Achieving Safety: A Field Study of Boundary Objects in Aircraft Technical Support

TitleAchieving Safety: A Field Study of Boundary Objects in Aircraft Technical Support
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2002
AuthorsLutters, WG, Ackerman, MS
Conference NameProceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'02)
Pagination266–275
Keywordsboundary objects, collaborative work, expertise sharing, high reliability organizations, hotlines, information reuse, knowledge sharing, organizational memory, safety, service engineering, technical support
Abstract

Boundary objects are a critical, but understudied, theoretical construct in CSCW. Through a field study of aircraft technical support, we examined the role of boundary objects in the “achievement of safety” by service engineers. The resolution process of repair requests was captured in two compound boundary objects. These crystallizations did not manifest a static interpretation, but instead were continually reinterpreted in light of meta-negotiations. This suggests design implications for organizational memory systems which can more fluidly represent the meta-negotiations surrounding boundary objects.

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