The work to make a network work: studying CSCW in action

This paper reports on a field study of the procurement, implementation and use of a local area network devoted to running CSCW-related applications in an organization within the U.K.'s central government. In this particular case, the network ran into a number of difficulties, was resisted by its potential users for a variety of reasons, was faced with being withdrawn from service on a number of occasions and (at the time of writing) remains only partly used. The study points to the kinds of problems that a project to introduce computer support for cooperative work to an actual organization is likely to face and a series of concepts are offered to help manage the complexity of these problems. In so doing, this paper adds to and extends previous studies of CSCW tools in action but also argues that experience from the field should be used to re-organise the research agenda of CSCW.