Meeting 3 Notes

Co-ordinator = Eve Mitleton-Kelley

PARTICIPANTS

• In the last session we talked about the slicing of the individual. I would like to know if we are using this as a metaphor or as a framework to approach the issue of this group. 
• I would say that home is a metaphor for an individual in the sense that there we have the full flesh human being, whereas office is the expression of the slicing of that individual. Our framework is one in which we start to see how is it that ICT somehow support or enable or, on the contrary, produce difficulties for the person in his/her slicing in a work situation. 
• If we are serious about a proposal I think we need to decide where are we going to present it. What kind of research proposal are we going to propose? Which language are we going to use?
• One very interesting issue to explore is how ICT can support the constitution of roles in an organisation.
• If organisations are moving into flat structures the consequence of that is that the constitution of roles will be towards more flexibility and more capacity for local decision and problem solving. Our concern on that will be how is it that ICT enables this type of constitution.
• In other words, we are asking how ICT can support this development of current organisations towards greater autonomy and responsibility? What are the restrictions for that?
• Notice that the problem of constituting roles is not only technological but also a cultural.

CRITICS & PARTICIPANTS

• Notice that in Maturana´s terms what you are calling home relations is the equivalent to social relations and what you are calling office relations correspond to his distinction of non-social relations. With this in mind, I would like you to consider how ICT can increase the variety of contacts in order to create social relations in the office?
• We can say that through ICT we can improve the responsibility and autonomy within an organisation but how this new organisation is going to relate to the new society?
• Another issue that you may consider regarding the use of ICT in the constitution of roles is the idea of designing ICTs in such a way that they can be adapted to specific needs of roles in particular organisational contexts. In this sense ICT is not a particular artefact with a pre-established purpose but a tool that can be manipulated and adapted during the process of constituting a particular role.
• I think we need to put the regulator of these technologies inside the system itself instead of being us who decide what is desirable for others.
• How can the design of ICT provide the openness and the choice for the people?
• Regarding desirability we can see two aspects. The first one is the constitution of roles in organisations and how is it that this constitution may stretch or put some tension in the person who has many other ecologies and as a result of that this person cannot perform well. The second aspect is that organisations have certain values that are espoused these days and the espousing of those values implies certain desirable roles with certain properties and what we find is that these properties do not emerge. In this sense we have the two pairs: a person and a role, and the role and the organisation. Of course the values are connecting the two pairs.
• As a synthesis I would be very interested in the development a research proposal as an outcome of this group.
• We can put forward the following question how can ICT, through the flexible "designability", facilitate the individual in developing roles.