Introduction

Abstract

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is, as its name indicates, concerned with the ways in which people work together and with the ways in which computer systems can be designed to support the collaborative aspects of work. It is through developing an insight into what makes people behave as they do in the organizational context that we hope to explain the nature of the interaction between computers and their users in the workplace, and ensure that the application of computers in human activities is successful. Indeed, one of the major objectives of CSCW is to create a design approach that puts technology into its proper perspective; that is, not a central place in design per se, but a place determined by considerations of the ways in which technological artefacts are used by human groups in work organizations.