Workplace studies revisited

In this paper, I revisit the discussion on workplace studies in computersupported cooperative work (CSCW). Mainly this discussion has debated the designrelated outcome, direct or indirect, of doing ethnographically informed studies of workplaces. There is, however, no clear definition on what counts as a workplace study in a CSCW context. Sometimes a workplace study signifies ethnographic fieldwork; at other times, workplace studies stands for the fieldtrips of design-oriented research. In addition, the lack of a concise definition has heavily influenced the debate on the role of workplace studies in CSCW. Based on an historic account of how workplace studies and CSCW came to be related and a presentation of some of the foundational problems of workplace studies’ contribution to CSCW, I discuss different candidates for an inclusive definition of workplace studies, that is, a definition that embraces both the design-oriented and the ethnographic grounded workplace studies of CSCW.