Flexible Interactive Technologies for Multi-Person Tasks: Current Problems and Future Prospects.

摘要

Whether organizations are moving to network their personal computers, decentralize their mainframe environments, or build group level computing structures, they share at least one major concern: to provide flexible interactive technology to support and augment multi-person work. This chapter reviews cross-sectional, case study and pilot research carried out by RAND's Institute for Research on Interactive Systems, which explores the deployment of current information technology in diverse user groups. The successful integration of new technology into information-intensive work demonstrates the socio technical properties of work groups that is, group members are interdependent not only on one another but also on the technology, and technical and organizational issues are closely interrelated. The more advanced the information-handling tools provided to the group, the more critical it becomes to give equivalent and concurrent attention to the social process through which these tools are deployed, and to seek a mutual adaptation rather than maximization of either the social or technical system in isolation.