Unlearning, relearning, and reactivation in times of rapid change and crisis: the case of electric utilities

Purpose Society faces significant challenges, including the climate crisis, energy crisis and war in Europe, where electric utilities play a crucial role. This paper aims to explore how employees at electric utilities unlearn and relearn in response to past and future crises and times of rapid change. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on seven focus group interviews with electric utility companies in Sweden in 2024–2025. It includes a total of 26 employees in various roles within the organizations. The interviews explore both the energy crisis experiences in 2022–2023 and future scenarios, focusing on opportunities and challenges related to the household customer segment. Findings Employees identify the need for new approaches, communication and collaboration within and between organizations. They reveal the complexity of ensuring a functioning electricity system while handling issues of sustainability, security and reliability amid changing expectations and new technical prerequisites. At the same time, uncertain boundaries between different stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities, lack of trust and limited analytical capacity constitute constraints for learning, complicating the ability to act. Originality/value Contributions include scrutinizing how socially critical actors navigate in and for an uncertain world. The authors show how employees learn in periods marked by crisis and rapid change and present four dimensions of multi-relational learning characterized by employees’ interactions: intra-organizational, inter-sectoral, cross-sectoral and citizen-organizational. Furthermore, the authors introduce the concept of “reactivation” to bring theoretical nuance, highlighting how relearning may involve mobilizing dormant or forgotten practices.