CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING

Volume 6 No. 2, 1999

Darek M. Eriksson and Volker Wulf: Self-Organising Social Systems: A Challenge to Computer Supported Cooperative Work Full Text

Christiane Floyd: Software Development Process: Some Reflections on its Cultural, Political and Ethical Aspects from a Constructivist Epistemology Point of View  Abstract

Katharina Just-Hahn and Thomas Herrmann: Step-by-Step: A Method to Support Self-organized Co-ordination
within Workflow Management Systems  Abstract

Michael Paetau: Can Virtual Enterprises Build up an Own Identity? Abstract

Volker Wulf: Evolving Cooperation when Introducing Groupware:
A Self-Organization Perspective Abstract

Kurt Dauer Keller: Sociotechnics and the Structuring of Meaning: Beyond the Idea of Autopoietic Social Systems  Abstract

The artist of this issue is Bruno Kjaer

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Index, forewords and abstracts to back volumes

This special issue of Cybernetics & Human Knowing presents a selection of revised papers delivered at the workshop ‘Groupware for Self-Organizing Units’ of the Fifth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, held in Stockholm, Sweden. The theme in focus is the intersection of Self-Organizing Social Systems and Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

Self-Organizing Social Systems (SOSS) is a particular conception of the social phenomena driven by the more recent developments in experimental epistemology, often associated with constructivism and the biological theory of living, called autopoiesis. This argument on the nature of human reality has shown an increasing impact on the understanding of the social, which differs, in some aspects radically, when compared with the more established conceptions. The idea of self-organizing working units has been successfully implemented in industry, on more pragmatic grounds, for example, in the Swedish car manufacturing company Volvo. One of the arguments for it’s use is that participatory work-design promotes both democracy and the ability of adaptation to new and non-forecasted conditions.

On the other hand, the recent emergence of the intellectual domain associated with the label Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has been driven by the developments within the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). In a broad sense, the idea is that various ICT artefacts are employed in order to support co-operation between individuals, groups, and organizations. Such tools allow us to treat aspects of working time and space, as well as the transformation of information, in ways that are not possible without them. The introduction of these artefacts frequently questions the existing work processes.

Whilst the two domains of intellectual inquiry, SOSS and CSCW, are rather recent and still elaborating their respective foundations, their cross-fertilization is in the very front-line of research. We cannot and do not want to provide any stable definition of this cross-fertilization. We would just like to confirm that the analysis and design of CSCW may take on a new dimension when conceived in terms of SOSS, and the reverse. 

The selected papers present a blend of theoretical analysis, empirical investigations and methodological contributions. The first paper, by Christiane Floyd, aims to contribute to an epistemology of software system design founded in the constructivist thinking. It discusses four main issues: the design process as an insight building process with choices made in the design about options available in the use of a system; the concept of operational form aimed to clarify the interaction between software systems and human actions; the conception of methods as recourses in a situated and self-organizing design process; and finally the inherent ethics of the design process.

In the second paper Katharina Just-Hahn and Thomas Herrman propose a method for design and re-design of business processes. While self-organization promotes autonomy of a human agent, workflow management systems can serve management as a means to control business processes. The proposed method, called Step-by-Step, aims to support self-design of business processes and thus to overcome the tension mentioned between the autonomy of an employee and its control by the management. Furthermore, this method, it is argued, makes it possible for a business organization to adapt rapidly to the challenges that today’s organizations constantly meet.

The development of groupware has been fundamental in the emergence of the so-called virtual enterprises. In the third paper, Michael Paetau’s empirically driven investigation asks whether such enterprises should be considered as special forms of social networks or if they may be seen as social organizations with their own identity. The study discusses, among other things, the tension between an organization’s differentiation and integration, which seems to be particularly pertinent for the behavior of virtual enterprises. The latter will come to a crossroad, where it must decide between maintaining its virtual character at the expense of losing its unity, or becoming a non-virtual organization with its own unity and identity, however losing the properties of a virtual organization.

A transition from the more traditional conception of social organizations that builds on prescription of its behavior towards a self-organizational conception which self-scribes its behavior is issued in the fourth paper by Volker Wulf. A question of investigation into which role CSCW can play to initiate and promote such a transition. In order to find the answers, two case studies of ICT introduction are interpreted with the theory of self-organizing social systems. The result suggests that the self-organization approach is more suitable for conceptions of social organizations then the more conventional prescriptive approaches. 

In the fifth and final paper, Kurt Keller provides a critical investigation of N. Luhmann’s theory of social systems and argues that the theory has limitations with regard to its potentiality to guide the conception of CSCW; this because of its treatment of human meaning. Instead, he proposes an alternative that is founded in the phenomenological tradition.