Remote Co‐operation. CSCW Issues for Mobile and Teleworkers

Citation

Ljungberg, F. (1998), "Remote Co‐operation. CSCW Issues for Mobile and Teleworkers", Information Technology & People, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 261-263. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.1998.11.3.261.1

This collection of papers examines various aspects of the increased importance of mobility and co‐operation in work. Dix and Beale, the editors of the book, start out by framing the overall problem: in a mobile, remote work environment collaborators cannot rely on having instant access to each other, neither via direct communication nor “common artifacts of work”. The remaining part of the book is an assortment of papers from a diversity of authors, both from academia and industry, covering theoretical as well as empirical analyses of IT use in distributed and mobile work settings. The book is targeted at both researchers and practitioners.

In chapter 1, Neal explores “the virtual office”, using it to denote the fact that work today is increasingly being carried out outside the traditional office. The pros and cons of the virtual office are explored, and some suggestions for how to approach obstacles are made. A similar approach is taken by Mitchell in chapter 2, where various aspects of “telework” and “field based work” are discussed. Madigan, in chapter 3, describes possible scenarios for the future of the construction industry, discussing the potential impact of different kinds of CSCW technologies, e.g. video phones and pen based computers. In chapter 4, James and Savill direct the focus towards “community care workers”, a highly mobile profession. An evaluation of a palmtop based system is outlined, and comparisons are made with previous ways of working. The chapter by Ainger and Maher (chapter 5) is mainly concerned with “the cell‐based factory”, which is a decentralized way of organizing production. Thimbleby and Pullinger, the authors of chapter 6, criticize the technological orientation of much CSCW systems design, suggesting “observational properties” as a way of approaching design from the users’ perspective. These ideas are further developed in the chapter by Thomas (chapter 7), which is primarily focused on “personal information management” in the context of group work. In chapter 8, Busbach argues for the importance of coordination in distributed work settings. The chapter by Dix and Beale (chapter 9) is concerned with the problems of synchronization and retrieval in mobile work and teleworking. Davies et al., in the following chapter (chapter 10), analyze how mobile computing can address the requirements of field engineers, such as real‐time access to multimedia information. In chapter 11, Sloane discusses IT use in the home, arguing that the adoption of modern IT would enable a vast amount of new kinds of services. Finally, Eisenstadt et al. report experiences from designing, teaching and learning in a “virtual summerschool”, i.e. an IT intensive environment for teaching and learning that does not rely on physical presence.

Even though mobility and co‐operation seem to have become increasingly important in work in general, the issue has not been very much investigated in CSCW. Clearly, this makes the topic of the book very interesting and appropriate. Furthermore, some of the analyses of the specific technological requirements and conditions of mobile and co‐operative work are relevant, important, and make good contributions. In particular, the paper by Dix and Beale (chapter 9) makes a serious attempt to analyze established requirements and problems in distributed databases and computing, within the particular conditions of mobile and co‐operative work. Likewise, the MOST architecture, suggested by Davies et al. (chapter 10), addresses specific requirements of CSCW in mobile work settings. The research agenda described by Davies et al., where empirical studies of work inform technological requirements, seems to be a very appropriate way of broadening the perspective of mobile computing, which up to today has been very technologically oriented. On a conceptual level, the chapters by Thimbleby and Pullinger (chapter 6), and Thomas (chapter 7) should be mentioned. Not only do these papers make clear points, but also seek to question current assumptions in the field and suggest alternative perspectives.

Unfortunately, some individual papers of the book are quite weak. There are in particular three kinds of problems that I would like to focus on here. The first two chapters of the book are to a large extent common sense discussions that lack points. This is a problem, since you would expect some “added value”, to use the current hype, such as new insights, alternative interpretations, or empirical results. It seems likely, I believe, that brief discussions of what concepts like “the virtual office” might mean, what the problems in such work settings might be, how these problems could be resolved, and so on, which neither are based on empirical investigations or theory, fail to meet the preferences of most readers. Another problem, which is not only true for chapter 1 and 2, is lack of accountability. The scenarios developed in chapter 3 and 5, for example, are quite interesting, but these papers are less convincing in terms of arguments, i.e. they lack reasons supporting the conclusions. In a sense, this makes these contributions more like “unsupported statements”. Having said that, these papers are interesting, and it would be possible to argue that their relevance overweighs the lack of support for the conclusions. It is also possible to trace methodological problems in some of the contributions, most notably in chapter 4, where a palmtop based system is evaluated and compared to a previous way of conducting work. The problem is, however, that we are not told by what kind of evaluation method that was conducted, only that a questionnaire was used and that people were interviewed. This is a problem since the method adopted very much determines the conclusions you can draw.

Even though my impression is that the book is quite weak in some aspects, the topics addressed are interesting and to a large part not dealt with in traditional CSCW research. I would therefore recommend the book for both practitioners and researchers concerned with CSCW issues in mobile work settings.