In the area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), a crucial issue is to devise computational Coordi-nation Mechanisms (CMs) that provide support for coope-rating actors in managing the complexity of articulating their distributed and yet interdependent activities. The con-cept of CM has been developed as a generalization of phenomena described in different ways in different empiri-cal investigations. These show that the articulation of dis-tributed activities requires support by means of category of symbolic artefacts which, in the context of a set of procedu-res and conventions, stipulate and mediate articulation work. From the evidence of empirical studies, we have derived a set of general requirements for CMs and, by im-plication, for a general enviroment for constructing such CMs [2; 3]. First, we defined a model capturing the dimen-sions of articulation work that are formalized in a collection of Objects of Articulation Work (OAW), for example role, actors, tasks, activities and the like, together with their rela-tionships, for example, responsible of, committed to, assig-ned to etc. Secondly, we derived the basic constituents of a CM: (a) the OAW characterizing the CM; (b) the distribu-ted protocol encompassing the set of conventions and pro-cedures governing the articulation through the CM; and (c) a symbolic artifact with a standardized format to represent the type of information necessary to mediate the articula-tion of distributed activities in the cooperative arrangement and in relation to the specific field of work under concen. Third, since no single mechanism will apply to all aspects of articulation work in all domains of work, a CM must be able to intemperate with other CMs in the wider organiza-tional field. Finally, the enviroment must provide means for the dynamic reconfiguration of the CMs and must give ac-tors means of controlling in a cooperative manner the prop-agation of changes to the behavior of the mechanisms.
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