Neil Carey

Computer supported collaborative working: lessons from elsewhere

In this paper we review two application areas in the field of IT concerning advanced manufacturing technology and office automation. We argue that new systems in both these areas have been predominantly technology-led in their development and implementation, excluding adequate attention to their human and organizational aspects. We describe two case studies as illustrations of these points and argue that the reasons for this technology-led approach lie in a complex interacting set of social systems that work effectively to marginalize the human and organizational aspects of the new technologies.The applicability of these findings to the domain of Computer Supported Collaborative Working (CSCW) is examined. There are two main sets of lessons that can be learned: those that apply generally to the field of IT, and thereby have relevance also to the special case of CSCW; and those that are particular to the conduct and content of research and development into CSCW. These lessons are outlined in the form of sets of suggestions.

Post Author/Ship Five or More IKEA Customers in Search of an Author

In this article, imposters’ (or fake authors) aim is to problematize fixed concepts such as author, authoring, and authorship both in qualitative research and in organization studies—especially in relation to organizational communications that ostensibly promote and value diversity of (sexual) identity. In seeking to do so, these imposters engage with an IKEA ad and, in a process of “prospective” writing, inductively explore the absence or void of an author through a series of writing events.

LGBT voices in work-life: a call for research and a research community

ABSTRACT Despite an apparent expansive inclusivity of the aims of work–life programmes, there remains a fairly narrowly defined heteronormative view of the family. Alternative and non-normative perspectives of family life, and especially those pertaining to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) identities, remain relatively occluded and under-researched. The aim of this paper is to question the presence and relevance of LGBT voices and perspectives in work–life research as they seem neither visible nor on the frontline of work–life research despite their increasingly legitimate presence in organisational and societal discourses.

Improvising Bags Choreographies: Disturbing Normative Ways of Doing Research

Postqualitative research-creation improvisations offer new possibilities to explore method/ology. In this article, we question how bags, as seemingly mundane objects, work as ontologically lively matter—as active agencies—to choreograph human–nonhuman relations and heterogeneous materialities. Working from three questions—How might a bag become? What do bags do? What do bags enable and enact?—we discuss four research-creation improvisations and the insights they generated. The article maps how bags choreographies put affects, bodies, and materialities into comotional relations to disturb normative approaches to research both within conference sessions and through writing articles.

Gay and Queer Coming Out into Europe (Part 1)

When South Pacific opened in 1949 racial segregation was the law in the US southern states. Lawmakers in the south tried to ban the following song … but failed. It was a monumental act of courage by the writers and producers of South Pacific to refuse to back down. In this chapter we will present our ideas around how research practice can helps to query the boundaries between what is considered “professional” and legitimate knowledge and behaviour and what is not as four ‘queers’ in academe. Academic culture when thought of as primarily being about the transmission of knowledge situates the roles of gay men who are researchers in specific ways of being, belonging, acting and speaking.