Team work: collaboration and control in London Underground line control rooms
Christian Heath, Paul Luff · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2000
Introduction It is hardly surprising that attempts to build technologies to support collaborative work draw from more traditional sociological models of the ‘team’ and the ‘group’. Such models continue to permeate the social sciences and with their formal description of roles and responsibilities, task specifications and the like, they provide a set of principles which can be embodied in complex systems. In consequence, the concept of the ‘group’ played an important part in CSCW, and still underlies the thinking behind a range of technological innovations. To an extent, therefore, CSCW has replaced the individual and cognitive model of human conduct found within HCI with a socialised being, an incumbent of organisational rules who follows formally prescribed procedures to achieve particular ends. It is increasingly recognised, however, that, despite the substantial contribution of such models, to both our understanding of human conduct and the design of technology, certain organisational arrangements do not readily lend themselves to descriptions which attempt to characterise conduct in terms of formal roles and responsibilities. The newsroom at Reuters may be one such example. Other forms of organisation may be rather different. Take, for instance, command and control supported by safety critical systems. Power stations, military surveillance centres, railway control rooms and the like are settings in which there is a clear allocation of tasks and responsibilities, coupled with a detailed and formal specification of the procedural organisation of particular activities.