Translating texts into care: Classification issues raised by evidence-based practice in t he UK health sector

The problem of translating texts into care (where practitioners are mandated to base their work on the literary corpus) has been construed in several ways: in terms of time management, in terms of physical access, and in terms of adequate surrogates for texts (translations) like indexes, abstracts, systematic reviews. In some cases, there may be a deeper problem of incommensurability. The nursing profession in the UK, a newly professionalized group faced with government mandates to base their practice on medical evidence, may constitute such a case. EBM (evidence-based medicine, or 'text') poses challenges for nurses (proponents of 'caritas'). This paper reviews epistemological and ontological problems identified in previous research on evidence-based nursing practice, which suggests that incommensurability of the medical and nursing domains is an issue. An additional surrogate for the medical corpus, the clinical guideline, is discussed. When based on inclusive consultation, this may prove to be a hospitable 'translation artefact' for groups whose domains are in conflict. Drawing on theoretical work on 'translation' by Bowker and his colleagues, by Berkenkotter and by Latour, the author explores the status of the clinical guideline as a translation artefact: it is a novel hybrid, which links retrieval, classification and action by combining different warrants

Teaching and Learning Electronic Commerce in a Virtual Economy

This paper describes the redesign and implementation of a graduate course in electronic commerce using a pedagogical strategy, problem centered learning, and a virtual economy, (VE) a simulation of a competitive marketplace for information products and services. The pedagogical, service, research, and technological components of this course are presented and the student experience is briefly described. At the time of this writing, the VE has been operating for three weeks so the discussion of the challenges faced by the students is necessarily brief and preliminary

If ICTs are Laboratories...

The authors argue for a monist view of sociotechnical analysis, and, following Fleck and his colleagues, discuss ICTs as laboratories where knowledge, activities and artefacts emerge across different sites and different stages of development. Researchers at a number of mature research sites (what Gieryn calls ‘truth spots’) have identified distinctive sociotechnical phenomena. These have been objectified and described in a scientific nomenclature that allows research to cumulate and comparisons to be made at a level that transcends the individual agent, the individual artefact and the local context. Five phenomena are discussed in detail: sociotechnical interaction networks; computerization movements; innofusion; configuration; multi-level social learning. The approach outlined in the paper, the authors suggest, may improve the focus of research in the IS domain

Ethological classification: A model for ordering the commercial workplace that draws on collective practice.

We would like to present a novel classification approach to the Idea mart, and receive feedback from colleagues. In certain circumstances an approach to classification may be useful that is based on repertoires of recurring activities and their associated documentation ('genre repertoires'); we label this 'ethological classification' (Davenport and Rosenbaum 2000). The approach offers an alternative to the search for 'deep structure' that organizes knowledge in a working group: as genres embody the practical understanding of such groups, they offer a 'surface' representation of knowledge that may be sufficient for some organizational purposes: finding groups to share activities, for example. As autogenic forms, genres may be taken as valid representations of the practical knowledge of the communities in which they emerge. The 'ethological' approach may solve some ofthe problems associated with recent attempts to design 'ecological work-based classification' schemes (Pejtersen and Albrechtsen, 2000) where the search for 'invariant structures' and their validation can be extremely resource intensive. The 'ethological' approach, a form of bricolage, which draws on knowledge that is to hand, offers a thrifty alternative

Implicit Orders: Documentary Genres and Organizational Practice

The paper explores the proposition that documentary genres implicitly order organizational activity; analysis oftheir role as tacit sorting devices can improve understanding of documentation and organizational practice. The author reviews recent work on communities of practice in organisations and discusses historical work on documentary genres and their role in capturing local or tacit knowledge. More recent work on documentary genres in the digital workplace is then addressed, and the place of the politics of classification in the construction of genres is discussed. The author analyzes case studies of new technology and changes in practice in a number of contexts, including current work on documentary genres in a small entreprise in the Scottish food and beverage sector. In this company, evolving documentary genres have allowed a recently automated sales team to adapt to a new order imposed by changes in external circumstanceS and the procurement of new technology. The paper concludes with a review of recent work on visualisation of social interactions, and its possible role in the rapid provision of templates for documentary genres in different domains. The author speculates that representations (by visualization or other means) of documentary genres in organizational settings may serve as 'thumbprints' of groups at work that may provide rapid insight into the nature of work in a given domain. Such insight may be important in distributed cognition, where ad hoc project teams work online and at a distance from each other in the 'temporary organizations' that characterize work in many domains

Clinical guidelines and the translation of texts into care: overcoming professional conflicts concerning evidence‐based practice

The difficulties of basing healthcare on literary warrant have been explained in different ways: busy practitioners have no time to read extensively, physical access is difficult, and adequate surrogates for texts like indexes, abstracts, systematic reviews are partial in their coverage. The author suggests that a deeper problem of domain conflict must be addressed. This paper reviews problems identified in previous research on evidence-based nursing practice, which indicates that there are conflicts between medical and nursing domains. EBM (evidence-based medicine, or “text”) poses challenges for nurses (proponents of “caritas”). An additional surrogate for the medical corpus, the clinical guideline, is discussed. When based on inclusive consultation, this may prove to be a hospitable epistemological bridge for groups whose domains are in conflict. Drawing on “social studies of science” literature, the author explores the provenance and status of the clinical guideline as a “translation artefact” or bridging mechanism, and presents a “snapshot” case study of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network in 1998. She suggests that the clinical guideline is a powerful documentary genre, which links several strands of information science: information retrieval, literary warrant and the politics of classification

Organizational knowledge and communities of practice

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