DESIGNING FOR INSTRUMENT-MEDIATED ACTIVITY

The need to design information processing systems based on an anthropocentric approach, i.e., one where the design of technical objects deliberately draws from and is geared to the user’s activity, is a critical issue in the modernization of life and work environments. Within this framework, we propose a developmental approach to instruments in which they are not just understood as fabricated material objects but are also psychological and social entities. We present a model and propose ways of approaching the design of information processing systems

CARTE: An Observation Station to Regulate Activity in a Learning Context

This chapter discusses the introduction of a new concept called "regulation" into a use model, which is part of a theoretical observation model called trace-based system (TBS). This concept defines a retroaction mechanism in an observation station. We present the results of experiments, in a learning context, with a prototype observation station called Collection, activity Analysis and Regulation based on Traces Enriched (CARTE)

Controls of knowledge production, sharing and use in bureaucratized Professional Service Firms

One of the main obstacles to the current bureaucratization trend in large professional service firms (PSFs) is the organic nature of professional knowledge production, sharing and use. Centralized knowledge management (KM) systems aimed at codifying ‘best practice’ solutions to recurrent client questions for large-scale reuse are a common strategy increasingly employed to overcome this obstacle. Using a socio-ethnographic case study of a business law firm in Paris, this research examines whether the use of centralized KM systems in bureaucratized PSFs contributes to a shift in power from professionals to managers. More specifically, are administrative controls over knowledge resources increasing, or do professionals retain power (i.e. some level of social and self-control) over knowledge production, sharing and use? The results of this study indicate that, far from losing ground, professionals’ social and self-controls have been reinvented and reformed in a bureaucratized context