Process Support for Cooperative Work on the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is becoming a dominating factor in information technology. Consequently, computer supported cooperative work on the Web has recently drawn a lot of attention. “Process Support for Cooperative Work” (PSCW) is a Web based system supporting both structured and unstructured forms of cooperation. It is a combination of the “Basic Support for Cooperative Work” (BSCW) shared workspace system and the Merlin Process Support Environment. The current PSCW prototype offers a loose connection, in effect extending BSCW with a gateway to Merlin. With this prototype we have successfully addressed the technical issues involved; further integration of functionality should not pose any real problems. We focus on the technical side of the PSCW system, which gives a good insight into the issues that have to be addressed generally in the construction of Web based groupware

Designing Tailorable Technologies

This paper provides principles for designing tailorable technologies. Tailorable technologies are technologies that are modified by end users in the context of their use and are around us as desktop operating systems, web portals, and mobile telephones. While tailorable technologies provide end users with limitless ways to modify the technology, as designers and researchers we have little understanding of how tailorable technologies are initially designed to support that end-user modification. In this paper, we argue that tailorable technologies are a unique technology type in the same light as group support systems and emergent knowledge support systems. This unique technology type is becoming common and we are forced to reevaluate existing design theory, methods of analysis, and streams of literature. In this paper we present design principles of Gordon Pask, Christopher Alexander, Greg Gargarian, and Kim Madsen to strengthen inquiry into tailorable technologies. We then apply the principles to designing tailorable technologies in order for their design to become more coherent and tractable. We conclude that designers need to build reflective and active design environments and gradients of interactive capabilities in order for technology to be readily modified in the context of its use

Growing an information infrastructure for healthcare based on the development of large-scale Electronic Patient Records

The papers of this thesis are not available in Munin. Paper 1. Silsand, L., Ellingsen, G. (2014). Generification by Translation: Designing Generic Systems in Context of the Local. Available in: Journal of Association for Information Systems, vol. 15(4): 3. Paper 2. Christensen, B., Silsand, L., Wynn, R. and Ellingsen, G. (2014). The biography of participation. In Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference, 6-10 Oct. Windhoek, Namibia. ACM Digital Library. Paper 3. Silsand, L. and Ellingsen, G. (2016). Complex Decision-Making in Clinical Practice. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16). ACM Digital Library. ISBN: 978-1-4503-3592-8. Paper 4: Silsand, L., Ellingsen, G. (2017). Governance of openEHR-based information Infrastructures. (Manuscript). Paper 5. Silsand, L. (2017). The ‘Holy Grail’ of Interoperability of Health Information Systems: Challenges and Implications. Available in: Stigberg S., Karlsen J., Holone H., Linnes C. (eds) Nordic Contributions in IS Research. SCIS 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 294. Springer, Cham. This thesis provides empirical insights about socio-technical interdependencies affecting the making and scaling of an Information Infrastructure (II) for healthcare based on the development of large-scale Electronic Patient Records. The Ph.D. study is an interpretive case study, where the empirical data has been collected from 2012 to 2017. In most developed countries, the pressures from politicians and public in general for better IT solutions have grown enormously, not least within Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems. Considerable attention has been given to the proposition that the exchange of health information is a critical component to reach the triple aim of (1) better patient experiences through quality and satisfaction; (2) better health outcomes of populations; and (3) reduction of per capita cost of health care. A promising strategy for dealing with the challenges of accessibility, efficiency, and effective sharing of clinical information to support the triple aim is an open health-computing platform approach, exemplified by the openEHR approach in the empirical case. An open platform approach for computing EPR systems addresses some vital differences from the traditional proprietary systems. Accordingly, the study has payed attention to the vital difference, and analyze the technology and open platform approach to understand the challenges and implications faced by the empirical process. There are two main messages coming out of this Ph.D. study. First, when choosing an open platform approach to establish a regional or national information infrastructure for healthcare, it is important to define it as a process, not a project. Because limiting the realization of a large-scale open platform based infrastructure to the strict timeline of a project may hamper infrastructure growth. Second, realizing an open platform based information infrastructure requires large structural and organizational changes, addressing the need for integrating policy design with infrastructure design

Computer-Supported Collaborative Production

This paper proposes the concept of collaborative production as a focus of concern within the general area of collaborative work. We position the concept with respect to McGrath's framework for small group dynamics and the more familiar collaboration processes of awareness, coordination, and communication (McGrath 1991). After reviewing research issues and computer-based support for these interacting aspects of collaboration, we turn to a discussion of implications for how to design improved support for collaborative production. We illustrate both the challenges of collaborative production and our design implications with a collaborative map-updating scenario drawn from the work domain of geographical information systems

EXPLORING THE RHYTHMS OF INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE COORDINATION FOR SMART CITIES: THE CASE OF BUILDING A MOBILITY INFRASTRUCTURE IN BERLIN

This paper investigates how the coordination of information infrastructures (II) emerges as a result of the dialectic between social and material agencies, whose interactions are tempered by both the objective and subjective flows of time. \ \ Drawing upon the theory of the Trichordal Theory of Coordination (Venters et al. 2014), the study explores the process of coordinating the development of particular forms of II associated with Smart Cities. It redirects this theory to the study of strategic niches by including socially constructed temporal rhythms that frame organizational practice (Jackson et al. 2011; Orlikowski & Yates 2002). We show that the development of II projects, such as those undertaken in the creation of smart cities, can be understood through interacting social and material agencies that are embedded in multi-dimensional temporality. \ \ The paper draws upon an in-depth study of the BeMobility project, in which a strategic niche had been created to prototype a sustainable mobility infrastructure in Berlin. The goal of the project was to demonstrate a future in which Berlin will have a multi-modal transport system dominated by electric car-sharing, which is fully integrated into the public transport system. The paper contributes to research on cooperative work in multi-stakeholder II projects for smart cities.

ECSCW 2013 Adjunct Proceedings The 13th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 21 - 25. September 2013, Paphos, Cyprus

This volume presents the adjunct proceedings of ECSCW 2013.While the proceedings published by Springer Verlag contains the core of the technical program, namely the full papers, the adjunct proceedings includes contributions on work in progress, workshops and master classes, demos and videos, the doctoral colloquium, and keynotes, thus indicating what our field may become in the future

Polycentric Governance of Interorganizational Systems: Managerial and Architectural Arrangements

In an increasingly digital world, introducing new interorganizational systems requires establishing associations and relying on contributions of multiple actors that control existing technical solutions. This article examines the question: “how can large-scale system implementations across multiple organizations be governed in situations of distributed control over components?”. To answer this question, we present the findings of a longitudinal case study on the introduction of e-prescription in Norway over a 14-year period. The findings point to complementary architectural and managerial arrangements that make possible a polycentric governance approach. This work contributes to research on Information Systems Governance by providing insights relevant to mandating large-scale system implementations across organizations by mobilizing and orienting multiple contributors that control various pre-existing solutions

A Design-Science-Research Approach

Neue Organisationsformen, wie evolutionäre Organisationen, bilden in vielen Kooperationsszenarien sozio-technische Konstrukte mit modernen CSCW Anwendungen aus. Daher erfordern Veränderungen dieser sozialen Systeme eine kontinuierliche Anpassung der technischen Tools an die neuen sozialen Konfigurationen. Diese Dissertation ist als Design Science Research (DSR) Projekt konzipiert und addressiert die folgende Forschungsfrage (RQ): “Wie können soziotechnische, evolutionäre Organisationen die Herausforderungen der joint optimization und des organizational choice während ihrer autopoietischen Veränderungsprozesse addressieren?” Die Fallstudie Viva con Agua de St. Pauli e.V. wurde mittels qualitativer und ethnographischer Methoden im Rahmen der entsprechenden DSR Zyklen untersucht. Das Forschungsprojekt fokussiert die Entwicklung von Artefakten indem sowohl eine technische, als auch eine soziale Perspektive eingenommen wird. Aus der technische Perspektive wird die RQ durch eine Microservice-Plattform adressiert. Die Architektur dient der Verteilung von Verantwortlichkeit für die Software in einem heterogenen Netzwerk von Entwickler:innen. Dabei müssen diverse neue Herausforderungen beachtet werden, wie etwa die Verteilung des User Interface. Durch die Betrachtung der RQ aus der sozialen Perspektive wird der USMU Workshop entwickelt. Dieses Artefakt dient der Verbindung der Charakteristika evolutionärer Organisationen mit agiler Software Entwicklung und mit Methoden des partizipativen Designs. Die Studien zeigen, dass beide Artefakte die RQ adressieren. Zudem konnte ich für beide Artefakte wertvolle Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten aufzeigen. Somit motivieren die Ergebnisse den nächsten Schritt des Projekts und die vorliegende Thesis wird Bestandteil des zyklischen Ablaufs eines DSR Projekts.The emergence of new types of organizational structures, such as evolutionary-teal organizations, almost always leads to the development of socio-technical constructs when it comes to working in collaboration with modern CSCW applications. A consequence of this is that the social system’s autopoietic change processes create challenges that compel one to adjust the implementation of the technical tool to the social system’s new configuration. This thesis is structured according to the design science research (DSR) approach and focuses on the research question (RQ): “How can socio-technical evolutionary-teal organizations address the challenges of joint optimization and organizational choice during their autopoietic processes?” For this purpose, the case study Viva con Agua de St. Pauli e.V. is investigated using a qualitative ethnographical approach during the DSR cycles. Addressing the RQ, two artifacts are designed from a technical as well as a social perspective. While the technical perspective primarily investigates the adjustments of technology, the social perspective focuses on the management of change in socio-technical evolutionary-teal organizations. I propose a microservice platform as an artifact that addresses the RQ from a technical perspective. The microservice architecture aims at spreading the responsibility for the software through a heterogeneous ecosystem of developers. The newly designed USMU workshop is addressing the RQ from the social perspective. It strives to intertwine the characteristics of evolutionary-teal organizations with agile software development and participatory design methods. In my studies, I examine the fact that both artifacts can be used to address the RQ. Additionally, I was able to identify valuable improvements for both of my artifacts. Hence, the project follows the lifecycle of a DSR project by reasoning through the results presented here for its next iteration