These documents are work in progress and are therefore not available directly. Much of the work has been adapted for inclusion in the deliverables. Requests for copies of any of these papers should be directed to Jacqui Forsyth in the first instance.
Agostini, A., G. De Michelis, et al.
MILAN-1-10
We describe the main aspects of the Milano system. The three components of the system - namely a Workflow Management System, a Communication Handler and an Organizational Handbook - are sketched. A description of the system architecture points out how the enabled mail technology can provide multiple levels of openess. Directions of future research are sketched at the end of the paper.
Agostini, A., G. deMichelis, et al.
MILAN-1-7
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has been proposed as a new approach to facing the challenge of improving the quality of a business process while reducing its costs. Workgroup computing systems can be considered as the best candidates for BPR, since they aim to improve the effectiveness of the group of people collaborating within a work process. In particular workflow management systems seem to offer the best support to a reengineered business process.
In this paper we report on a case of BPR. It consists in the application to a real bank procedure of both a new approach to the analysis of work processes (allowing the evaluation of its transaction costs) and a prototype of a Workflow Management System (WMS), allowing an effective handling of procedure breakdowns without forcing the designers to take care of them.
Agostini, A., G. D. Michelis, et al.
MILAN-1-8
In this paper a framework for the conceptual modelling of organizational contexts is provided and it is embodied into an extension of the TOSCA organizational handbook.
The context of a work process is relevant since the effectiveness of the cooperation between its actors is highly dependent on their awareness of it. It requires, on the one hand, that the context is made available in terms of visibility and/or transparency; on the other, that at any time a selection is made so that only what is relevant to the context is provided, leaving the rest in the background. With respect to the first requirement a model of the organizational context is needed, so that all the information regarding the other dimensions can be linked together. With respect to the second requirement, a work process model provides some guidelines for designing a system offering a selective access to the context of a work process. The workspace metaphor is a good paradigm to make that information ready at hand; it is also a good way to access the context of an electronic work space. Moreover the interrelations between different organizational contexts, e.g. between different project contexts, or between a project and a particular task context, or between a project and the surrounding formal organization context, are outlined.
Bannon, L. and K. Kuutti
RISØ-OULU-1-1
The paper reviews the discussion around organisational memory, criticises naive assumptions about the nature of memory usually tacitly adapted and used , and outlines an alternative, more grounded direction.
Bowers, J.
MAN-1-11
This document comprises a brief conference report of CSCW '94, Chapel Hill, NC, USA together with the paper the author presented at that conference and which was published in the conference proceedings. This paper is a revised version of MAN-1-5.
Bowers, J., W. Sharrock, et al.
MAN-1-13
This paper examines the status of 'models' of work, interaction and organizational context in CSCW. After briefly reviewing some of the various positions which have been taken in CSCW and allied fields with respect to modelling, simulation and similar enterprises, the chapter argues that the status of models (etc) should be made a practical concern and a topic for empirical investigation rather than protracted epistemological, theoretical or methodological debate. Under this aegis, a field study is reported of an organization in the print industry, examining a workflow system introduced to the shopfloor. We detail the indigenous methods by which members order their work, contrast this with the order provided by the system, and describe how members have attempted to accommodate the two. Although it disrupted shopfloor work, the system's use was a contractural requirement on the organization to make its services accountable. This suggests workflow systems can sometimes be seen as technologies for organizational ordering and accountability. We conclude that the status of models of work and organizational context needs to be understood in relation to the purposes of the modelling enterprise and how it might go about satisfying those. The implications of this purpose-relevant understanding of 'models' are explored in relation to CSCW requirements which, specifically, should acknowledge the exigencies and organizational status of CSCW technologies which embody models of work (such as workflow systems).
Bowers, J., W. Sharrock, et al.
MAN-1-12
This paper reports fieldwork from an organization in the print industry, examining a workflow system introduced to the shopfloor. We detail the indigenous methods by which members order their work, contrast this with the order provided by the system, and describe how members have attempted to accommodate the two. Although it disrupted shopfloor work, the system's use was a contractural requirement on the organization to make its services accountable. This suggests workflow systems can often be seen as technologies for organizational ordering and accountability. We conclude that CSCW requirements should acknowledge such exigencies and the organizational status of workflow technologies.
De Michelis, G.
MILAN-1-9
In this paper the service paradigm is used to analyze and characterize work processes and their complexity. A work process, from this point of view, is characterized by the communicative relations binding its participants and embedding their performances. The complexity of work processes is then related to organizational design issues, to the empowerment of professional skills and to the computer support systems capable of helping people to manage the complexity of their work effectively. The approach to change management that underlies this paper renovates the Socio-technical System Design Methods, allowing them to fully exploit the potential of existing Information and Communication Technology.
Favorin, M.
OULU-1-6
Instead of being an isolated activity reserved for classroom settings, learning is nowadays thought to be a central part of productive working activity. The growing use of information technology at work is a potential resource to support these learning needs. However, the needs, constrains, and technological alternatives of learning support at work differ from those of school learning and thus it might be beneficial not to restrict support for learning at work to the same modes as in schools. To find out some suggestions how collaborative learning should be supported especially in working environments, some elements of collaborative learning are discussed with the help of Activity theory, and six requirements for learning support are identified. These requirements are suggestions to support the construction of learning community around the work, to support continuous and collective reflexivity, and to support creation of novel solutions and improvement of work as well as that the support system should be a boundary object, embedded in the working support system, and modifiable.
In many projects of collaborative learning technology there has been an attempt to move schoolwork to resemble more "real" work or real scientific work or to connect these two worlds and their people, and therefore it is a potential area where examples of implementation of the requirements identified could be found. Another area is working support systems, which also might meet some of the requirements. These areas are discussed according to the requirements identified. Finally, promising future direction is outlined.
Favorin, M.
OULU-1-7
Instead of being an isolated activity reserved for classroom settings, learning is nowadays thought to be a central part of productive working activity. The growing use of information technology at work is a potential resource to support these - often collaborative - learning needs. However, it might be beneficial not to restrict support for collaborative learning at work to the same modes as in schools. To find out some suggestions how collaborative learning might be supported in working environments, some elements of learning are discussed and six requirements for learning support are identified.
Hughes, J., D. Randall, et al.
LANCS-1-4
The notion of `organisational memory' has gained considerable currency in recent years, largely because it proposes a model for dealing with a series of intransigent organizational problems. However, the notion that the myriad practices which constitute the record keeping, accounting, auditing, training, etc activities of the organisation are made transparent by the gloss of organizational memory is, for us, deeply problematic.
This paper explores and evaluates the foundations of the notion of Organisational Memory drawing upon findings from ethnographic fieldwork undertaken within commercial organisations and offers the notion of 'organisational remembering' as an alternative means of formulating such a notion.
Kuutti, K. and M. Favorin
OULU-1-5
In groupware research and development one of the central themes has been to use the computer to create a "shared view" or a "shared workspace", and a large number of experimental systems have been built to support distributed real-time collaboration by enabling participants to perceive the same objects, point to, mark, annotate or edit specific items in the workspace. Most of the shared workspace research assumes tacitly that sharing the information in the workspace is unproblematic and that the participants already (without much explaining or negotiation) have a "shared interpretation", that they "know" what the workspace contains and so they can concentrate on pointing, editing, etc. This tacit assumption has been criticized by many recent researchers. It has been pointed out that the assumption can hold only in special cases using a face-to-face discussion, but normally the creation and maintenance of that shared interpretation can become an issue and a problem in a distributed environment.
The paper uses an example of radiological conferences in studying the issue and shows that even in a case of intensive face-to-face work situation the creation of a shared interpretation can be an issue and a problem, and that a special intermediate class of tools is needed to facilitate it if the conference is distributed over a local network.
Kuutti, K., J. Virkkunen, et al.
OULU-1-4
The debate around BPR is shortly reviewed. It is found that "business processes" seem not be sufficient as basic units in organisational analysis and development, and several researchers are demanding, that this unit should be expanded.
The paper presents one possibility to replace "business process" with a broader and theoretically more firm alternative, namely "work activity.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-16
The organization information server is designed as a service provider within an environment of applications which support cooperative work.
This paper describes describes the design of an organization browser which enables users to search and browse the organizational information. This is followed by a description of the interaction between a task management system and the server. The task management system can be regarded as a representative CSCW application, because it supports unstructured and structured cooperative work by the provision of mechanisms which allow its users to decide on the amount of control they want to enforce in the cooperative work.
The flexibility of the task management system makes it furthermore applicable for the coordinated distributed administration of the organizational information server. The appropriate concept for the synergetic interaction between both applications is described in the final section.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-14
This paper presents the OIS architecture followed by a description of the services offered by the OIS information server, to access and manage the organizational model and information.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-15
This paper considers the implementation and management of the Tosca organization information server.
First, the implementation of the organizational information server is described. Then, an organization object model design tool is described. Finally, the process and experiences with the acquisition of organizational information are reported.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-12
This paper presents a modelling framework which provides the basis for organizational information modelling in a cooperative environment. Additionally, it provides the foundation for the information model of the organizational information system called Tosca (The Organization information System for Cooperation support Applications), developed in the course of the COMIC project.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-11
This paper starts with a brief introduction into the X.500 Directory which concentrates on the Directory Information Model and Directory Services. The second section, presents how an organization can be represented. This section starts with a review of the description means provided by the standard for that purpose, which is followed by recommendations for the application of these means for an appropriate modelling and representation of various kinds of organizational forms. The concluding analysis section considers separately the representation methods, the functionality, and the administration means provided by the X.500 standard.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-13
(Prinz, 1995c)describes the definition elements for the three building blocks of the OIS object model: organization objects, relationship objects, event objects. This chapter contains a general consideration about the modelling domains of organizational information and then the object class schema for each building block will be presented. Only a general outline and examples for the schema will be provided as a complete description of all object classes needed for a comprehensive organization modelling would exceed the framework of this work. The aim of the proposed schema is the provision of a toolkit that can be adopted to different organizational settings.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-17
This paper presents work in the field of organizational knowledge representation and organizational information servers. The selection concentrates on work that has been presented in the CSCW research area, but suitable work from other areas is considered, too. Based on the intended application and purpose, the presented work can be grouped into two different categories: organizational analysis and CSCW user or system support.
Prinz, W.
GMD-1-10
This paper identifies a set of requirements for an organization information system (OIS). In (Prinz, 1995) these requirements will be used to evaluate related systems for the suitability as an OIS for CSCW applications.
Prinz, W., T. Rodden, et al.
LANCS-1-3
In conjunction with the general development of CSCWas a research area a wide variety of software systems have emerged to support cooperative work. Particular applications include shared editors, audio/video-conferencing, group design tools, co-authoring systems, work-flow systems and message-based conferencing. The diversity in the level of support, focus and view of cooperation across this collection of disparate applications is vast. Yet many researchers have attempted to find a common underlying model that can be used to describe such applications and, ultimately, to construct a range of new ones. These models frequently provide a notation or language for "configuring" applications which can then be interpreted by a general purpose underlying system. The goal of a system that supports a wide variety of cooperative uses is a worthy one. However, the idea that all applications can be built to a single common model is extremely restrictive to future design and it is therefore likely that a multiplicity of approaches and applications will persist.
Rodden, T., J. O'Brien, et al.
LANCS-1-2
The cooperative use of information plays a central role in many work settings. As this information becomes increasingly electronic applications require facilities that promote cooperative access to shared information. This is particularly true as users browse repositories of information. A need exists to discover new ways of presenting this information to users. It is equally important that these new facilities are informed from an understanding of the use of information. This chapter turns to the use of documents as a means of understanding the use of shared information within organisations. The pertinent features of documents are outlined before a field study examining the ways in which users access shared information is presented. The results of the field study are used to directly inform the development of a novel set of information visualisation techniques. Rather than focus on discovering the location of information the visualisation facilities focus on finding others through the document and the sharing of the document within the context of the organisational setting.
Rouncefield, M., S. Viller, et al.
LANCS-1-1
Ethnographic studies of CSCW have often seemed to involve the investigation of relatively large scale and highly specific systems; consequently ignoring the small office within which many people spend much of their working lives and which is a major site for the introduction and implementation of IT. This paper is concerned with a `quick and dirty' ethnographic study of a small office that was considering the introduction of greater levels of IT. The process of work in a small office and its recurrent features; notably the massive volume of paperwork; the importance of local knowledge in the accomplishment of work; and the phenomenon of `constant interruption'; are outlined as generic features of office work. This paper suggests that despite the obvious contrasts with work settings analysed in other ethnographic studies, similar features of cooperative work can be observed in the small office and that the issues of cooperation and the sociality of work cannot be forgotten about even in small scale system design.
Serra, A.
UPC-1-4
The goals of the ethnographic work done in this research project have been the same of the rest of ethnografic work in COMIC: to analyse how a particular co-operative system works to give insights about how better CSCW systems can be designed. Yet we have adopted a different approach, instead of analyse what kind of CSCW would need a type of work, we have studied what kind of work produces a computer network with CSCW tools like a conferencing system.
A first result of COMIC has been producing "A Conceptual Framework for Describing Organisations" around the question :"What is an organisation?". One of the COMIC conclusions is that the organisations increasingly are been transformed from a "bureaucratically controlled workplaces" to a more "network learning organisations" (K.Kuutti &J.Virkkunen, 1994). We went a step further and we have analysed what we call "an organisational network", a computer and telecommunications network with organisational roles. I*EARN is the case study for that.
Virkkunen, J. and K. Kuutti
OULU-1-9
The paper studies the expansive transition from individual, tradition bound knowledge work to a new, problem oriented, experimental type of knowledge work in teams. It is argued that there are different historical types of knowledge work based on qualitatively different concepts of knowledge and expertise. The expansive transition from individual work to team work became possible only after the group of inspectors had begun to work out this common instrument and to analyze a broad problem area using the new instrument, but the change process has also led to new connections across organizational boundaries, to new principles of division of labor and to
new rules of work.
"activity systems"
Virkkunen, J. and K. Kuutti
OULU-1-8
Despite the popularity of research on "organisational learning" there is little coherence, concensus or cumulative progress. To explain this the paper identifies four major problem areas: the use of organisation as the unit of analysis, the abstract and ahistorical mode of analysis, the
assumption that learning mechanisms are universal and insufficient differentiation between spontaneous and conscious learning. The paper argues that by moving the focus from "organisational learning" to "learning in activity systems" many of the problems of research can be alleviated. The paper presents a conceptualisation of learning in organisations based on Activity Theory, and illustrates the usefulness of such formulations by studying a case example where an organisation moves from bureaucratically organised work towards a network organisation.