Office Automation & Intranets

Clarke, R. J (2001) L909-03: 1

Office Automation & Intranets

BUSS 909

Lecture 3Computer Supported

Cooperative Work (CSCW) & Groupware

Clarke, R. J (2001) L909-03: 2

Notices 1

New Tut Monday 3:30-4:30 MicroLabs 2effective next week- those who are not yet in

a tutorial need to fill in the tutorial sheet being circulated

notes will be on the Intranet so that you can see what this tutorial is about

use your assignment topic as a means for improving your search skills

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Notices 3

Must provide me with your topic for Assignment 1- nowa list is being circulated- duplicate

topics will be changedin this tutorial we will consider research

techniques using search engines and also describe how they work

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Agenda

Define CSCW; distinguishing it from traditional OA; Identifying some metaphors which drive the researchBannon et al (1988) Reading #15;Nunamaker et al (1991) reading #17

Distinction between CSCW in Europe and Groupware in the USAGrudin (1991) Reading #16

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CSCW Rationale & DefinitionBannon et al (1988) Reading #15

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Defining Cooperative Work

cooperative workintra- and inter-organisational, or even

outside of formal organisationsmay even include non-hierarchical, non-

specialist, relatively autonomous worknot really a separate field in IS, more a shift

in IS theoretical perspective or worldview (Weltanschauuung) away from automation (as in OA) and towards group support

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Theoretical Reasons

deficiencies and errors in the rational model of organisationsthe rational model of organisations is

the theoretical foundation of most Management Information Systems (MIS) and Decision Support Systems (DSS)

contributes to the large number of IS failures

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Critique of Rational Orgs. Model

realisation that the creation and use of IS technologies in organisations is political in nature (not exclusively technical):sharing of information via DB involves

negotiation between parties with entrenched interests (social emphasis)

awareness of non-objective issues in systems analysis, design, implemention and use (not physical science but design practice)

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CSCW Rationale & DefinitionWrong Emphasis in OA (1)

using rational model of organisations, IS developers see the office as:a well-structured environmentworkers carry out tasks using clearly

defined procedures

IS developers the attempt to ‘automate the office’ by recreating existing or new procedures

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Wrong Emphasis in OA (2)

IS designers model office work by using information-flow diagrams

unfortunately these techniques do not capture much of what goes on in offices

replacing people with systems does not work as intended- need to shift to supporting office work

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Understanding Office Environments (1)

new view is that offices are social communities where work is accomplished through social interactions of office members

the social nature of office work, previously overlooked and misunderstood, has been revealed using ethnographic studies of office environments

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Understanding Office Environments (2)

these new studies show the central role of human communication:especially in synchronising work activitiesjointly determining exemptionson-going, sustaining mutual interaction to

enable behaviour of workers to be mutually understandable

new studies employ sociology, anthropology and ethnography

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Improved Coordination in Offices

close coupling of what were separate systems requires good computerized cooperation and control systems

management has become very interested in extending computer coordination into non-traditional types of systems (eg. e-mail etc)

this entails some risks- eg. The Coordinator, and gIBIS systems

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Technological Advances

leverage off new technologies (eg. PC based workstations and networks)

provision of better application softwareextension of ‘shrinkwrapped software’

with powerful, although often proprietary, scripting langauges eg. Visual Basic for Applications or VBA

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CSCW Rationale & Definition Human/Computer Interaction

significant increase in HCI activityattempts made to extend beyond the

human-machine dyad to look at human-computer-human interactions

new, but still undeveloped, theoretical extensions to group interfaces, organisational interfaces, software ergonomics, social ergonomics

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Defining Cooperative WorkSome Doubts (1)

CSCW and Group work sounds so reasonable- but a number of researchers have expressed doubts about the concept

Bannon et al (1988) believe that uneasiness with this concept is due to the assumption that:groups have shared goalsdoes not recognise the socio-political nature of

workplaces

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Defining Cooperative WorkSome Doubts (2)

even if we accept the need for socio-political approaches to organisation- how can this theory be developed

IS researchers don’t have the background in these areas, and social scientists don’t have the background in IS- need hybrid researchers

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CSCW -vs- GroupwareGrudin (1991) Reading #16

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CSCW -vs- Groupware

some of the difficulties IS academics have in being able to accept CSCW, are based on the fact that the North American version of it- Groupware- looks similar to what is going on at the moment

historically CSCW predates Groupware

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CSCW -vs- Groupware

CSCW is based research into organisational and social aspects of IT/IS

the difference is that Europe has developed theorised approaches to work in organisations

North American researchers are much more interested in technical fetish to ask why should these ideas be developed

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CSCW -vs- Groupware

CSCW has its roots historically in the socio-technical movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the Scandinavian work redesign projects of the 1970s and 1980s

much of this work started being more widely known in North America during the 1980s by Rob Kling (a well respected North American IS researcher)

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CSCW -vs- Groupware

European research was interested in internal, in-house developments- systems to address organisational needs

North American research should also be interested in this- as most IS development is done in that part of the world

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CSCW -vs- Groupware

instead the development of Groupware in USA, has been geared around off-the-shelf software products, shrinkwrap software:collaborative authorship systemsmeeting management systemselectronic mail

much research motivated and funded by big software houses!

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CSCW -vs- Groupware

North American researchers view the Groupware push as incremental development of existing software products - supporting groups

European researchers view CSCW as a way of developing entirely new approaches to explain how work is performed by groups of people in organisations

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Groupware Applications Nunamaker et al (1991) Reading #17

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Groupware Applications

“Almost every time there is a genuinely important decsison to be made in an organisation, a group is assigned to make it- or at least counsel and advise the individual who must make it”

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Nunamacker et al paper is rather typical of North American interest in CSCW/Groupware specifically and IS research in generalemploys quantitatively informed research

modelsresearch modesl are confused with theoretical

foundationsthe general approach emphasises managerial

uses

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whilst representing itself as being interested in organisations- you would expect sociological approaches- the tradition being drawn from is profoundly asocial- ie. organisational behaviour- psychological

attributes of individuals are being mapped uncritically onto organisations- eg. group memory

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where group processes are elluded to, psychological justifications are used to explain them

eg. domination becomes an individual (managers) attribute

folk psychological categories are elevated to the level of theoretical categories- information overload

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not surprising that in emphasising the kinds of technologies that they do

weakly justifications are used to argue that this is Groupware- in fact one of these systems was used to talk about Group Decision Support Systems (gDSS)

in North American IS there is little difference between these!

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CSCW Development MetaphorsBannon et al (1988) Reading #15

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CSCW Development MetaphorsTools, Medium & Panopticon

Bannon et al (1988) assert that there are three types of metaphors which influence the theory of CSCW:computers as toolscomputers as mediumcomputer as panopticon

we will describe each in turn- but we should be careful in using them...

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CSCW Development MetaphorsProblematic Categories

in principle these are dubious or problematic categories- as some research spans all three metaphors

even traditional approaches may employ one or more of these metaphors (eg. Bjorn-Andersen has used the panopticon metaphor to explain traditional IS development practices)

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CSCW Development MetaphorsTool Metaphor (Ehn and Colleagues)

Bannon et al (1988) assert that the so-called tool metaphor has been and is important in forming assumptions concerning CSCW

developed by Pelle Ehn (1987) and others from Denmark

based on considerable work redesign studies of changes to the print industry

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CSCW Development MetaphorsTool Metaphor (Ehn and Colleagues)

make systems that make the user in control of work processesleads to the creation of systems that are

like toolboxesdifficulty of this metaphor is that most

tools are developed for single users!the challenge is to make systems that are

useful to groups of related users rather than single users

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CSCW Development MetaphorsCommunication Medium (Flores; Goldkuhl)

launguage as action perspectives view the computer as a communications mediumthis has created interesting language

centred approaches like ActionWorkflow and DEMO

focuses on how computers are used as a communications channel to support group interaction

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CSCW Development MetaphorsCommunication Medium (Flores; Goldkuhl)

this metaphor does not, help us understand how the computer distorts and changes our understanding of the world

despite the fact that it should- the problematic issue with the approach is that it is not a reflexive or critical one!

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CSCW Development MetaphorsComputers as Media (Andersen; Holmqvist)

related to the computers as communication media, is an approach which considers the computer as media

unlike the former approach this one does not use or suffer from the adoption of a transmission model of telecommunication (Shannon & Weaver)

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CSCW Development MetaphorsComputers as Media (Andersen; Holmqvist)

Traditional Media images/paintings video (linear) photography print media

:

Computer Media raster & vector graphics digital video (linear & non-linear) virtual reality hypertext

:

this related metaphor sees computer applications as new kinds of media just like other kinds of media we are familiar with:

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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault; Bentham)

19th C. British architect Jeremy Bentham developed the design for a jail called the panopticon

the panopticon consisted of a ring of prison cells which had only one window which looked toward the centre of the structure

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prisoners could not see each other, their view obstructed by the observation turret

the observation turret was covered with one-way mirrors so that while the prison guard could see the prisoner, the prsioner could not see the guard

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The Central Turret is clad using one way mirrorsThe prison Guard can see prisoners, but prisoners can never see the guardAll a prisoner sees is theire own reflection!

Central Turret, where the prison guard can watch each of the prison cells

Prison cells

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the clever(!) aspect of the design of Benthams prison is that a prisoner can never be sure if they are being observed by the prison guard

they cannot even be sure if the guard is present,

so the prisoner must assume that they are being observed every moment

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Michel Foucault (French philosopher) used Bentham’s prison as a model of surveillence in western society

the enactment of discipline upon people is most successful when they are forced to do it to themselves!

Bjorn-Andersen extended this idea of surveillence to understand IS in organisations

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the organisation of work is increasingly interdependent on IS

the performance of each individual in an organisation becomes more ‘transparent’

when one workers tasks depend on others, a great peer pressure can be exerted to accomplish the task- the same as the panopticon!

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the result may be that the IS increases the transparency of work to the level where nothing much gets done

ironically the very systems designed to facilitate work, may do the exact opposite users will be adverse to risk taking or refuse

to experiment with learning different ways of performing workpractices

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because CSCW systems are about group cooperation, they along with OA systems, may increase the risk of creating panopticons for workers in organisations

may also risk worker-managers relationships (prisoner-jailers)

this metaphor may be typical of many IS, not just CSCW systems

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Next Week

we will start discussing the enabling technologies that is used in OA and CSCW/Groupware Week 4: Media and Document

Architectures- changing nature of communication in organisations

Week 5 SGML- one of the technologies that forms the heart of HTML and XML!

Documents

Office Automation & Intranets