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Many researchers have proposed representational schemes to capture complex reasoned discourses. In this paper, we use our experiences with argument representation to examine some of the issues affecting the design of these representational schemes. Our discussions focus on how well a particular scheme, Toulmin structures, maps into the domain of argumentative discourse and captures and highlights various phenomena we consider central to argumentation. We then use this analysis to explore several complementary representational schemes. Finally, we discuss some relatively unexplored factors that influence the usability of these schemes. 1.

Contemporary approaches to systems analysis ignore the importance of computing infrastructure-- the kinds of resources necessary for making computerized system workable and effective. Infrastructure includes "hard resources " such as electricity and physical space; it also includes human resources such as the skill levels of systems users and maintainer. Systems analyses which account for infrastructure can help lead to more effective recommendations. The key organizing ideas of this paper, web models, are based on almost 20 years of empirical studies of the ways that people and organizations adopt, develop and use computerized systems. It is based on an understanding of how people and organizations actually behave rather than upon a model which prescribes how they should behave. Web models draw "large " social boundaries around a focal computing resource so that the defining situation includes: the ecology of participants who influence the adoption and use of computer-based technologies, the infrastructures for supporting system development and use, and the history of local computing developments. Social action characteriwed by "natural open systems " models of organizations. Web models help explain the actual leverage of computing developments, their carrying costs,

Abstract: Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action. Depending on the organization's beliefs about environmental analyzability and the extent that it intrudes into the environment to understand it, four modes of scanning may be differentiated: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting, and searching. We analyze each mode of scanning by examining its characteristic information needs, information seeking, and information use behaviors. In addition, we analyze organizational knowing processes by considering the sensemaking, knowledge creating and decision

an earlier version of this paper, and to members of the Senior Teams Workshop and the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Seminar at the Harvard Business School for ideas and inspiration. We benefited from comments provided by three anonymous reviewers and the Editor of Leadership Quarterly. A DYNAMIC MODEL OF TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM EFFECTIVENESS: MANAGING UNSTRUCTURED TASK STREAMS Leadership research relating top management team demographics to firm performance has produced mixed empirical results. This paper suggests a new explanation for these inconsistencies. We first note that a given top management team (TMT) is likely to face a variety of different situations over time. Thus, while TMT demographic composition is relatively stable, the TMT task is dynamic and variable. In some situations, team members have similar information and interests (a symmetric distribution); in others, information or interests diverge (an asymmetric distribution). Based on team effectiveness theory, we then argue that, unless group process is managed accordingly, asymmetric distributions of situation-specific information and interests will reduce TMT decision-making effectiveness. We develop leader process choices to mitigate the potentially

The symposium included in this issue of Analyse & Kritik extends the basis of Cooperation Theory as set forth in Axelrod's Evolution of Cooperation (1984). This essay begins with an overview of Cooperation Theory in terms of the questions it asks, its relationship to game theory and rationality, and the principal methodologies used, namely deduction and simulation. This essay then addresses the issues raised in the symposium, including the consequences of extending the original paradigm of the two person iterated Prisoner's Dilemma to take into account such factors as nonsimultaneous play, the ability to offer hostages for performance, social networks of interaction, information sharing that can support reputations, learning behavior, envy, misunderstanding, and an option to exit. The essay places the contributions of this symposium in the context of previous research on these and related issues.

Although scholarship in the social construction of technology (SCOT) has contributed much to illuminating technological development, most work using this theoretical approach is committed to an agency-centered approach. SCOT scholars have made only limited contributions to illustrating the influence of social structures. In this article, the authors argue for the importance of structural concepts to understanding technological development. They summarize the SCOT conceptual framework defined by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker and survey some of the methodological and explanatory difficulties that arise with their approach. Then the authors present concepts from organizational sociology and political economy that illuminate structural influences in shaping phenomena of interest to SCOT scholars. These structural concepts can be applied to the study of the design, development, and transformation of technology. The authors conclude that the limited amount of scholarship on structural factors in the social shaping of technological development presents numerous opportunities for research. Researchers in the field of science and technology studies (STS) have produced a great deal of scholarshipin recent years that documents and analyzes the social shaping of technology. 1 An important area of this scholarship, known as the social construction of technology (SCOT), traces its origins to

The authors introduce a new team game, the intergroup chicken game, to model intergroup conflicts involving bilateral threats (e.g., military conflicts, industrial disputes). The group that wins the game is the one that competes while the other group yields, and the benefits associated with winning (e.g., territory, higher wages) are public goods for the members of that group. However, a failure to yield on the part of both groups leads to an outcome (e.g., war, strike) that is disastrous to all the players. The authors report an experiment in which an intergroup chicken game with two players on each team was compared to a two-person chicken game and a (single-group) four-person chicken game. The games were played repeat-edly, and each round was preceded by a signaling period. Results showed that subjects were more competitive (and, consequently, less efficient) in the intergroup chicken game than in either the two-person or the four-person chicken game. The two-person game of chicken derives its name from the following story. Two drivers race toward each other on a narrow road. Each driver has the choice to swerve and avoid a head-on collision or to continue on the collision course. Much of the

The undersigned certify that this thesis meets masters-level standards of research, argumentation, and expression.

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