E-SYSTEMS DESIGN THROUGH THE STUDY OF AUTHENTIC

WORK PRACTICE

social activity theory and the case of University - Industry collaboration

John Perkins, Sharon Cox

School of Computing, Faculty of Computing, Information and English, University of Central England, Birmingham, UK.

Keywords: Knowledge management, information s

ystems analysis, supply-chain management, socio-technical systems,

social activity theory, information requirements analysis, collaborative systems, e-commerce systems.

Abstract: E-commerce systems involve collaborative systems that support and enable trading partners to work

together as members of communities of practice. Eliciting the information requirements necessary to design,

develop and run these systems requires understanding of what practitioners do in practice, as well as what

policy directives impose as practice. A practice-centric approach is proposed for identification of elements

of practice, a brief summary is made of some tools and concepts from Social Activity Theory and their

relevance for further analysis of collaborative system information requirements is assessed.

1 INTRODUCTION

E-business removes the need for physical contact

between trading partners or agents. Teams of

practitioners, which are dispersed geographically,

organisationally and culturally, need to operate as a

form of community in order to enable the trading

system to work effectively through its technical

infrastructure. The traditional face-to-face approach

to developing mutual trust and a shared

understanding of the trading system is rarely

available to them. Instead they develop practice

within a technical system overlaid with socio-

cultural rules. This is what we refer to here as a

collaborative system.

Communities using these systems are highly

ependent upon sharing knowledge that enables

them to be effective practitioners. This reciprocal

dependency between practice and knowledge

maintains the criticality of communication, co-

ordination and co-operation (Bafoutzou and Mentzas

2002) in collaborative systems that perform

satisfactorily. Sharing of knowledge is, in turn,

highly dependant upon the establishment of trust

within practitioner communities and allows the

community knowledge to be accessed and

contributed to by its members.

In previous work, a socio-technical view of

devel

oping collaborative systems between trading

partners has been examined (e.g. Dingley & Perkins,

2000). This paper proposes an approach to identify

the information requirements of such systems,

exploring the relationship between policy and

collaborative practice.

Problems with the development and management

f systems that attempt to enable collaboration arise

as a result of building the systems on cardinal, or

espoused requirements of practice projected from

policy requirements. We propose that in contrast,

the actual practice that often results from individual

practitioners ‘working around’ policy directives to

achieve finite results in a situation where time and

other operational resources are rationed (Lipsky

1980) should form the basis for determining the

information requirements.

Computer supported co-operative practice

research

has recognised this problem of identifying

actual as opposed to cardinal practice, but it remains

a difficult problem (Sachs 1995). By the nature of

the encultured and embodied knowledge that enables

expertise, it is highly tacit and often not recognisable

in an explicit form even by the practitioner who

employs it in practice activity. An approach to

develop information systems that more effectively

enables collaborative activity needs to be situated

within the study of practice activity itself.

This paper introduces some recent approaches

nown collectively as Social Activity Theory

317

Perkins J. and Cox S. (2004).

E-SYSTEMS DESIGN THROUGH THE STUDY OF AUTHENTIC WORK PRACTICE - social activity theory and the case of University - Industry

collaboration.

In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 317-324

DOI: 10.5220/0002648203170324

 SciTePress

developed in the social sciences as a means of

identifying authentic practice with a view to

analysing its information system requirements.

1.1 Approach

This paper aims to propose an approach to

investigate the information needs of groups of

collaborating practitioners. It provides a context for

the critical appreciation of some recent theory.

Collaboration in practice is explored both between

industrial partners and between a UK University and

an industrial organisation. The study is principally

aimed at individual practitioners and the groups, or

communities that they form in the conduct of their

practice.

The following section explores the subject of

collaboration to clarify its meaning and practice. A

taxonomy of academic-industry collaboration is then

proposed as it pertains to a computing school in a

UK University in order to develop information

systems based on practitioner needs. The paper will

identify some of the policy developments that

provide explicit influence upon institutional

frameworks. It concludes by identifying means by

which collaborative activity might be examined

more closely to reveal the authentic patterns of

practice of e-trading practitioners

2 EXPLORING COLLABORATION

In the UK Higher Education sector there are

considerable pressures upon academic staff to

collaborate with their colleagues inside their

institution, with their colleagues at co-operating

institutions and with commercial and industrial

partners. The rationale for this collaboration may be

positioned at a number of different organisational

levels and orientations. It might be situated at the

level of technical rationality with resource efficiency

and effectiveness as the primary criteria.

Alternatively it might be at the level of academic

research or teaching practice as a means of more

effectively situating learning through immersion in

practice. Yet another situation might involve

collaboration as a tool for social engineering,

especially with a view to redistributing educational

resources.

Frequently the collaborations that academics

become involved with are entered into in relative

ignorance of the issues and criteria that surround the

immediate task. The integration of these activities is

ostensibly integrated under the umbrella of

University policies that dictate strategy and lend

guidance to practice (UCE 2002). However policy

frequently falls short of providing adequate and

appropriate direction to the individual or group

engaged in practice involving collaborative work.

The practice that results is likely to reflect the

behaviour referred to as that of the ‘street-level

bureaucrat’ (Lipsky 1980). This refers to behaviour

where the discretion arising from job ambiguity is

used to develop new practices to control the

behaviour of clients and introduce the rationing of

scarce resources. This may give rise to institutional

uncertainty and doubt that changes the nature of

collaborative activity. Alternatively it may provide

sufficient ambiguity of objectives to collaborating

practitioners that they feel enfranchised to take on

board further powers of discretion in their roles. The

problem appears to be of mapping espoused policy

to roles and practice. The determination of the

conceptual foundations of collaboration and in

particular, academic-industrial collaborative

practice, may provide a means to address this

problem of activity specification.

2.1 Generic Concepts of

Collaboration

The notion of collaboration is a broad one. A

dictionary definition gives two meanings: the first is

‘to work together, especially in a joint intellectual

effort’. The second is ‘to cooperate treasonably, as

with an enemy occupation force in one’s country’

(www.yourdictionary.com). This indicates at least

two factors. Firstly, the meaning of the term is

historically and socially situated. It implies that the

partners’ ‘joint-ness’ is equal and that the partners

in collaboration share common goals, enjoy equal

benefits and wield equal power. These initial

assumptions about the nature of collaboration appear

to be contested by much literature on observed

practice in collaborative work situations (Tett 2003,

Booher and Innes 2002). Secondly, collaboration has

not always occupied high moral ground.

Collaboration frequently appears to contain a strong

competitive element. The notion that collaboration

can go too far and become tantamount to

‘fraternisation with the enemy’ is another common

feature of reports on collaborative practice (Loan-

Clarke and Preston 2002). Power and status within

the partnerships undergoing collaboration also

appear to be potentially interesting issues to guide an

investigation into its conceptual foundations.

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318

2.2 Collaboration Policy within the

Industrial Sector

The nature of interaction between suppliers,

customers and fellow competitors in a market driven

capitalist system such as that in the UK remains

reasonably well represented by the original ideas of

Adam Smith (2001) developed 250 years ago. The

introduction of concepts of relative power between

competing participants within competitive

marketplaces was developed further during the early

1980’s when free market economy was developing

as the dominant contemporary paradigm in the USA

and UK (Porter 1980) when the principal motivation

of survival within a competitive marketplace was

extended into a concern with strategic alliances used

to gain competitive advantage. The concept of value

chains and value networks were used to provide

metaphors capturing and objectifying this dialogue

(Porter 1985). Many management approaches

followed in an attempt to develop competitiveness

(Alvesson 2002).

The development of Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) from the 1990s

was perceived as a significant weapon for securing

advantage completive advantage for industry and

commerce (Synnot 1987). The development of the

Internet and the introduction of the world-wide web

in the early 1990s brought about some profound

changes in the way that technology might mediate

traditional ways of competing (Gates 1996).

Within the UK retail sector, for instance, major

supermarkets all established electronic trading

networks. In some research conducted over a four-

year action research programme into a collaborative

e-commerce system in the retail sector, suppliers to

these monolithic organisations were effectively

compelled to change their systems of trading to

comply with the technical and operational

requirements of these systems (Perkins and Dingley

2001). The structure of the collaborative systems

that resulted imposed considerable differences in the

amount of power that the collaborating partners

could bring to bear on other partners (Perkins et al

2003), however, suppliers willingly assented to

become part of the collaborative trading system as

they considered that their position in the supply

chain produced by the collaboration increased their

chances of survival within the market as a whole

(Perkins and Dingley 2001).

2.3 Collaboration Policy within the

University Context

Cycles of mutual dependency and antipathy have

long existed between the UK government and the

University sector. These have been responsible for a

series of legislation and supporting policy that is

well documented (Trowler 2003, Kogan and

Hanney 1999 and Henkel 1999). New expectations

of education/industrial collaboration by the UK

government and its agencies through legislation date

back to at least 1994 with the White Papers on

competitiveness (DTI 1994) and Foresight (DTI

1997). This launched the debate on public-private

interests in research and provided a means of

scanning the environment for determining social,

economic and market trends and deciding upon

appropriately responsive research policy as a result.

The Dearing Report (Dearing 1997) contained

explicit recommendations that UK universities

should collaborate rather than compete. It also

recommended that institutions of higher learning

should be represented on Regional Development

Boards, establishing a participatory role for

universities in local economic development. Tett

sees the concept of collaboration as integral to the

current UK government ideology:

‘These themes of collaboration and partnership,

sometimes referred to by the shorthand term ‘joined-

up government’, are at the centre of New Labour’s

vision of the welfare state’ (Tett et al 2003).

In contrast with the situation in the industrial

sector, and with the exception of the sort of

collegiate research collaboration described by Smith

(2001), collaboration within UK universities is not

as well established. At the corporate level,

universities are frequently involved in collaboration

in research joint ventures as a result of

encouragement by government policy (FEFC 1997).

Also there is considerable incentive to collaborate

with overseas institutions of learning as a means of

increasing income independently of government

funding. Both types of initiative may be seen to be

parallel to the needs within the industrial sector to

create and be protected by the synergy resulting

from monolithic networks of trading influence.

In general however, within UK universities it

appears that tangible collaboration at the level of

individual academic practitioners has been

normative, localised and often ad-hoc. Specific

examples of policy directives on how collaboration

should be achieved are rare. Research collaboration

is encouraged in principle, but the effects of a

structural devolution of power to specialised

faculties and departments tends to become a serious

barrier to managing cross-faculty or cross-

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institutional projects that require resources (Smith

2001).

2.4 Collaboration policy between

Universities and Industry

The present UK government has made a strategic

commitment to securing collaboration between the

two sectors but there is evidence that academic-

industrial collaboration meets with problems arising

from a lack of common goals and a lack of mutual

benefits (DTI 2000).

Many of the goals that are held in common

between industrial and academic institutions exist

primarily at the top levels of corporate University

management. The financial management of

organisations in both industrial and academic sectors

share common concerns about securing income,

managing costs and optimising cash flow. They are

also both constrained by government policy that

seeks to position research grants and other major

funded projects in elite teams situated within elite

institutions, both industrial and academic (Jarvis

2000). At middle levels of management as well as at

the level of active practitioners in both academic and

industrial organisations there appears to be a much

lower incidence of common goals. Work by

Willmott (1998) identified differing attributes of

practitioners in a sample of industrial organisations

compared to a sample of academic practitioners.

Loan-Clarke and Preston (2002) focus on research

practice but identify areas of tension and power their

case study hybrid practitioner. These include:

theory as opposed to practice orientation

rigour against relevance

insider against outsider orientation

academic (research) role against practice

(management) role.

Academic-industrial collaboration can be

interpreted as potentially beneficial from one of a

number of standpoints. Firstly, and seen from the

viewpoint of national policy, it appears to provide a

cost-effective means of embedding government

policy into the Higher Education sector. Secondly,

seen from the viewpoint of those sponsoring

research for the purpose of increasing national

wealth and academic prestige, it provides a

framework for developing elite research

partnerships. UK government policy is to encourage

the structural embedding of collaboration between

industry and the Universities. However, at the level

of academic and industrial practice there appear to

be some generic problems. Short-term common

goals that are valued by both academic and

industrial partners are difficult to identify (Jones

2002). Government research funding programmes

frequently address this with explicit performance

measurement requirements. However, the implicit

interpersonal relationships that provide the more

tacit components of collaboration, such as mutual

trust, are not so frequently assessed in such

frameworks.

Overall, academic-industrial collaboration

appears to have lacked the drive from survival or

competitive pressures that typically lead industry to

collaborate In general, and with the possible

exception of some practitioner-led research

programmes (Smith 2001), there has been an

absence of bottom-up initiatives for academic-

industrial collaboration. Government policy

requirements have insisted that such collaboration

will take place and this has led to enforced top-down

collaboration in Universities when they bid for

major research and other significant projects. But

top-down pressure for collaboration tends not to be

effective (Smith 2001).

This reflection on the impact of policy on how e-

commerce practitioners interact in collaborative

systems has been examined at a strategic level up to

this point. This is useful for identifying macro

influences on e-commerce systems but is remote

from the operational practice that enabling e-

commerce systems are intended to operate. In order

to identify information requirements it is necessary

to resolve specific activities where practice exists.

This will be the subject of the next part of this paper.

3 A TAXONOMY OF

COLLABORATION

A variety of tasks are called collaboration.

Collaboration comprises many different practices

and policy will impact upon them in different ways.

The taxonomy proposed here will provide a means

of refocusing upon this interaction. The notion of

collaborative practice is distributed over all shades

and varieties of practice. Smith (2001) identifies

categories specifically for the research area of higher

education, and this has a usefully simple, if not fully

explanatory function for collaborative practice in

general. His categories comprise:

• Corporate partnerships

• Team collaboration

• Inter-personal collaboration

This scheme maps well to the notion of practice

at the macro (national/organisational), meso (local

community of practice) and micro (individual and

small group) levels. The macro level addresses the

areas of strategic consideration of overall policy

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within the operation of educational schemes. The

micro level addresses the activity of individual

tactical educational practice. Finally, the meso level

bridges the gap between these two end points of the

practice continuum. It does this by considering the

activities of closely co-operating groups, or

communities of practice that interact dynamically

with other communities. This model appears to be a

useful way to structure discussion on how these

categories of collaborative practice act and interact.

Smith bases his work on academic research practice

in Universities. This model may be further qualified

in terms of the universal, reformist and radical

approaches to practice identified by Martin (1987) in

his study of community education. This uses an

alternative characterisation of approaches described

as:

• Universal

• Reformist

• Radical

Under the universal model, it is assumed that

there are shared values and a working consensus

with a basic harmony of interests. In this view the

community educator’s role is to make universal non-

selective provision for all ages and groups. Under

the reformist model, it is assumed that there is a

plurality of interests with inter-group competition

for resources. Here, selective intervention is made

by the community educator to assist disadvantaged

people and socially excluded areas. Under the

radical model, it is assumed that interests are in

conflict because existing structures create inequality

and powerlessness. In this model, the community

educator’s intervention is based on ‘developing with

local people political education and social action

focused on concrete issues and concerns in the

community’ (Martin 1987: 25).

Another viewpoint comes from the management

literature. Bush (1995) identifies five distinct types

of educational management orientations through

which collaborative activity might be viewed. These

are:

• Formal

• Democratic

• Political

• Subjective

• Ambiguity

These categories are by no means an elegant

mapping of approaches to the problem of addressing

the multiple dimensions of collaborative practice.

Each of them assumes that only one archetypal

category is consistently dominant throughout the

course of an element of practice. However, any

area where ‘everything depends on everything else’

may benefit from the sacrifice of some precision in

definition in order to gain a small breakthrough in

discerning patterns of collaborative practice (Fullan

1999).

A simple taxonomy of practice was developed

from two interviews conducted with an academic

partner and an industrial partner to a joint project

(Dingley and Perkins 1999). This data was

triangulated with data taken from observation of

collaboration between academic and industrial

institutions. This provides a complementary way of

integrating parts of these three models in order to

look at specific examples of what is meant by

collaborative practice. The taxonomy is built upon a

scale where one end is occupied by practice that is

predominantly controlled, or influenced by academic

institutions (for example, teaching and learning

practice) and the other end by industrial influence

(for instance, applied research and development

projects).

At the educationally oriented end of the

practice continuum this taxonomy comprises:

Micro

level

A1 Industrial practitioners from industry -

guest lectures from industry- relation of

categorical information.

A2 Industrial practitioners as guest lectures

relating case studies for problem solving

A3 Industrial practitioners acting as team

members in academic workshops

Meso

Level

A4 Groups of industrial practitioners giving

access and information to academic staff

and/or students

A5 Groups of industrial practitioners

providing access to research by academic

staff/students

A6 Groups of academic staff sharing

resources and research outcomes

Macro

Level

A7 Industrial institutions providing access to

academic institutional staff and students

for placements, workshop activities

A8 Industrial institutions providing access

and facilities to academic institutional for

educational projects

A9 Industrial institutions sharing resources

and research outcomes (joint venture).

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At the industrially oriented end of the practice

continuum this taxonomy comprises:

Micro

level

B1 Academic practitioners act as

trainers/advisors for the relation of

categorical information

B2 Academic practitioners act as guest

lecturers relating case studies for problem

solving.

B3 Academic practitioners acting as team

members in industrial projects

Meso

Level

B4 Groups of academic practitioners give

access and information to industrial staff

and/or students

B5 Groups of academic practitioners provide

access to research by industrial staff

B6 Groups of academic staff share resources

and research outcomes with industrial

staff

Macro

Level

B7 Academic institutions provide access to

industrial institutional staff for personal

development and training

B8 Academic institutions provide access and

facilities to industrial institutional for

educational projects

B9 Academic institutions share resources

and research outcomes (joint venture).

This simple categorisation provides a

rudimentary taxonomy of this example of

collaborative practice observed between an

academic and an industrial institution, its groups and

its individuals. The development from initial types

of collaborative practices to more mature forms is

characterised by the taxonomy proposed above.

Increasingly intensive forms of collaboration, such

as that from A1 to A3, or B7 to B9, involve more

developed levels of collaborative ability, motivation

and cultural affinity to collaborative action.

Development of the collaborative practice in this

way is accompanied by a concurrent development of

a number of attributes of the developed collaborative

system. These include time invested in the

collaborative arrangement, by a higher level of trust

amongst the participating practitioners, by an ability

to identify benefits accruing from the partnership, by

holding some goals in common and by having begun

to institutionalise, or ‘tempered’ the relationship in a

way in which interpersonal tensions are released

sufficiently to enable participants to be able to

perform in the joint practice that emerges from the

collaborative work system (Dingley and Perkins

1999).

3.1 Refining and Using the Taxonomy

An example of collaborative practice between an

academic member of staff from UCE and a major

industrial manufacturer of soft drinks was used to

test the proposed taxonomy. The investigation

involved an interview with a member of UCE staff

involved in an extended collaborative project and an

interview with a senior member of a business

organisation involved in the same exercise.

Observation of the practice that took place in some

of these activity groupings was done concurrently

through a programme of action research over a

period of four years.

The taxonomy can be used as a basis for

identifying degrees of departure from cardinal

practice, that is practice that ostensibly ‘should’

happen if accepted policy is interpreted literally by

practitioners. This can be compared with authentic

practice, which is about what really happens when

practitioners use ‘work arounds’ that cope with the

work-based pragmatics of managing limited time

and resource availability.

Let us take as an example practice B6 – ‘groups

of academic staff share resources with industrial

staff’. The cardinal practice set by policy in this area

of activity might dictate that e-commerce systems

must enable groups of practitioners from both

industry and academia to access research outcomes

in a particular area. Design activity to carry this out

might result in common data being made available

through a web-based portal and with this technical

infrastructure in place, the policy need is ostensibly

satisfied. In observed practice however the case

study identified differences of preferences for

information presentation between academic and

industrial partners. Summarising the observations

briefly, academic partners expected emerging

research data to be presented and discussed in some

forum. Industrial partners expected a summary of

best practice principles to emerge from the data that

might inform tactical decision making for current

practice. The information was strongly mediated by

its coding and presentation. Frequently the

knowledge of practice that the collaborative system

information was expected to support was of a

category that could not be coded in any explicit

form.

The study of authentic practice within

communities of practitioners is necessary to

determine the cultural rules that underpin routine

practice and provide a process of authentic

information requirements determination. An

approach that is currently emerging from the social

sciences and organization studies that offers some

valuable advice is that of Social Activity Theory.

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322

3.2 The Role of Social Activity

Theory

This developing area sets as its main focus the study

of organisational culture through the medium of the

work practices that comprise and result from it. It

comprises an eclectic body of research and provides

useful tools for the analysis of work practice

identified through the taxonomy developed above.

Blackler’s taxonomy of knowledge is a

significant move away from the traditional concept

of knowledge as abstract, disembodied, individual

and formal (Blackler 1995). Instead a model of

knowledge as embodied, embedded, embrained,

encultured and encoded is proposed. Rather than

studying knowledge as something individuals or

organizations supposedly possess, the attribute of

‘knowing’ is seen as something that they do. This is

used to analyse the dynamics of the systems through

which knowing is accomplished. With this

reorientation of approach,

‘..knowing in all its forms is analysed as a

phenomenon which is: (a) manifest in systems of

language, technology, collaboration and control (i.e.

it is mediated); (b) located in time and space and

specific to particular contexts (i.e. it is situated); (c)

constructed and constantly developing (i.e. it is

provisional); and (d) purposive and object-oriented

(i.e. it is pragmatic).’ (Blackler 1995)

Blackler uses Activity Theory (Engestrom 2001)

to identify this knowledge situated within

communities of practice. Engestrom’s model of

socially distributed activity systems explores the

dynamics between agents, such as the users of

collaborative systems, objects of activity, such as

trading processes, and the community that this

trading takes place within. The way that these

elements are mediated by implicit or explicit rules,

by roles and divisions of labour and by instruments

and technology such as their information systems are

then analysed.

Michael Eraut introduces processes of distributed

learning and distributed ‘knowing’ about how

practice should be conducted (Eraut 2000). Recent

research from psychology and education into

memory structures and knowledge acquisition

pathways are presented to allow a deeper

understanding of some of the cognitive processes

taking place within the activities analysed.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Collaborative systems are important to successful e-

commerce systems, which are in turn a vital

component of modern business. But the nature of

collaboration is not clear. This is problematical

because:

practices can turn out to be different from their

ostensible policy specification,

the community in which those practices are

understood to be actioned can reject them

the knowledge that drives work practices can be

located in places or media inaccessible to the

information systems supposedly enabling them.

An approach to improving the ability of

collaborative information systems to support

authentic work practice is proposed. This begins

with the development of taxonomies of practice for

the specific work situation under examination. It

moves on to using participant surveys and

observation to refine the nature of individual

practice. Conceptual tools from Social Activity

Theory are then identified in order to better

determine the information requirements of systems

to support the collaborative practice.

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