Collaborative Work Systems Inc.

Distributed Work in Networked Organizations

Networked socio-technical work systems are often a complex community of people, technologies, information, and services interconnected by a communications network, seeking to achieve optimal utilization of resources, synchronization of events, and specific outcomes.  For these organizations to be effective users of the network need to be aware of relevant information that can aid their decision making, and they need to have it at the right time and in optimal formats to ensure efficient and effective decisions.

Necessary collaboration among people and technologies means that the "pushing" and "pulling" of information can come from either source, and good team processes are needed to share, interpret, plan, and act on information in the network to achieve goals.  Even when these systems are well designed, some training is normally required to help individuals and teams achieve optimal performance.

Robust Data Entry of Shared Information

Barcoded wristbands/medications for efficient & accurate data entry

Distributed Command & Control

A regional FAA air traffic control center

Mobile Command Centers

A temporary military command center

Military Command and Control

Processes for shared/coordinated awareness, understanding, and decision making

Organizational knowledge management is also critical because much of an organizations knowledge is tacit.  This is particularly true when organizations are distributed and for meta knowledge.  For these organizations it is critical that there is good self-awareness within an organization and of other organizations and groups that are both collaborators and competitors.  Challenges in this regard include relevant data collection, aggregation and transformation, and analysis and presentation of results necessary to make it meaningful and part of an organization's decision making processes.

Some of the most important concepts in socio-technical work system operations are:

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