A Practical Sense of Knowing: Exploring Awareness Strategies in a Mobile Workplace

dc.contributor.authorOrre, Carljohan
dc.contributor.authorWatts, Leon A.
dc.date.accessioned2017-09-14T07:11:52Z
dc.date.available2017-09-14T07:11:52Z
dc.date.issued2006
dc.description.abstractThis paper presents and discusses strategies used by homecare workers to establish and maintain awareness in a mobile workplace. It capitalizes on data derived from a longitudinal translocal ethnographic study of homecare and the utilization of mobile technology. The study exposes two distinct dimensions of the work context, denoted the Case and Base dimensions, which are used as vehicles to describe situations of collaborative practice that occur (1) in a coordination meeting, (2) on a homecare visit, and (3) in an on-the-fly ‘illicit’ use of mobile technology. We propose a new conception of collaborative awareness as a ‘practical sense of knowing’. Findings from the ethnographic study are consistent with a well-worn distinction between “knowing that”, declarative knowledge, and “knowing how”, procedural knowledge. Conventional structures of organizational control, encoded both procedurally and as declarations of responsibility, are routinely broken and reformed. This happens as workers devise new strategies in order to maintain the keen sense of their collaborative situation required to sustain an orderly workplace.en
dc.identifier.isbn978-1-58603-604-1
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherIOS Press
dc.relation.ispartofCOOP 2006: Cooperative Systems Design - Seamless Integration of Artifacts and Conversations - Enhanced Concepts of Infrastructure for Communication
dc.titleA Practical Sense of Knowing: Exploring Awareness Strategies in a Mobile Workplaceen
gi.citation.endPage254
gi.citation.startPage239
gi.conference.date9-12 May 2006
gi.conference.locationCarry-le-Rouet, France

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