Information technology has been used in organisational settings and for organisational purposes such as accounting, for a half century, but IT is now increasingly being used for the purposes of mediating and regulating complex activities in which multiple professional users are involved, such as in factories, hospitals, architectural offices, and so on. The economic importance of such coordination systems is enormous but their design often inadequate. The problem is that our understanding of the coordinative practices for which these systems are developed is deficient, leaving systems developers and software engineers to base their designs on commonsensical requirements analyses. The research reflected in this book addresses these very problems. It is a collection of articles which establish a conceptual foundation for the research area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Brings together both classic and less well known articles on the phenomena of cooperative work and coordinative practices Provides critical elements of the conceptual foundation of CSCW Includes research carried out in a number of European institutions

Klappentext
The development of computing technologies have from the very beginning been tightly interwoven with the development of cooperative work, but over the last couple of decades, computing technologies are increasingly being developed and used for coordinative purposes, as a means of regulating complex activities involving multiple professional actors, in factories and hospitals, in pharmaceutical laboratories and architectural offices, and so on. The economic importance of the applications of these coordination technologies is enormous but their design often inadequate. The problem is that our understanding of the coordinative practices, for which these coordination technologies are being developed, is quite deficient, leaving systems designers and software engineers to base their system designs on rudimentary technologies. The research reflected in this book addresses these very problems. The book contains a series of articles that has played an important role in establishing the conceptual foundations of the research area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). These articles are complemented by four new chapters in which CSCW's research program is subjected to critical examination and clarification.

Inhalt
Preface.- Part I: Progress Report.- Cooperative work and coordinative practices.- Part II: Surveying the connections.- Riding a tiger, or CSCW(1991).- Taking CSCW seriously (1992).- The organisation of cooperative work (1994).- Coordination mechanisms (1996).- Of maps and scripts (1997).- The critical role of workplace studies in CSCW (2000).- The problem with 'awareness' (2002).- Remarks on the complexity of cooperative work (2002).- Ordering systems (2004).- Part III: CSCW reconsidered.- Formation and Fragmentation.- Frail foundations.- Dispelling the mythology of computational artifacts.- References.- Index.