“This is not a cake recipe”: Historicity as an element for the understanding and transformation of a waste management activity at a university hospital in Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes the potential of interventions based on historicity for organizational learning. Intervention methodologies that include the exploration of past executions allow projecting future changes in an activity. A study of the Change Laboratory on the waste management activity was carried out with a group of 20 workers from different areas in a university hospital in Brazil. After 12 intervention sessions based on three types of historicity (history in movement, history of memory recovery and history to build the present), participants perceived that the organization of the activity had been insufficient to meet the demands of the hospital and society. The present historicity in the learning experience allowed participants to be aware of themselves and the importance of waste management. This process occurred both from a functional and a social point of view. Likewise, the study revealed the rejection of the participants towards ready recipes for waste management in their hospital.