Collaboration and underlying issues or the surprises of cooperative dialogues

Abstract

The observation of cooperative dialogues between production and maintenance workers of a dairy has revealed that socio-organisational factors had strong effects on cooperation. In order to better understand the nature of these factors, the sociological literature on autonomy, rule generation, negotiation and conflict is reviewed. A methodology based on inferential pragmatics is developed in order to analyze what takes place socially in operational exchanges and makes it possible to identify rules for cooperative functioning that are specific to this work situation, and that relate to the defence of the territory of each individual. The conclusion stresses that cooperative dialogues are also the place where social stakes are adjusted and discusses potential applications of the proposed framework to the design of cooperative systems.