working across multiple media.final.1 · working across multiple media formal vs informal canonical...

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Working across multiple mediatheoretical and practical implications

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Outline

1. Defining the concepts2. Integration of multiple media3. Integration as translation4. Theoretical implications5. Practical implications6. Conclusion

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Working across multiple media

Formal vs informal Canonical vs non-canonical (Brown and Duguid) Visible vs invisible (e.g. Star and Strauss, 1999) etc...

Work as an accomplisment(The Practice Perspective)

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Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Richness_Theory

Information Richness Theory (Daft and Lengel, 1984)

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Information richness theory does not considercontextual issues

Alternative theories, e.g:Social influence theory (Fulk, Schmitz & Steinfield 1990)Social learning theory (Bandura, 1986)etc (see www.december.com/cmc/theory/context.html)

Some examples of issues that aims at taking intoconsideration contextual issuesAwareness (e.g. Gutwin and Greenberg, 2002)Presence (Farshchian, 2002)Social translucense (Erickson et.al 2002)

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Working acrossmultiple media(sequentially orconcurrently)

Merging variousrepresentation ofinformation (paper,talking, digital, etc)

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In this presentation I refer to ”Working acrossmultiple media” as various representations ofinformation is drawn on in everyday work

Information always tied to its materiality, thus:Media in use = Infomation entity (representation of

information)Multiple media in use = heterogeneous assembly of

information entities

This representational perspective makesintegration (merging media) particularly relevant.

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1. Defining the concepts2. Integration of multiple media3. Integration as translation4. Theoretical implications5. Practical implications6. Conclusion

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Eliminating fragmentation - Integration

As organisations grow in scale and complexitythere is an increasing need to shareinformation across professional andinstitutional boundaries Inconsistent systems/media, redundancy and local

practices

Larger, integrated electronic basedinformation infrastructures are established toenable seamless integrationg and efficiencyERP-systems, KMS, EPRs, etc...

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Example -Translated into the healtcare domain Remove local systems and redundancy...

“users performing diverse tasks (...) in different departmentwithin a hospital may have deployed different (...) systemsthat should be integrated in order to support the businessprocesses adequately” (Grimson, Grimson and Hasselbring2000)

Integration at its peak...A thorough and general introduction of EPR is presumed to

have the most potential gain of all the ICT measures in thehealth and social sector. EPR throughout the whole of thehealth services is a premise for continuity of patient care ingeneral and in particular for patients with chroniccomplaints or complex needs (The Ministry of Health andSocial Affairs, 2004).

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Simply put...

From this To this

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Implementing a Global Scale IS(Rolland, 2003) Corporate-wide information infrastructure effort in a

major Maritime classification company. How a global-scale information system unfolded

globally across more than 150 local offices Objective: Reduce fragmentation and standardise IT Result: Fragmentation of multiple media

reintroduced Variation across sites (problem related to space)

in some offices the very same feature of the GSIS infrastructureintroduced an unintended side effect that re-introducedfragmentation of reporting information impeding theanticipated change to take place

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Implementing MS Sharepoint(Hepsø et.al 2007) Implementation of MS Sharepoint in a major

international Oil-company Interdisciplinary work - Production optimizsation MS Sharepoint not able to handle existing

infrastructure of specialised systems andpractices

Fragmentation of multiple media reintroduced Difficult to trace decisions in time

(problem related to time)

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What happened - abbreviated

From this To this

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Dimensions of fragmentation

Time

Space

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No ”one size fits all”

Fragmentation hard to remove Integration of multiple media extremely difficult

to accomlish and in particular large scaleintegration efforts Irreversibility of the installed base (Monteiro and

Hanseth, (heim.ifi.uio.no/~oleha/Publications/bok.html)Complexity and the boomerang effect (Rolland, 2003)The inevitable risk of side-effects (Hanseth et. al 2001 )Drift away from intentional usage (Ciborra, 2001)etc...

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1.Defining the concepts2.Integration of multiple media3.Integration as translation4.Theoretical Implications5.Practical Implications6.Conclusion

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Integration as translation

Single information entities always theoutcome of heterogeneous networks

Information sharing - a process oftranslation

Stabilisation (of information across sites)involves enrollment of allies and inscriptionof statement into different materials

(Latour, 1987)

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Relational - the outcome ofheterogeneous networksJohn Law

If you took away my computer, my colleagues,my office, my books, my desk, my telephone Iwouldn't be a sociologist writing papers,delivering lectures, and producing "knowledge”(Law, 1992)

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How do we make things understandable acrosstime and space? - inscription

Source: http://www.qualitytrading.com/illusions/

Eskimo or Indian

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21Source: http://www.qualitytrading.com/illusions/

Nose (indian)Arm (eskimo)

indian facing lefteskimo facing away

ear (indian)arm (eskimo)

How do we make things understandable across time andspace? - stronger inscription

Eskimo or Indian

22Source: http://www.qualitytrading.com/illusions/

nose (indian)arm (eskimo)

indian facing lefteskimo facing away

ear (indian)arm (eskimo)

How do we make things understandable across time andspace? -even stronger inscription (me explaining)

Eskimo or Indian

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Integration revisited

Continuous process of decontextualisatingand recontextualisation of information.

”Information is essentially bound to thecontext of its production (...) disentanglingdata from their primary context (...)requires active work” (Berg and Goorman(1999, pp 58-59)

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Integration revisited (2)

”the further information has to be able tocirculate (i.e. the more diverse contexts it has tobe usable in), the more work is required todisentangle the information from the context ofits production” (Berg and Goorman, 1999, p 51)Entails working across multiple mediaEntails consideration of the various types of media

(written, oral, picture, etc) where information is inscribedCodified information entities are not self-explanatory but

needs to be enacted and made sense of

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Implications for theory

Move away from archive commodified andpurified conceptualisations of media as archive

In practice media is an evolving set of complexlyinterrelated forms, papers, technologies andpractices that are embedded historically andspatially in sociotechnical environments

The alternative perspective emphasise:(1) the distributed nature of information and(2) the process in which information is produced

Fragmentation along two dimensions (time andspace)

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Implications for designers

Acknowledge variation and pursue a strategy of localcultivation by designing alternative ways of representingdata and in that sense enable sensemaking processes(tech. has potential to promote different perspectives)

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Implications for designers

Focus on output - the various ways in which datamigh be transformed into different media orderto enable sensemaking. For example:abstractions in terms of summaries, tables, figures, ... Ilustrations of how things have evolved over timeaugmented technologies (to be used when working)

When possible automate (monitoring,coordination and accumulation)

Portals that incorporates the installed base andenables quick access to the ”patcwork ofsystems”

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Implications for users

Maintain/develop arena for sensemaking Accept and cater for differences (e.g. between

different professionals) Everything is negotiable... ambiguity always

present and important part of working andlearning

Trustbuilding when distributed - need to knowthe people on the other side in order to enableproductive interactionknowledge about the activity of the person at the other

side

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Implication for management

Arenas for local negotiaion (facilities, openversus closed work-environments, technologies)

Allow and nurture workarounds Moving away from control and efficiency and

establishing communities of learning - enablenetworking where people interact and integrationevolves from below (people are efficient inintegration multiple medias)

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Conclusion Working across multiple media is an intrisic part

of everyday work Rather than pursuing an archive-strategy of

integrating, one should acknowledge ambiguityand fragmentation

Integration - ongoing, heterogeneous andachieved in practice (i.e. in which multiple mediaare embedded)

In larger information infrastructures, multiplemedia might compensate for lack of fit with localpracticeFacilitate sensemaking processes locally...

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References

Brown, J.S. and Duguid, P (1991), Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: A unified View of Working, Learningand Innovation, Organization Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 40-56.

Star S. L. and A. Strauss. 1999. Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work. ComputerSupported Cooperative Work 8:9-30

Daft, R.L. & Lengel, R.H. (1984). Information richness: a new approach to managerial behavior and organizational design. In:Cummings, L.L. & Staw, B.M. (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior 6,Homewood, IL: JAI Press.

Fulk, J., Schmitz, J., & Steinfield, C. (1990). A social influence model of technology use. In J. Fulk, and C. Steinfield (Eds.),Organizations and communication technology (pp. 117-139). Newbury Park, CA: Sage

Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gutwin, C., and Greenberg, S. "A Descriptive Framework of Workspace Awareness for Real-Time Groupware," Computer

Supported Cooperative Work (11:3-4) 2002, pp 411-446. Farshchian, B.A. "Presence technologies for informal collaboration," in: Being There - Concepts, Effects and Measurements of

User Presence in Synthetic Environments, G. Riva, F. Davide and W.A. IJsselsteijn (eds.), IOS Press, 2002. Thomas Erickson, Christine Halverson, Wendy A. Kellogg, Mark Laff, and Wolf, T. "Social translucence: designing social

infrastructures that make collective activity visible," Communications of the ACM (45:4) 2002, pp 40 - 44 Grimson, J., Grimson, W., Hasselbring, W. The SI Challenge in Health Care. Communications of the ACM. June 2000;Vol. 43,

No.6. The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs 2004. Te@mwork 2007: Electronic Cooperation in the Health and Social Sector,

Governmental Strategy 2004- 2007. Rolland, Knut H. (2003) "Re-inventing information infrastructures in situated practices of use. An interpretive case study of

information technology and work transformation in a global company". Ph.D. thesis, The Department of Informatics. Faculty ofMathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway.

Hepsø Vidar, Monteiro Eric, Roland Knut (2007): Ecologies of einfrastructure. Paper submittet to Special issue of JAIS oneifrastructure

Hanseth Ole and Monteiro Eric (unpublished book) Understanding Information Infrastructure(http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~oleha/Publications/bok.html)

Ole Hanseth, Claudio Ciborra, and Kristin Braa. The Control Devolution. ERP and the Side Effects of Globalization. The Database for advances in information systems. Special issue: Critical Analysis of ERP systems: The Macro Level. Vol. 32, No. 4, Fall2001, pp. 34-46.

Ciborra C, (2001.) From control to drift – The dynamics of corporate information infrastructures. Oxford Univ. Press. Latour, B. (1987) Science in action, Open Univ. Press. John Law, “Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity”, published by the Centre for

Science Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN, at http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Law-Notes-on-ANT.pdf

Berg, M. and Goorman, E. (1999): ﾔThe contextual nature of medical informationﾕ, International Journal of Medical Informatics,vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 51 - 60.

working across multiple media.final.1 · working across multiple media formal vs informal canonical...

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