In search of cooperation: an historical analysis of work organization and management strategies

Authors:
Joan Greenbaum
Affiliations:
Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C Denmark and City University of New York, USA
Venue:
CSCW '88 Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work
Year:
1988

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Abstract

During the last decade, literature about work has increasingly focused on the importance of collective communication, tacit knowledge, and group activities. The idea of designing computer support for group-based work activities, which we loosely call 'cooperative work', is a useful and challenging one, for it represents a break from design approaches that focused on centralized and bureaucratic systems of communication and control.To get a clearer idea of the meaning of cooperative work, this article will look at historical patterns of work organization and management strategies. It will contrast user-centered concepts of cooperative work, with the idea of seeing cooperative work in the context of democracy in the workplace. The focus on workplace democracy has been a main theme in the Scandinavian systems tradition. The article uses the Scandinavian tradition, with its roots in a Labor Process Approach as a way to analyze the meaning of cooperation for workplace democracy and its implication for the design of computer support.