Center for Coordination Science
@ MIT
1998 TECHNICAL
REPORTS AND WORKING PAPERS
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ABSTRACTS
1998 Working Papers
No. 203
Mark Klein
April 1998
This paper describes a novel knowledge-based
approach for helping workflow process designers and participants better
manage the exceptions (deviations from an ideal collaborative work process
caused by errors, failures, resource or requirements changes etc.) that
can occur during the enactment of a workflow. This approach is based on
exploiting a generic and reusable body of knowledge concerning what kinds
of exceptions can occur in collaborative work processes, how these exceptions
can be detected, and how they can be resolved. This work builds upon previous
efforts from the MIT Process Handbook project and from research on conflict
management in collaborative design.
No. 204
Kevin Crowston and Charles Osborn
July 1998
Managers must understand, influence, and
redesign organizational processes to improve business performance. In
this paper we present a technique for documenting a business process.
The technique has six steps: defining process boundaries, collecting data,
determining actors and resources, determining activities, determining
dependencies and model verification. While similar to other process-mapping
techniques, our approach is novel in incorporating ideas from coordination
theory, thus the attention to dependencies. As a result, the technique
is useful both for documenting a process and suggesting ways in which
the process could be redesigned. We present an extended illustration with
the hope that the technique can be used by readers of this article.
No. 205
Wanda Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates
July 1998
In this paper, we demonstrate that teams
may use genre systems -- sequences of interrelated communicative actions
-- strategically or habitually to structure their collaboration. Using
data from three teams' use of a collaborative electronic technology, Team
Room, over an eight month period, we illustrate that genre systems are
a means of structuring six aspects of communicative interaction: purpose
(why), content (what), form (how), participants (who/m), time (when),
and place (where). We suggest that CSCW researchers, designers, implementors,
and users may benefit from an explicit recognition of the role genre systems
can play in collaboration.
No. 206
Manabu Ueda
July 1998
In this paper I proposed the creation of
a dialogue document for making available the knowledge contained within
a creative conversation process. I discussed three main issues: the role
of ordinary documents, the need to better represent conversation processes
rationally, and the costs of editing conversation. I looked at the reasons
why we rarely see the knowledge from the conversation process recorded
in documents, even though this knowledge is in same cases as important
as the result of the conversation. The dialogue documents I propose are
documents of edited actual transcript for readers. My argument is that
such documents in dialogue form, are the most effective way to provide
access to the knowledge included in the conversation process, because
the dialogue documents allow readers to become virtual audiences in the
conversation. This means that dialogue documents convey not only explicit
knowledge but also allow access to some tacit knowledge by relying on
the reader's active formulation of the experience. Perhaps, this is the
essential value of dialogue. To crystallize my notion of the dialogue
document, I discussed its features in contrast with those of a transcript
of conversation as well as an ordinary document. I analyzed the dialogue
document from the perspective of 'production costs and benefits' and 'message
quality and editing time'. Finally, I considered the possibility of IT
support for the dialogue document production process and I discussed the
implications of both the technological and social aspects of dialogue
documents production and use.
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