Year: 1995
Type: article
Abstract: In recent years dramatic changes in the world economy have led companies to restructure themselves in order to compete globally.Debates in the academic community about the changing demand for workplace skills with the globalization of the economy are paralleled in the business literature about what it takes to create a productive business (e.g., [8,22,24]).Business goals for such improvements as computer systems, work systems, or learning organizations are heavily influenced by underlying assumptions about how people work and how organizations function.In this article I examine these underlying assumptions and outline their implications for design.I suggest that underlying assumptions rooted in different conceptions of work coexist within an organization and represent different lenses through which people in the organization peer.One such lens, or conception of work, I call an "organizational, explicit" view, the other an "activity-oriented, tacit" view (see Table 1).Each of these perspectives carries different implications for the design of work and technologies.1 An organizational perspective on work is an explicit view and is represented, for example, by sets of defined tasks and operations such as those described in methods and procedures, which fulfill a set of business functions (the work-flow approach reflects this; see [16].)This view of work differs from an activity-oriented approach, which suggests that the range of activities, communication practices, relationships, and coordination it takes to accomplish business functions is complex and continually mediated by 36
Source: Communications of the ACM
Author: Patricia Sachs
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2086093613