Edward Gould

Support for the sense-making activity of managers

Abstract The knowledge management literature has focussed on the creation and capture of organisational knowledge, but little attention has been paid to the ways in which senior managers make sense of, and use, this knowledge for decision making. This paper describes a new approach to the study of this problem using the cultural-historical activity theory. This theory takes activity, mediated by tools and the community, as the basic component in purposeful human work. A consequence of using this theory is the recognition of the pivotal role of the sense-making activity in linking the processes of knowledge management and strategic decision-making.

The Evolution of an Information System for Managerial Use: a longitudinal study

The failure of many Information Systems (IS) designed for use by managers may be due to the fact that traditional IS methodologies were used in their development. In this paper we describe an organisations efforts, over a period of four years, to develop an IS for use by senior management and show how traditional methodologies have impeded the involvement of the intended users of the system from the development process resulting in poor specification of user requirements and inflexible systems. From this experience we verify the superiority of an evolutionary prototyping methodology for the development of these types of systems.

Activity Theory and HCI: Research and Practice

The tutorial introduces attendees to Activity Theory, providing an overview of the theory as it applies to HCI and relating it to the use of information systems in organisations. An Activity Theory approach takes the whole activity as the core point of departure for any kind of human endeavour. The strengths of Activity Theory for HCI are its concept of tool mediation and its emphasis on activity in a social context.