Unlearning and public services -A case study with a Vygotskian approach

All successful public service innovations require learning and just as importantly and often more deeply, unlearning. This research investigates the unlearning of health professionals focusing on the issue of why and how unlearning happens at an individual level for health care professions in the transition from product logic to service-dominant logic at Tampere University Hospital in Finland. We applied a qualitative single case study method, a problem-centred unlearning framework with a narrative approach, which facilitates understanding of how the informants perceived the service transition process. We identified three distinct unlearning narratives, and we recognised barriers and enablers to unlearning in the health care service culture and context and suggest ways in which these might be overcome. Results of the study shows that deep and radical change in public health care services is possible, by applying distributed leadership and allowing individual actors time for reflections, mind-wandering, listening and learning from users and discourse between professionals.