schools and Universities: Beyond Adoption**

**Eugene Kowch**

#### **9.1 Introduction**

Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum but requires openness and interactions between systems and their environments. This is also very much the case for education. (OECD 2016, p. 3)

Digital technologies do not transform a learning organization in isolation, but they can offer high potentials for constant-fux schools and university contexts. In this chapter, we argue that leading digital transformation in the learning organization frst requires different *leadership* approaches and then different *organization* structures to allow more *autonomous, team-based digital innovation efforts* across education *ecosystems* (Kowch 2018a). Only then can schools and universities adapt to digital innovation experiments that can truly transform their products and processes (learners with better lives). First, we explore how existing formal leadership ideas to "adopt" education technologies have been confused with true innovation to offer leaders and innovators a different path for conceptualizing great digital innovation as a complex mix of experimental, evidence-informed, risk-taking done by networks of teams. Daimler-Benz cannot transform the company by inventing a driverless car. Yet in their past they have transformed the company by changing the processes and products of the organization by integrating ideals for safe driving with vast technological innovations. Innovation in education systems means much more than invention, technology or technology adoption alone.

Contemporary Education change scholars warn that schools and universities cannot lead such transformation because we fail to create adaptable organizations that can transform with our digital innovations (Hargreaves and Shirley 2012). Instead, we focus on piecemeal, microscale change in learning while making huge technology investments in organizations (Fullan and Kirtman 2016), while the

© The Author(s) 2021 145

E. Kowch (\*)

University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
D. Ifenthaler et al. (eds.), *Digital Transformation of Learning Organizations*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55878-9\_9

OECD (2016) warns that massive global education technology investments have failed to generate proportional learning improvements for learners.

The *problem* is that educators need knowledge to *organize* and to *lead* digital innovation teams differently today. Ifenthaler and Egloffstein (2020) remind that digital technology integration is an important mission for every business, organization, or institution not only for communication, administration, and management but also for learning and instruction/teaching (p. 302). However, with artifcial intelligence, Big Data, smart classrooms (Ifenthaler 2017), and service robots (Kowch 2020) arriving in the near horizon to help teaching and learning, digital innovation teams need guides for leading a more integrated approach to leading, learning innovation work that offers a better chance to transform the learning organizations.

Our understanding of education ecosystems has changed a lot from historical presumptions of stable, linear role-in-function systems (only dead systems are stable) to unstable systems with complex, interconnected dynamics where a change in one part of the system affects all other parts of it (Schwandt and Sabla 2007; Hazy and Uhl-Bien 2015). Too often misunderstood by university leaders as "apps" for achieving vaguely defned "transformation" adoption and buy-in, most educational technology projects live short, hectic lives. Here we offer theory and practical guidelines for digital innovation leaders who guide integrated solutions that can, with the right leadership and organization, truly transform and sustain a school or university.

Section 9.2 explores why classic, more formal approaches to leading and organizing our work constrains the adaptive spaces necessary for digital innovators and leaders interested in real transformation. Section 9.3 outlines how (less formal) leader and organization approaches can lead and organize work differently as ecologies of innovation thriving in more open organizations. We demonstrate how and why digital innovation teams have a better chance to impact deep school and university change by forming highly capable relational teams within more adaptive organization structures or "homes" for that important work. The fnal section offers theory and practical guidelines for networked digital innovation team members and leaders whose experiments can be better engines for genuine, system-wide education organization transformation.

## **9.2 Formal Leaders in Formal Organizations: Limiting Space for Innovation**

Classical formal leader epistemologies ft tongue-in-groove with formal organization epistemologies (Clegg et al. 2011). For digital innovators (all innovators) today, that classic way of knowing technology, education systems and leadership is a toxic combination that unconsciously limits individual and team innovator potential for school or university transformation. In this section, we explore four important concepts and features for leading and managing digitization and change in education systems today: *people*, *power*, *systems*, and *change*/*innovation* (Hallinger and Heck

2002). Senge et al. (2000) remind us that informal leaders *do the right thing*, while formal leaders *do things right* (as process managers).

## *9.2.1 Formal Leadership:* **Doing Things Right with People, Power, Systems, and Change**

For over a century, scholars and practitioners in education have struggled to defne educational leadership but many agree with Yukl's (1994) meaning:

Most defnitions of leadership refect the assumption that it involves a social **infuence** process by one person (or group) to **structure** the activities and relationships or in a group or organization. (p. 3)

Formal leaders operate within the confnes of roles and vertical power lines forming limited paths for transactions usually aimed at improving work fow effciencies. Formal leaders consider the *utility* of a technology in terms of how it will improve functional effciency from subordinates working together, but from different specialist 'silos'. In the last century (1900 to 1950), Taylor's scientifc *management* theory defned *formal leadership* frst as a set of predictable cause-effect, rule-based work relations between managers supervising employees in steady-state systems (organizations or institutions) in terms that do not describe the hyper-connected leading and working world of education organizations, yet you can fnd many scientifc managers in at any moment or context in education today. Scientifc leaders think about the inputs, processes, and outcomes of work done by *specialized*-*labor* employees with an overall goal to apply psychology for improved organization (school, university) outputs—so social dynamics and worker humanity did not concern early formal leaders aiming for stability. Because change and innovation in a system introduces risk, formal leaders minimize experimentation, risk-taking, and innovation. Per the leadership of Henry Ford, innovation occurs "at the top" of traditional, formal closed systems (Enkel, Bogers & Chesbrough 2020). Not all leaders are Bill Gates.

Formal leaders understand *power* as a commodity that is attributed to a position (rank) and aligned within a vertical *power-over* hierarchy designed to control scarce resources (Carlsen et al. 2020). Formal leader power is not earned, rather it is assigned by comparing the rank of a leader over managers and employees functioning within strict rules assigned by their specialization and functions in an institution (Hallinger and Heck 2002) so position in the organization pecking order matters as much as capability. Carlsen et al. (2020) charts and laments how entrenched leader ideas about positional power-over reduces creativity and isolates individuals from collectives while scientifc leaders have also been critiqued for *power-over* tactics for their "obsession with tight, top down control leading to institutional dysfunction" (Maguire et al. 2006, p. 173). This researcher has found repeatedly that formal leaders are more common in schools and universities struggling not to function as industries.

Formal leaders also understand their institution's existence as a factory unto itself—consciously or not, formal leaders act within what they believe is a *closed*  *system* with inputs, processes, and outputs bounded by the institutional rules, roles and operating policies associated with it (Schwandt and Szabla 2007). *"Closed systems are considered to be isolated from their environment" as steady-state systems* (Bertalanffy 1968, p. 38). When a university provost evaluates the effciency of an online learning program and faculty using LMS (learning management software) data (discussion frequencies, grades, logged time online) alone, he or she is leading formally to improve core processes isolated within the organization. As a *manager*, he or she is "doing things right" by *adopting* a proven effciency tool or mindset (Senge et al. 2000), not really considering the complexity of interconnected subsystems such as learner preferences, adult life contexts or even cultural learning histories that might have powerful effects on the success of such technological enhancements. This is a real problem for digital innovation teams in schools, where, for example, we know that good online learning technology *could* transform a failing face-to-face school into a thriving cyber charter school (Kowch 2009). But formal leaders care less about the complexity of social systems, working on good transaction effciency in a closed system model without regard for technical, pedagogical, or even fnancial potentials offered by digital innovations, for example. Formal leadership reduces the project to linear, stable and closed work organizations that may never have existed, and that certainly do not exist in today's education reality.

*Leading change* is an important element in education leadership thinking and praxis, particularly when innovations are involved because innovation *causes* change, to an extent, in education organizations (Fullan 2015). Digital technologies are often the greatest sources of such change in our time. Still, formal education leaders approach changes from an *industrial paradigm* stance where a change to inputs, usually in terms of human or mechanical performance, is believed to result in predictable linear cause-effect desired outcomes (ideally) so most leaders today apply systems theory to *adopt* a technology by following predictable *innovation S-Curves* in the back of their mind (Fig. 9.1), aiming for a specifc change. Because adoption can be forced or manipulated in vertical power orgnizations, formal leaders often lead change by (a) seeking "buy-in" among employees for a technologically enhanced process that will result in what they hope will be an organizational change (Rogers 1962) and by (b) hoping that a technology or "app" can and will change the organization (Visvizi et al. 2018). This *linear cause-effect* approach to change leadership and innovation has been harshly criticized by contemporary organization and education scholars, who have proven time and again that formal leaders mostly create "piecemeal" or incremental change in education systems by assuming linear, steady-state change parameters while ignoring human learning and socio-technological infuences (Reigeluth and Duffy 2008). The result is often a change that does not sustain, or a technology that soon sits idle after considerable investment.

Today most education systemic change research involves linear thinking about organizations assumed in steady states (equilibrium), a false assumption that hinders necessary experimentation and knowledge exchanges needed to change a school (Cabrera and Cabrera 2019; Kowch 2019; Reigeluth and Duffy 2008). In fact, many of the authors in Springer's *Systems Thinking and Change* major refer-

**Fig. 9.1** Innovation Diffusion Curve (Rogers 1962). (Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Diffusionofdeas.PNG)

ence volume (Kowch 2020) write that when *education* technology is present, formal leadership falls short because formal leaders strive to maintain the status quo so as to avoid uncertainty brought by experimentation. That limits both risk-taking experiments and the adoption of innovations (Uhl-Bein et al. 2007), often reducing digitization to a matter of acquiring expertise that is directed to perform isolated (closed system) transactions without deep consideration of social factors in or beyond a school or education setting. By *leading change as individuals* (with variable practices), formal leaders depend on line management and role specialists believing that the purpose of the university or school is a pipeline for delivering individuals to society in systematic ways, so they wind up with limited success when engaging professions and the larger institutional community so essential to the sustained success of the change (Hargreaves and Shirley 2012).

## *9.2.2 Formal Organization:* **Restricting Adaptive Space for Innovation**

An *organization* is a mental model for a structure that "houses" people doing work together in a "space" where a body of individuals *work* under a defned system of *rules*, *assignments*, procedures, and *relationships* designed to achieve identifable objectives and goals (processes, products) (Greenwald 2008, p. 6). Formal organizations are highly structured, closed bureaucratic system arrangements of specialized people with vertical power responsibilities framed by clear rules/policy within isolated institutions most often acting with formal leaders adopt a closed system (Clegg et al. 2011, p. 148). *People or laborers* in a formal organization are assigned by *position and function* in a vertical hierarchy of functions (as in an organization chart), so their relations are prescribed by reporting lines (up and down). Working across departments, units, and specializations is challenging, if not impossible. For example, professor might have a good idea for a technological innovation to enhance instruction, for example, but because getting the technology information from the Information Technology department on the necessary instructional elements is not part of the IT person's "job" function per se, the instructional innovation stagnates. Post-COVID mandated instructors in universities, for example might fnd that an integrated student/instructor meeting booking system might just improve both learning and instruction, but in formal organizations with IT departments essentially operating out-of-house LMS packages, such an innovation cannot be specifed technically or operationally because teaching is not connected to the design of the learning management system in-house. This formal organization or house is not designed for sharing information and ideas across lines of functional expertise.

 The biggest challenge for next-generation or 21st century organizations in education is that are rather formal *bureaucracies*—an industrial age concept critiqued for separating persons from their offce in organizations characterized by *hierarchical power* and chains of command, *meritocracy*, and *rule-based* decision-making (Marion and Uhl-Bien 2001, 2007). These houses are not designed for the knowledge age, nor are their formal leaders. Bureaucracies like this exist mostly in *formal* organizations where leaders at the top of the organization structure possess *power* "over" people in positions below them and so on (Gu et al. 2018) along a "chain of command" enshrined in the organization structure that is the same if it is "bottom up" or "top down," limiting lateral infuence beyond job functions.

So we argue that formal education organizations are *closed systems that are always restricting heterogeneity or diversity* that is essential for today's innovating organizations. Bureaucracies function to maintain formal organization structures, thus limiting engagement across schools, favoring top-down state investment and dependence on separate experts (i.e., Information Communiction Technology (ICT) experts, educational technologists, policy makers, fnanciers, disciplinarians in STEM) in the *most brittle, change-resistant and unsustainable structures* (Hargreaves and Shirley 2012). A common formal organization response to a lack of capability is to create mini-hierarchies or sub-structures (committees) of assigned experts resulting in organization charts that grow vertically—like Topsy. We need new mindsets to re-imagine collaborative, shared expertise and experimentation (often with digital processes) in more fexible organization forms (less formal) essential in the knowledge era.

*Leading change* in formal organizations means work by formal leaders in bureaucracies shaping cause-effect efforts without consideration of the constantfux environments outside education organizations. So education change leadership amounts, most often to micro level incremental, linear change efforts focused on a manageable part of the organization and not on the whole school, making transformation of that school (digitized or other) *piecemeal and diffcult to sustain* (Reigeluth and Duffy 2008).

Formal organizations are a "house" for digital innovation destined to occur by their very natures across a labyrinth of functions that bind expertise and restrict the space of the possible from often unconscious boundaries around people and by impeding risk-taking, experimentation and innovation, especially in education (Hargreaves and Shirley 2012).

For example, a recent case study (Downing 2018) of educational technology decision-making found a closed-system, power-over mandate from a government offcial to use (adopt) thousands of iPads in national following the top minister's consultation with expert vendors only. Adoption by most professors using the "super app" iPad innovation did not improve instruction, learning, or leadership. This study found that students only had slightly better access to the Internet. The product (learning) and adoption (instruction with iPads) did not change or transform the universities because their utility was only visible as in-house tools with limited connection to the lives and learning found among networks of instructors and students who were simultaneously and differently well-connected to the rest of the world. A new tool in a closed system that is not understood in terms of instruction and learning cultures is not an innovation, it is an adoption.

## **9.3 Informal Leaders in Less Formal Organizations: Creating Adaptive Spaces**

The rapid and continuing development of technology in schools requires a new generation of leaders who to use these new tools to enhance their own productivity and decisionmaking activities and who understand the benefts of integrating technology into learning. (OECD 2016, p. 146)

## *9.3.1 Informal Leadership:* **Doing the Right Things with People, Power, Systems, and Change**

From 1950 to 1970, education leadership theorists realized that the work of educators and learners is not trait-dependent but rather that it is a more interdependent body of activity that is better conceptualized as a blend of *social* systems and human *psychology*. This was the dawn of the *linear information processing* (IP) or *learning systems* epoch when education administration scholars recognized that leadership by top-down actors in vertical power hierarchies depended a lot on specialized labor but also it depended on highly trained people who learn and live outside and inside the organization (Lord and Brown 2001). IP type leaders set goals and interventions to achieve prescribed learning and teaching outcomes as transactions in machine-like processes where **people** are considered *human resource* **assets.** Organizations (schools and universities) welcomed the integration of social dynamics elements to leadership thinking but individual hearts and hopes seemed left out of leader discourse and praxis. During this time, early educational technologists created teaching machines and explored mediated technology-enhanced learning hardware and software as well as instructional conditions.

By 1970, falling short of theory that predicted actual education leadership practice and reality, leadership theorists expanded their homogeneous integration of *social systems*, or team concepts so that leaders could consider values and ethics models as part of their work (Greenfeld 1984), deepening leadership thinking and directing more action toward duties of care. By 1990, leadership scholars added individual ethos, ethics, and social values in less linear educating process models informed as well by critical social theory, leading to *effective schools and instructional leadership* models (Mitchell and Sackney 2011). The result was an improvement on formal leadership, but with a complex social dynamic in education such efforts resulted in school leader overload from tracking people and group performance within only slightly less bureaucratic conceptualizations disguised as instructional leadership (Hargreaves and Fink 2006). Results have been disappointing for years (Cuban 2001). At the same time, education technologists integrated Bandura's social learning into learning environment designs with personal-level computers and constructivist pedagogies.

From 1990 to 2020, more subjective and holistic *open-system* education models emerged for a newer generation of less formal leaders interested in leading from a premise that change is constant within and outside our education institutions. Learning from bio sciences, leadership research is fnding that less formal, *open systems* are like living systems, and that natural scientists have proven that the only stable system on earth is a dead system (Cilliers 2000). So the formal leader/organization goal for stability and steady-state conditions seems a fallacy. Yet formal leadership and organizations still assume stable systems (Fullan 2015). By contrast, leaders in open systems are *aware of their context in the environment, often creating fexible teams spanning* institutions boundaries (Bertalanffy 1968; Kowch 2013). We have learned that open systems are in *constant fux*, so leaders can only understand them in the context of the environment or ecosystem (Gharajadedaghi 2011). This may seem like 'common sense', but few of our education planning, fnance, policy or innovation processes consider more than the old steady-states or linear adoption strategies despite billions spent yearly to achieve 'transformations' at the education institution level. Transforming education organizations today requires far more informal leader approaches with informal "structuring" (organizing) so that change can happen at all—has a chance to happen. Yet look around you and you will fnd bureaucracies and formal leaders of position—galore. Similarly, *living systems* are the kind of open systems that can allow a thriving team (Capra 1997, 2002) to work across role boundaries. Leadership in open systems means managing *upward* or *across* relational elements such as organizations or teams that are, paradoxically, composed of individuals that co-connect (Barabasi 2003) and infuence one another, tending toward far less formal, self*-organizing* with less formal order (p. 57). These connections can be described and understood as networks (Granovetter 1973) of codependent, less isolated people, yet informal leaders are not ad hoc.

Recently, a community *reform/transformation leadership* models have emerged to address the heterogeneity of individuals and people doing more than creating

learning outcomes or stable budgets in the co-dependent work of instruction, including empowering people (Sergiovanni 1989; Leithwood and Jantzi 2005). Again, however we should remember that most research on leading education institution (organization) transformation offers little evidence that such institutional reform thinking has impacted learning achievement (Leithwood and Jantzi 2005), and we have found that reform/transformation leaders, labeled "transformational" leaders, often become "profoundly egoist" with their super-charge to empower employees toward better (Gronn 2002). Transformation *language* has exploded with innovation and change rhetoric where most transformation is actually found to be an incremental change in small subsystems at best (Kowch 2015), and so the term "transformation" remains popular and widely juxtaposed with "change." Less formal leaders in open education organizations, especially those working with digital innovators need a much better concept for leading deep change in education systems. This author considers *transformation* an organizational phenomenon where *the process* (teaching, administration, socializing) of education changes fundamentally, as does the product of education (learning outcomes, social impact). Today, *education technologists are leaders* in expensive "smart" learning, AI, and Big Data-informed learning environment designs for more self-directed, cloud-based, technologysupported infrastructures that may afford a reconfguration of education leader thinking to include innovation and not just the adoption of innovations (Ifenthaler 2017; Spector and Ma 2019).

We must reconceptualize change, leadership and organizations to become better leaders now by evolving our leadership knowledge for a new context. (Levin and Fullan 2008)

This author has proposed a *new, less formal paradigm* for leaders working toward less formal and more integrated education system connecting IT, leadership, change, and learning environment by taking a complexity theory approach to create transformation through *innovation* (Kowch 2018), not transformation by technology adoption. The future of the educational technology subfeld in education could depend on such a shift, because education technologist and leadership theory and practice may be overspecialized and disconnected from learning too much of the time (Kowch 2013b). Today, more *relational* and less formal co-dependent conceptualizations for leading education systems, power, labor, and change inform leaders "coaching" highly connected, *constant-fux education network structures* in more participative learning contexts via more distributed leadership (Hargreaves and Shirley 2012; Harris 2008). This is a refreshing idea for digital innovation team members who attract experts from across the organization for specifc problemsolving and who work outside their traditional 'specialist' boxes to identify and to solve education system innovations that can (and do) change the product and processes in schools and universities in constant fux. However, artifacts of outdated education systems remain so that meritocracies (formal schools) can penalize informal collaboration, constraining people and chances that the organization could transform. We recommend starting digital transformation and organization transformations with informal digital innovation leadership in *teams* carefully designed to operate as subsystems within large formal organizations for this reason. Rome was not built in a day, and it is not structured for radical change—but change can evolve from subsystems experimenting with less formal leadership in more open system teams, skunkworks and cross-disciplinary structures or networks found or already operating within—Rome.

Defning *complex adaptive leadership* (Sect. 9.4), Uhl-Bein et al. (2007) reconfgure how informal leaders understand *power*— as a form of energy to facilitate, orchestrate, and share innovative ideas and outcomes throughout the organization where leader networks generate complex *pro-innovation* environments with complex (but knowable) dynamics and innovations-to-organization transference (p. 315). Less formal *change leaders* are similarly identifed as "fourth way" change leaders who are able to focus on systemic and sustainable change with an inspiring, inclusive, and innovative mission (Hargreaves and Shirley 2012, p. 10), so for these leaders *doing the right thing* means "letting go" a little while building *fexible* organizations (houses) along with capable innovation teams. We need to assure that the "house" is be less formal, less structured so that it can handle change brought by collective innovation in an open network of people with the right knowledge and abilities to experiment and scale up innovation across our education systems today.

## *9.3.2 Informal Organization:* **Creating Adaptive Spaces for Digital Innovation Teams with People, Power, Systems, and Change**

The challenge is to identify alternatives [to bureaucracy] and develop theories that account for them. It is not trivial. How can we improve upon, even replace, such a painstakingly well-developed concept of how human beings collectively best accomplish their objectives? (Child and McGrath 2001, p. 1136)