Management organisation theory within CSCW

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Management / organisation theory within CSCW

• Based on slides originally prepared by Magnus
  Ramage

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Experiences of management

• Characteristics of good management
• Communication
• Leadership (not necessarily individual)
• Good structure
• Shared vision / common goals
• Encouraging staff development
• Characteristics of bad management
• Lack of the above!
• Inconsistency
• Over-strong leadership

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Taking a systemic perspective (1)
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Taking a systemic perspective (2)

• A set of inter-related components organised
  together to form an entity that, as a whole, has
  emergent properties that belong to no single
  component or subset of the components of which it
  is formed (Paul Lewis, 1994, Information-Systems
  Development)
• example of emergence riding a bicycle
• Thus the concept of socio-technical systems
  those which contain both social and technical
  aspects
• CSCW systems must be considered in this way
  (hence the onion)

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Participatory design (1)

• Involving users in the design process
• Good for organisations (helps buy-in)
• Good for workers (more control over work)
• Good for designers (more assurance their work
  will be used)
• Also often connected with industrial democracy -
  Scandinavian approach
• Quite threatening in hierarchical firms!
• Politics power issues crucial

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Participatory design (2)

• Principles (Greenbaum Kyng, Design at Work,
  1991)
• need for designers to take work practice
  seriously
• we are dealing with human actors, not
  cut-and-dried human factors
• work tasks must be seen within their context, and
  are thus situated actions
• work is fundamentally social, involving extensive
  cooperation and communication

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Participatory design (3)

• Some PD techniques
• Cardboard Computing
• Iterative / cooperative prototyping
• PICTIVE
• Evaluation Through Redesign
• Future Workshops
• Wizard of Oz (related)

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Plastic Interface for Collaborative Technology
Initiatives through Video Exploration

• Combines low tech design components with high
  tech video recordings
• Plastic icons are employed on a design surface
  and a video record is made
• Individual expertise is recognised - users on
  job/task scenarios, developers on system
  components
• shared concrete visualisation and social record

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Mintzbergs Organisational Structures

• 5 basic structures 1 simple,2 machine
  bureaucracy, 3 professional bureaucracy, 4
  divisionalised forum, 5 ad hocracy.
• 5 mechanisms a mutual adjustment, b direct
  supervision, c standardisation of work processes,
  d of outputs, e of skill
• 5 organisation parts A operating core, B middle
  line, C strategic top, D technostructure, E
  support staff
• (from Henry Mintzbergs Structure in Fives,
  Prentice-Hall, 1983.)

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5 examples

• 1 - Small company, one boss only, little or no
  D,E small A (able to react quickly)
• 2 - Automobile manufacturer, c, large D,
  uncreative A and B
• 3 - university, hospital, a b -gt e, large E,
  small B and D
• 4 - multi-national, conglomeration of 2s or
  layer 4s then 2s
• 5 - consulting firm or specialised technical
  firm, c,d,e not possible, a - mode of muddling
  through, teamwork among equals, project based

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Knowledge management and organisational memory

• What do organisations know and remember?
• How can we capture this?
• How can we preserve it for the future?
• Knowledge gt data
• can be tacit as well as explicit
• what I know might contradict what you know so
  what do we know together?

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Studies using organisation theory

• Orlikowski on Notes - what effect it had on
  various organisations, how they evolved with it
  etc.
• People learn to tailor their software to fit
  their work situation (Trigg Bødker)
• Mediators between technology users actively
  guide and manipulate technology its use over
  time (Okamuara et al)
• Workflow systems work best in highly
  bureaucratised organisations (Ramage)

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CSCW system for CS Department - Discussion

• How would you get started?
• Who would you involve?
• What sort of experts would be needed?

• How can we accommodate change within the
  organisation in our system?
• Is there a wider societal context to be
  considered?