Vignette 1: Leisure Time Catering (Anderson, Hughes, & Sharrock)
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Cooperative Arrangement
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Small group of co-workers (17). Location within a site, some co-location at desks.
Ability to oversee and overhear other peoples work. Focus on one type of artefact,
invoices, how they are constituted and how they work their way round the office.
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Representation of Activity
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The activity is represented in the invoice. The paper processing path (or trackway,
Star and Greismer, 1989) for invoices within a catering firm is encapsulated on those
invoices. Different invoices have different routes round the office depending on whether,
for example, they need to be approved by the chairman. At different parts of the process
the invoices are stamped, initialled, signed, coded and so forth indicating a particular
action has been carried out by a particular person on a particular date. This record
allows a worker to see almost 'at-a-glance' the process that any given invoice has been
through and serves as a reference to the context of decision making. During processing
this, "stratified record of work", serves as a resource to quickly see what has been
done, what needs to be done and what any problems might be. After processing it serves
as an accountable record of having completed the work properly.
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Ecological Arrangement
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The two important aspects to capture about the ecology are the invoice
itself and its movement round the office.
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Coordination Techniques
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Coordination is achieved with the invoice as a medium of coordination. Each worker
in series carries out their required activity, for example a processing or signing task,
amends the invoice respectively and then passes the invoice on to the next person in the
process. The placement of the invoice in the in tray of the next worker signals the
change in process stages. The information on the invoice should indicate what work has
been done by who, when. The record also facilitates for the present holder of the invoice
to communicate with the previous workers for clarification and so forth.
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Community of Use
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Inter-organisational group of workers in an accountancy department of a small
catering company.
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