Everyday, people in organizations must solve their problems to get their work accomplished. To do so, they often must find others with knowledge and information. Systems that assist users with finding such expertise are increasingly interesting to organizations and scientific communities. But, as we begin to design and construct such systems, it is important to determine what we are attempting to augment. Accordingly, we conducted a five-month field study of a medium-sized software firm. We found the participants use complex, iterative behaviors to minimize the number of possible expertise sources, while at the same time, provide a high possibility of garnering the necessary expertise. We briefly consider the design implications of the identification, selection, and escalation behaviors found during our field study. Keywords Expertise networks, knowledge networks, computermediated communications, expert locators, expertise location, expertise finding, information seeking, CSCW, compu...

Theorists often speculate why open source and free software project contributors give their work away. Although contributors make their work publicly available, they do not forfeit their rights to it. Community managed software projects protect their work by using several legal and normative tactics, which should not be conflated with a disregard for or neglect of intellectual property rights. These tactics allow a project's intellectual property to be publicly and freely available and yet, governable. Exploration of this seemingly contradictory state may provide new insight into governance models for the management of digital intellectual property. Key Words: Software, Public Goods, Open Source, Intellectual Property, Common Pool Resources *Contact: Siobhn O'Mahony; Negotiations, Organization and Markets group, Harvard Business School, Baker Library West 186, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163, USA; Tel: +1 617 495 0875; Fax: +1 617 496 7379; E-mail: somahony@hbs.edu This research was in part supported by the Stanford University's Center for Work, Technology and Organization, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and funds provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Social Science Research Council's Program on the Corporation as a Social Institution. Special thanks to the editors and reviewers for their helpful comments, to my informants for their time and interest and to Stephen Barley, Robert Sutton, Josh Lerner, Carliss Baldwin, George Baker, Victor Seidel, Fabrizio Ferraro, Mark Mortensen, Michael Schrage, Rachel Campagna and Jason Owen-Smith for their always thoughtful comments on the formation of these ideas and earlier versions of this paper. It's kind of cool to bring the power to where it belongs and what's really exciting about working with the hack...

This chapter is about methods for managing and analyzing qualitative data. By qualitative data we mean text: newspapers, movies, sitcoms, e-mail traffic, folktales, life histories. We also mean narratives—narratives about getting divorced, about being sick, about surviving hand-to-hand combat, about selling sex, about trying to quit smoking. In fact, most of the archaeologically recoverable information about human thought and human behavior is text, the good stuff of social science. Scholars in content analysis began using computers in the 1950s to do statistical analysis of texts (Pool, 1959), but recent advances in technology are changing the economics of the social

Abstract. The use of workflow technology has created considerable discussion within the CSCW community. Although the debates have been grounded in theories of work, less has been written about specific organisational and social settings where workflow systems have been used. This paper presents findings from an empirical study where a workflow-like system was in routine use for some of the work. It draws conclusions about the circumstances that made this possible.

In this article I elaborate and codify the extended case method, which deploys participant observation to locate everyday life in its extralocal and historical context. The extended case method emulates a reflexive model of science that takes as its premise the intersubjectivity of scientist and subject of study. Reflexive science valorizes intervention, process, structuration, and theory reconstruction. It is the Siamese twin of positive science that proscribes reactivity, but upholds reliability, replicability, and representativeness. Positive science, exemplified by survey research, works on the principle of the separation between scientists and the subjects they examine. Positive science is limited by “context effects ” (interview, respondent, field, and situational effects) while reflexive science is limited by “power effects ” (domination, silencing, objectification, and normalization). The article concludes by considering the implications of having two models of science rather than one, both of which are necessarily flawed. Throughout I use a study of postcolonialism to illustrate both the virtues and the shortcomings of the extended case method. Methodology can only bring us reflective understanding of the means which have demonstrated their value in practice by raising them to the level of explicit consciousness; it is no more the precondition of fruitful intellectual work than the knowledge of anatomy is the precondition of “correct ” walking. Max Weber—The Methodology of the Social Sciences True, anatomical knowledge is not usually a precondition for “correct ” walking. But when the ground beneath our feet is always shaking, we need a crutch. As social scientists we are thrown off balance by our presence in the world we study, by absorption in the society we observe, by dwelling alongside those we make “other. ” Beyond individual involvement is the broader ethnographic predicament—producing theories, concepts, and facts that destabilize the world we seek to comprehend. So, we desperately need methodology to keep us erect, while we navigate a terrain that moves and shifts even as we attempt to traverse it.

ABSTRACT: In this ethnographic study of summer undergraduate research (UR) experiences at four liberal arts colleges, where faculty and students work collaboratively on a project of mutual interest in an apprenticeship of authentic science research work, analysis of the accounts of faculty and student participants yields comparative insights into the structural elements of this form of UR program and its benefits for students. Comparison of the perspectives of faculty and their students revealed considerable agreement on the nature, range, and extent of students ’ UR gains. Specific student gains relating to the process of “becoming a scientist ” were described and illustrated by both groups. Faculty framed these gains as part of professional socialization into the sciences. In contrast, students emphasized their personal and intellectual development, with little awareness of their socialization into professional practice. Viewing study findings through the lens of social constructivist learning theories demonstrates that the characteristics of these UR programs, how faculty practice UR in these colleges, and students ’ outcomes—including cognitive and personal growth and the development of a professional identity—strongly exemplify many facets of these theories, particularly, student-centered and situated learning as part of cognitive apprenticeship

Children want to find information about their world, but there are barriers to finding what they seek. Young people have varying abilities to formulate complex queries and comprehend search results. Challenges in understanding where to type, confusion about what tools are available, and frustration with how to parse the results page all have led to a lack of perceived search success for children 7-11 years old. In this paper, we describe seven search roles children display as information seekers using Internet keyword interfaces, based on a home study of 83 children ages 7, 9, and 11. These roles are defined not only by the children’s search actions, but also by who influences their searching, their perceived success, and trends in age and gender. These roles suggest a need for new interfaces that expand

Abstract: Grounded theory has frequently been referred to, but infrequently applied in business research. This article addresses such a deficiency by advancing two focal aims. Firstly, it seeks to de-mystify the methodology known as grounded theory by applying this established research practice within the comparatively new context of business research. Secondly, in so doing, it integrates naturalistic examples drawn from the author’s business research, hence explicating the efficacy of grounded theory methodology in gaining deeper understanding of business bounded phenomena. It is from such a socially focused methodology that key questions of what is happening and why leads to the generation of substantive theories and underpinning knowledge.

Abstract. In this paper we consider the development of ‘digital records ’ to support ethnographic study of interaction and collaboration in ubiquitous computing environments and articulate the core concept of ‘record and replay ’ through two case studies. One focuses on the utility of digital records, or records of interaction generated by a computer system, to ethnographic inquiry and highlights the mutually supportive nature of digital records and ethnographic methods. The other focuses on the work it takes to make digital records support ethnography, particularly the work of description and representation that is required to reconcile the fragmented character of interaction in ubiquitous computing environments. The work involved in ‘making digital records work ’ highlights requirements for the design of tools to support the endeavour and informs the development of a Replay Tool. This tool enables ethnographers to visualize the data content of digital records; to extract sequences of relevance to analysis and remove non-relevant features; to marry recorded content with external resources, such as video; to add content from internal and external resources through annotation; and to reorder digital records to reflect the interactional order of events rather than the recorded order of events. Key words. CSCW, ethnography, e-Social Science, digital records, record and replay. * © Springer, 2006. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of

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