The issue of boundaries is fundamental to our present work and our use of
CHAT in it. But it is an issue with so many facets that I would like to hear
more from Sonja about what it is that puzzles her.
Acknowledging that I may be commenting on the wrong facet, I will just start
the ball rolling by reflecting that some of the difficulties we create for
ourselves in our work are to do with a predisposition to reify and fix
boundaries to the systems we are working with. We tend to do this in order
to make cognitively manageable the particular system space we are working
with at the time, but it invariably gets us into trouble.
We constantly have to pull back and remind ourselves of a number of things
about systems and their boundaries which make them uncertain and constantly
shifting, but which nevertheless are real, the most frequently occuring
being:
1. Unit of analysis questions. Is the system the team? the functional
business unit? the whole company? The company, its suppliers and its
customers? ..... and so on. This is the nested character of activity
systems. The issue here is that workers constantly find themslves crossing
boundaries that exist on one level, but not on another. E.G. sales must deal
with manufacturing, and cross one kind of boundary to do so. But on another
level both sales and manufacturing exist within the same system in order to
cross together the boundary with customers. This also happens in the
tangible world. I cross the boundary between San Diego and Solana Beach
without leaving California. I cross the boundary between California and
Arizona without leaving the US. Your new President today seemed to tell us
that he believes that the USA is a separate activity system from the rest of
the world when it comes to climate. Time will tell whether or not he is
correct. All of these boundaries are the locus of significant disturbances
and contradictions which we may or may not resolve.
2. The boundaries associated with the multiple contexts that we carry with
us. Even when I am at work in my team or unit, I am still a member of other
systems - family, clubs, political parties, whatever. I constantly
experience the tensions which occur at the motivational boundaries of those
different systems - and I transmit my experience of those tensions to my
work system through the way I behave within that system as a consequence. It
is arguable that the crew of the US submarine that sank the Japanese ship
failed because they were inadequately equipped to deal with operating at the
boundary between two systems which were making simultaneous demands of
them - the normal operational system of the submarine, and the political
public relations system which required them to schmooze visitors (Known as
the 'interrupted check list syndrome' in aviation).
3. The cognitive boundaries between what is observable and knowable by the
system within which I am currently working, and what is not observable or
knowable.
Yrjo also talks about 'knotworking' - the boundary issues associated with
well defined systems which must come together temporarily to deal
collaboratively with an issue common to them all - and which therefore must
deal with those aspects of their systems which are incompatible with those
of the systems with which we are collaborating.
That's just an ill thought out rave to stimulate those who actually know
what they are talking about
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
Sent: Thursday, 29 March 2001 17:09
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: passed along/AT boundaries
This question, posed locally, seems to me very challenging and I would be
interested in xmca help on the issue.
mike
-----
Hi everybody, I am struging with the following
question:
If an activity (system)is a context of action, how one
identifies its boundaries? Yrjo talks about "crossing
boundaries" in his paper about policontextuality,
referring to his examples (a worker moves to another
production unit). I am not sure, I understood this,
but I feel this is an important question for AT...
Maybe, the issue of boundaries is not relevant at all,
but then, how can we talk about 'crossing boundaries'
Please talk back, I am desparate for other voices..
Sonja
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