Process oriented cooperative work: an emergent framework

Abstract

A particular process in an organization is not always fixed in term of agents' roles, process steps and goals and process results. In consequence, we can consider processes such as concurrent engineering as emergent processes. This is a challenge for socio-technical design and our aim is to design a configurable CSCW system for this kind of process. CSCW systems can broadly be referred to as either conversation oriented (from rhetorical to speech acts models) or activity oriented. We discuss the drawbacks of these approaches in a concurrent engineering context and present our solution to this problem. Our process model enables the representation of an environment as emerging in situ from the dynamics of interactions, dynamics resulting from the comprehension that each participant has for the actions of others and by the perception of indications coming directly from the environment. The system we are building analyzes the actions done by agents in their cognitive shared space, derived from a process model, through the events generated by their actions and interactions.