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| Almaden Institute |
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Changing Ways of Working? |
Abstract:
George Orwell wrote about the temptation to view what turn out to be the
eddies of history as tidal waves merely because we are experiencing them.
Set within our own historical context, we may wonder at the social and technological
changes we have witnessed. Yet historically, the problematics of managing
enterprises in today's era of the global extensible enterprise would
be very familiar to the members of the Dutch East India Company in 17th
Century. In our easy ways of associating historical and technological change
with changes in ways of working, we sometimes forget that the actions and
interactions of people that make up a course of work may be recognizable
across time and across technologies. The actual work of practicing the law
within a modern enterprise, for example, would no doubt be very familiar
to the lawyers of the Dutch East India Company. The company lawyers would
recognize the practices of their trade - what makes up a course of work
may, by its organisational necessities, remain immutable. What may change
are the enabling features and the peripheries of work: computers have replaced
quill pens, global networks have replaced the mail packet, and data bases
the dusty archives. Yet the constituent practices of the work remain despite
changes in the enabling technologies. Drawing from a series of empirical
studies of work done in modern enterprises, this talk will show that, in
order to do their work in the face of new technology, people have either
had to work around it, switch it off, accept lower productivity, or work
to make it work in their circumstances. This talk will cover how changing
ways of working demands that we be serious about understanding how bodies
of work are done, and this understanding should condition what we mean when
we say work will be transformed in new organisational eras made possible
by new technology.
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 Presentation [1.1Mb] |
Biography
Graham Button gained his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 1976 where
he was also the faculty research assistant. He subsequently joined the University
of Plymouth, first as a lecturer in sociology, then as a senior lecturer and
principal lecturer, with sabbatical periods at the University of California,
Los Angeles and Boston University. In 1992 he joined the European Lab of Xerox's
Palo Alto Research Centre -EuroPARC- as principle scientist. Shortly thereafter
he created the Studies of Technology, Organisations and Work program and became
its area manager.
In 1999 he was appointed the director of the Cambridge Laboratory of Xerox
Research Centre Europe, and in 2002 he became the laboratory director of XRCE
in Grenoble, France. His major research interest is the organization of work
and interaction at work, and with how research into these topics may be used
in the production of novel workplace technologies. In addition to his core interests
in work, interaction, organizations and technology, he also undertakes research
into the philosophy of mind and has contributed to the debates surrounding artificial
intelligence and computational models of mind.
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