Collaborative information sharing in complex and extended organizations

Organizational forms are changing and developing. The new forms of organizations include networked and hybrid organizations forms which have interdependencies and use technological applications in their operations. These organizations are extended and complex in terms of relationships, operations and boundary crossing. Whilst literatures on information behaviours exist in different work contexts, there is little or no reference to information sharing in these new complex and extended settings, leaving the area under studied. This study, therefore, set out to explore how complexity and extension influence collaborative information sharing and how complex and extended organizations respond to deficiencies in information sharing. The study used a qualitative research methodology on a single case study organization including 46 semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis from 4 different sets of participants within the case study organization as well as the extended stakeholder community that it works with. This was a non-probability sample based on convenience. Activity Theory was used as a framing tool and lens in guiding the choice of sample as well as analysis, as the approach allows the consideration of transient and cross boundary multiple relationships. Fourth generation activity theory was used as a complementary approach to third generation activity theory; giving a level of insight in terms of the activity systems, shared object, and tensions and contradictions as drivers of information sharing failures. The findings suggest failures in the sharing of information are linked with, in part at least, the increase in complexity caused by organizational extension. This study reports the use of specialised teams and groups (with a complementary nature) as ways of responding to and managing such information sharing failures. Key among the reactions observed was the formation of knots; among these were some whose characteristics are qualitatively different to those discussed and described in extant literature. These knots mitigate the deficiencies in the setting but behave in a different way from knots in other settings studied in the literature. The knots reported are motivated and shaped by the extended specialised nature of the setting and serve as a way of filling the expertise need which cuts across organizational boundaries. The key differences observed are in the crafting process of developing membership, and the speed of formation of such knots. This study has value for both theory and practice; having implications for the use of tools, rules and roles and policy in decision making and guiding practice in responding to information sharing failures in these new, complex and extended, organizational forms

Mathematics that arises from collaborative gameplay in The Sims 3

Mathematics emerges and is used in out-of-school settings, such as workplace settings and everyday activities. An activity that many children enjoy doing in their everyday lives is playing digital games for entertainment. However, research exploring mathematics that emerges during children’s gameplay in out-of-school settings is limited. This study aims to shed light to this field of research by exploring mathematics that arises in collaborative gameplay in The Sims 3, which is a real-life simulation commercial digital game that allows players to edit a domestic onscreen environment, in out-of-school settings and without a teacher’s intervention. Following a constructionist epistemology and a socio-cultural theoretical framework that views context as paramount, the research design of this study is ‘embedded multiple case study’, with activity being the unit of analysis. This study followed eight 8-12 year-old children who, in pairs, were asked to do two open tasks which are considered integral to this digital game’s gameplay. First, they were asked to build, furnish and decorate a house without budget constraints and then a house for a selected Sims family with a budget constraint. The four groups’ onscreen gameplay activity and talk was recorded using screen recording software; analysis focused on players’ goal-directed actions and discourse during gameplay. This study argues that players underwent an instrumental genesis during gameplay and that: i. mathematics that arose in players’ gameplay activity was ‘blended’ with players’ everyday prior understandings and the game’s virtual artefacts and rules which they used as resources, ii. mathematical thinking in this game lies in players mathematicising relationships which are hidden in the game’s virtual artefacts and become mobilised during gameplay, iii. the constrained gameplay influenced players’ mathematical thinking as players experienced unexpected situations which required them to use their mathematical prior understandings and Mercer’s exploratory type of talk

The effects of mobile technologies on the work of front-line police officers in a UK Police Force

This thesis reports on three sequential cases in the development and deployment of mobile information and communication technologies to front-line operational police officers in a police force in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the thesis was to explore the introduction of these technologies into the police context and the impact of them on the operational officers to whom they were issued. Mobile technologies, allowing remote access to information systems without the need to make use of information intermediaries, have recently become a priority both for central government in the United Kingdom and for the individual police forces. These technologies offer police forces the potential to deliver developments which help them to deliver performance in line with the various pressures and priorities which they have either developed internally or have had placed upon them. Police forces have come under pressure over the last decade to increase the level of visibility and effectiveness of police officers, especially in the community. These pressures have come out of the doctrines of new public management, out of developing policing models reacting to public concerns, and out of media attention. Significant amounts of money, on the order of £110 million from central government, have been spent to help police forces to develop the capacity to deploy and make use of mobile computing (mobile data in the police community) especially with front-line officers - the vast majority of the uniformed police officers in the United Kingdom. Developments to date have mainly been at the level of pilot projects and proof of concept deployments and they have adopted widely differing technologies with varying levels of success. This research aims to provide a more detailed understanding of both the process of introduction of these technologies into the police context and the impact which they have on the front-line officers to whom they are deployed. This is, clearly, a recursive relationship with the process of introduction and management of the technologies having an impact on the way- that officers use them, and the use of the technologies by officers in turn affecting the wider organisation as well as the communities policed. By understanding the process and the effects of it better I aim to both develop practice in implementation and an understanding at a theoretical level of the key areas of attention in such developments. This research is based on the introduction of mobile data to a territorial police force in England. The research was conducted across a total of twenty-eight months and involved sixty-one interviews with users of the technologies, their supervisors and managers, and members of the team implementing the project. Thirty observations were carried out, for of training sessions and twenty-six observations of officers using mobile data in operational contexts. Six focus groups were also run with officers. The bulk of the data was, thus, collected from interview and observation and this was analysed using a qualitative analysis package. The overall framework for both the collection of data and the analysis of it was Activity Theory in the evolved form of the activity process model. Activity Theory was used as a lens both to examine the three cases individually and also the process of introducing mobile data in the force as a whole. The research has provided contributions to practice with the force with whom the research was carried out and in other forces in the United Kingdom as well as with central agencies charged with assisting the development of mobile data in police forces. It has also contributed at a theoretical level; extending the understanding of the level at which users constructed and interpret the information technology artefact, providing a broader understanding of the key areas of attention in the development of mobile information systems in the public safety context and, at a methodological level, in evaluating the use of activity theory across sequential cases