Abstract
Cooperative work, as an aspect of human ecology, seems to have existed in human societies for hundreds of thousands of years, but until recently only as a marginal phenomenon. Work has, of course, been socially situated and socially organized in all human societies, and ‘cooperation’ as the sharing of the fruits of our toil is arguably constitutive of human sociality (Reynolds, 1981).
Kjeld Schmidt: ‘Remarks on the complexity of cooperative work,’ Revue des sciences et technologies de l’information. Série Revue d’intelligence artificielle (RSTI-RAI), vol. 16, no. 4–5, Hermes/Lavoisier, Paris, 2002, pp. 443–483.
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Notes
- 1.
Bittner’s analysis of the observer’s perspective is a development of Schutz’ analysis of ‘common-sense’ and scientific perspectives (Schütz, 1953).
- 2.
For identical observations about the complexity of hospital work, cf. (Strauss et al., 1985).
- 3.
One may object that the phenomenon of selective attention has been subjected to extensive research since 1976. However, in an extensive review of the literature on this issue from 1986 Johnston and Dark wonder whether ‘understanding the nature of selective attention is ultimately futile’ (Johnston and Dark, 1986, p. 70). Again, in a sweeping review of the literature from 1993 Allport questions whether attention is a coherent field of study and whether any theoretical progress has been made in 25 years of research (Allport, 1993).
- 4.
- 5.
Notice how diligently Miller makes ‘the number of bits of information’ the measure of ‘familiarity’ and ‘learning’.
- 6.
Wood’s distinctions hark back to Thompson’s (1967).
- 7.
The more intense the interdependencies of activities are, the larger the space of possible states the actor will need to take into account before taking action, especially with respect to the state of the field of work of colleagues, etc.
- 8.
The terms ‘mobilization’ and ‘deployment’ are here used as the neutral terms to denote the processes of (a) identifying potential actors and (b) specifying the relationship between actors and activities, irrespective of the particular social form of these processes. Mobilization may thus involve conscription as well as volunteering. Likewise, ‘deployment’ may mean somebody’s assigning somebody else to a particular task as well as somebody’s assuming a particular task. The point is that the styles and forms of mobilization and deployment vary immensely. When deploying, actors may be commanded to do something, they may be specifically paid to do it, they may be expected to do it, they may believe they might be expected to do it, they may do it because they believe it may be in their interest to do it, they may offer to do it as a helpful gesture, they may do it because it’s fun, and so on. Very often all of these styles and forms of governance coexist and complement each other in an infinitely variegated pattern.
- 9.
Cf. Leigh Star’s concept of ‘boundary objects’ (Star and Griesemer, 1989; Star, 1989).
- 10.
It is worth noticing that the two usages of the term ‘articulation work’ are reflected in the literature. On one hand, Anselm Strauss consistently uses the term ‘articulation work’ in the sense of ‘first order’ articulation work. To him the ‘granularity’ of the concept is defined by the concept of ‘tasks’ and articulation work is simply same as the ‘articulation of tasks’ as he also puts it (Strauss, 1985). By contrast, Gerson and Star do not treat ‘task’ as a black box; they open up the box and generalize the concept of articulation work to denote the ongoing adjustment of action in view of inexorable contingencies: the concretization, instantiation, adaptation, modification, etc. of routines, plans, and representations (Gerson and Star, 1986).—In my usage of the term ‘articulation work’ I am following Gerson and Star.
- 11.
It should be emphasized, however, that actors observe and understand the bodily conduct of colleagues, not simply on the basis of some putatively generic and innate semantic scheme of postures and gestures, but with respect to and in terms of the actor’s knowledge of the state of the field of work. I am stressing this because the role of bodily conduct in cooperative work is often idealized and overstated. An actor’s observation of the bodily conduct of a co-worker may or may not be critical in a particular setting or situation but it is always grounded in the observer’s understanding of the structural and behavioral characteristics of the common field of work, its current state, as well as the operational constraints and procedures and is thus an integrated aspect of their domain-specific professional competences.
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Schmidt, K. (2008). Remarks on the Complexity of Cooperative Work (2002). In: Cooperative Work and Coordinative Practices. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-068-1_9
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