Office Automation

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Office Automation Intranets

• BUSS 909

Lecture 3 Computer Supported Cooperative Work
(CSCW) Groupware
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Notices 1

• New Tut Monday 330-430 MicroLabs 2
• effective 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-
  now
• a list is being circulated- duplicate topics will
  be changed
• in 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
  research
• Bannon et al (1988) Reading 15
• Nunamaker et al (1991) reading 17
• Distinction between CSCW in Europe and Groupware
  in the USA
• Grudin (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 work
• intra- and inter-organisational, or even outside
  of formal organisations
• may even include non-hierarchical,
  non-specialist, relatively autonomous work
• not 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
  organisations
• the 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 environment
• workers 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 activities
• jointly determining exemptions
• on-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 software
• extension 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 activity
• attempts 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 goals
• does 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 dont have the background in these
  areas, and social scientists dont 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 systems
• meeting management systems
• electronic 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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Groupware Applications

• Nunamacker et al paper is rather typical of North
  American interest in CSCW/Groupware specifically
  and IS research in general
• employs quantitatively informed research models
• research modesl are confused with theoretical
  foundations
• the general approach emphasises managerial uses

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Groupware Applications

• 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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Groupware Applications

• 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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Groupware Applications

• 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 tools
• computers as medium
• computer 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 processes
• leads to the creation of systems that are like
  toolboxes
• difficulty 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 medium
• this 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)

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

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

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

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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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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault
Bentham)

• 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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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault
Bentham)
Central Turret, where the prison guard can watch
each of the prison cells
Prison cells
The Central Turret is clad using one way
mirrors The prison Guard can see prisoners, but
prisoners can never see the guard All a prisoner
sees is theire own reflection!
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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault
Bentham)

• 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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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault
Bentham)

• Michel Foucault (French philosopher) used
  Benthams 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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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault
Bentham)

• 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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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault
Bentham)

• 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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CSCW Development MetaphorsPanopticon (Foucault
Bentham)

• 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!