Isabel Alexandra Brandenberger

• Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra & Mäkitalo, Åsa (2025). Care with assistive technologies: professional responsibility when learning to navigate the unforeseen in homecare services. Journal of Workplace Learning. ISSN 1366-5626. doi: 10.1108/JWL-05-2024-0111. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Purpose This study aims to explore how responsibility is managed by an interprofessional team of healthcare professionals when unforeseen challenges in the use of assistive technologies in homecare raise concerns for care. Design/methodology/approach An ethnographic approach was used to study the daily work of integrating assistive technologies into homecare services. By observing 27 interprofessional team meetings, this paper investigated how challenges in using these technologies for specific cases were handled collectively through professional discussions. Sociomaterial and practice-theoretical perspectives were used to analyze actors and relations expressed as healthcare professionals discussed their concerns, and how responsibilities were reconsidered in ongoing patient care. Findings In analyzing the meeting discussions, this paper found that unforeseen challenges put the professional responsibility of the healthcare team at stake in knowing how to respond. This paper found that healthcare workers collectively managed distributed responsibilities by a) reviewing specific user cases and b) reconsidering responsibilities. This paper propose that this “responsibility work” and the care for entanglements it entails contribute to the stabilization of homecare service practices by embedding the use of technology in the constantly changing health needs of users. Originality/value This article proposes the notion of responsibility work as a constitutive part of practitioners’ knowing and learning at work in complex organizations under digital transformation. In such work, the complexities stemming from emerging concerns and specific entanglements are collaboratively managed as matters of care through professional discussions in situated workplace practices.

• Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra; Hasu, Mervi & Nerland, Monika (2023). Integrating technology with work practices in primary care: Challenges to sustainable organizing "from within". Learning Organization. ISSN 0969-6474. doi: 10.1108/TLO-01-2023-0009. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Purpose This paper aims to generate a better understanding of how challenges and opportunities for sustainable change during digitalization relate to the organizing work of change agents mandated to facilitate technology adoption from within local work organizations. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the work of welfare technology coordinators, health-care professionals who are mandated to facilitate the use of technologies in home-based services in a Norwegian city. Data comprise ethnographic observations of meetings and work practices, interviews and documents collected over one year. A practice-based approach was applied to analyze how the welfare technology coordinators go about integrating technologies with the work practices, and the forms of negotiations this work implies in their work community. Findings The analysis identified four sets of practices in the coordinators’ work: exploring and integrating new technologies into work practices, legitimizing aims and values, formalizing routines and responsibilities and critically considering existing and envisioned service practices. Through these practices, emerging problems and disconnections in the service organization were attended to in a continuous manner. Originality/value The study contributes to the literature by examining the work of internal change agents mandated to facilitate multiple and simultaneous technology adoption and demonstrates the importance of recognizing the continuous efforts and negotiations of these agents as significant to sustainable organizing.

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• Nerland, Monika & Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra (2025). Hva krever digitaliseringen av helsearbeidere? Full text in Research Archive
• Nerland, Monika; Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra; Sadorge, Christopher; Dæhlen, Åsmund & Aanestad, Margunn (2024). Hva krever digitaliseringen av helsearbeidere og ledere? Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Digitaliseringen av helsetjenestene i kommunen endrer både jobben som skal gjøres og kompetansen som kreves. I denne formidlingskonferansen presenterte forskere i CORPUS-prosjektet resultater under to tematiske bolker: 1) Hva innebærer digitaliseringen for ansatte i tjenestene? 2) Hva er implikasjonene for ledelse av utviklingsprosjekter og endringer i arbeidsmiljøene? Resultatene ble kommentert og diskutert med forskere og representanter for aktuelle praksisfelt.

• Nerland, Monika; Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra & Hasu, Mervi (2023). Relational meta-work emerging during technology integration in primary care. Full text in Research Archive
• Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra; Hasu, Mervi & Nerland, Monika (2022). Reorganising practices in digitalising primary health services: The concerns of welfare technology coordinators. Full text in Research Archive
• Hasu, Mervi; Nerland, Monika & Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra (2022). Hvordan endrer velferdsteknologi arbeid og kompetanse i tjenestene? Presentasjon av foreløpige forskningsresultater og interaktiv seminar. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Forskningsprosjektet CORPUS utvikler kunnskap om kompetansebehov og læring i helsesektoren ved å gjennomføre nærstudier av hvordan digitalisering fører til endringer i arbeidsorganisering og oppgavefordeling, hvilke kompetanser som trengs for å takle disse utfordringene, og hvilke læringsmuligheter som tilbys i det daglige arbeidet. Innføring og bruk av velferdsteknologi i Oslo kommune har vært et hovedområde for forskningen, med bydel N.N. som en sentral samarbeidspartner. CORPUS-prosjektet er nå midtveis i sin finansieringsperiode, og vi avslutter datainnsamlingen denne våren. Vi vil presentere de foreløpige observasjonene og funnene om (1) hvordan arbeidet i tjenestene endres med implementering og bruk av velferdsteknologi, og (2) hva endringene betyr for organisering av arbeidet, arbeidsroller og kompetansekrav. I tillegg vil vi gjerne (3) høre dine synspunkter og kommentarer, og diskutere hvilke funn som er mest relevante å fokusere mer på i den gjenværende prosjektperioden.

• Brandenberger, Isabel Alexandra & Hasu, Mervi (2021). Implementing technologies as renegotiating of responsibilities: a study of the emerging work role of the welfare technology coordinator in municipal health care. Full text in Research Archive

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