Computer Support for Organizations: toward an Organizational Science

Management in the 1990s Management in the 1990s is an industry and governmental agency supported research program. Its aim is to develop a better understanding of the managerial issues of the 1990s and how to deal most effectively with them, particularly as these issues revolve around anticipated advances in Information Technology. Assisting the work of the Sloan School scholars with financial support and as working partners in research are: The conclusions or opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, the Management in the 1990s Research Program, or its sponsoring organizations. Many of the original ideas for the intelligent mail filter system arose in discussion with Michael Cohen. I would also like to thank John Carroll and Michael Rothkopf for helpful comments. This paper argues that it will become increasingly important to extend our concept of user interfaces for individual users of computers to include organizational interfaces for groups of users. A number of suggestions are given for how to develop a theoretical base for designing such interfaces that includes extensions of traditional cognitive and motivational points of view. For instance, examples are used to illustrate how theories of multi-agent problem solving and intrinsic motivation can contribute to the design of text-sharing systems in organizations. In an extended example, a model of flexibility and efficiency in alternative organizational structures is summarized and used to: (1) explain historical changes in American business structures, (2) predict how organizational structures may change with the widespread use of computer systems, and (3) suggest new ways computer systems can help coordinate the assignment of tasks and the flow of information to people in organizations. Studies of human-computer interaction have, in the past, focused primarily on designing user interfaces to support individual problem solving. Much of the theoretical base for this work has grown out of cognitive science theories concerning the information processing involved when individual people solve problems, learn, and remember the other chapters in this volume). In this chapter, I will suggest that it is becoming increasingly important to focus, not just on isolated interactions between people and computers, but also on the interactions among groups of people that are mediated by computers. To provide a theoretical base for this new endeavor, I will indicate how traditional cognitive and motivational perspectives can be extended to include groups of people …