Steps Across the Border – Cooperation, Knowledge Production and Systems Design

Abstract

The computer support of cooperation and knowledge production across socially distributed activity systems has become an important topic in the context of the discourse on ``knowledge management''. The present article will draw on concepts of cultural-historical activity theory to discuss the problem of how the notion of ``knowledge'' is conceptualized and implicitly implemented in computer systems to support knowledge management, often neglecting the social embeddedness of knowledge production in everyday work practices. From the point of view of cultural-historical activity theory we would propose to look upon the generation of knowledge as a process embedded in socially distributed activities that are constantly being reproduced and transformed in and between specific communities of practice. We will present a model of cooperation that relates processual and structural aspects of joint activity. Methodologically, it draws on the analysis of unexpected events in the course of joint activity. Our model also proposes to use forums for co-construction to make visible different perspectives in the process of software design. The concept of cooperative model production is highlighted as a means to mediate, not to eliminate, differences of perspectives involved in the course of systems design. An empirical example will be given in which the repertory-grid technique is used to visualize similarities and differences of potential users' viewpoints and requirements in early stages of systems design.