Cooperative Information Systems: A Manifesto

Information systems technology, computer-supported cooperative work practice, and organizational modeling and planning theories have evolved with only accidental contact to each other. Cooperative information systems is a relatively young research area which tries to systematically investigate the synergies between these research fields, driven by the observation that change management is the central issue facing all three areas today and that all three fields have indeed developed rather similar strategies to cope with change. In this paper, we therefore propose a framework which views cooperative information systems as composed from three interrelated facets, viz. the system facet, the group collaboration facet, and the organizational facet. We present an overview of these facets, emphasizing strategies they have developed over the past few years to accommodate change. We also discuss the propagation of change across the facets, and sketch a basic software architecture intended to support the rapid construction and evolution of cooperative information systems on top of existing organizational and technical legacy.