The term computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) was first coined by Irene Greif and Paul M. Cashman in 1984, at a workshop attended by individuals interested in using technology to support people in their work[1]. At about this same time, in 1987 Dr. Charles Findley presented the concept of collaborative learning-work. According to[2], CSCW addresses "how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems." On the one hand, many authors consider that CSCW and groupware are synonyms. On the other hand, different authors claim that while groupware refers to real computer-based systems, CSCW focuses on the study of tools and techniques of groupware as well as their psychological, social, and organizational effects. The definition of [3] expresses the difference between these two concepts:
“
CSCW [is] a generic term, which combines the understanding of the way people work in groups with the enabling technologies of computer networking, and associated hardware, software, services and techniques.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is a design-oriented academic field bringing together social psychologists, sociologists, and computer scientists, among others. Despite the variety of disciplines, CSCW is an identifiable research field focused on understanding characteristics of interdependent group work with the objective of designing adequate computer-based technology to support such cooperative work.
Over the years, CSCW researchers have identified a number of core dimensions of cooperative work. A non-exhaustive list includes:
Awareness: individuals working together need to be able to gain some level of shared knowledge about each other's activities[4].
Articulation work: cooperating individuals must somehow be able to partition work into units, divide it amongst themselves and, after the work is performed, reintegrate it[5][6].
Appropriation (or tailorability): how an individual or group adapts a technology to their own particular situation; the technology may be appropriated in a manner completely unintended by the designers[7][8][9].
These concepts have largely been derived through the analysis of systems designed by researchers in the CSCW community, or through studies of existing systems (for example, Wikipedia). CSCW researchers that design and build systems try to address core concepts in novel ways. However, the complexity of the domain makes it difficult to produce conclusive results; the success of CSCW systems are often so contingent on the peculiarities of the social context that it is hard to generalize. Consequently, CSCW systems that are based on the design of successful ones may fail to be appropriated in other seemingly similar contexts for a variety of reasons that are nearly impossible to identify a priori[10]. CSCW researcher Mark Ackerman calls this "divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically" the socio-technical gap and describes CSCW's main research agenda to be "exploring, understanding, and hopefully ameliorating" this gap [11].
CSCW Matrix
the CSCW Matrix
One of the most common ways of conceptualizing CSCW systems is to consider the context of a system's use. One such conceptualization is the CSCW Matrix, first introduced in 1988 by Johansen; it also appears in [12]. The matrix considers work contexts along two dimensions: first, whether collaboration is co-located or geographically distributed, and second, whether individuals collaborate synchronously (same time) or asynchronously (not depending on others to be around at the same time).
The 47 CSCW Handbook Papers[13]. This paper list is the result of a citation graph analysis of the CSCW Conference. It has been established in 2006 and reviewed by the CSCW Community. This list only contains papers published in one conference; papers published at other venues have also had significant impact on the CSCW community.
The “CSCW handbook”[13] papers were chosen as the overall most cited within the CSCW conference <...> It led to a list of 47 papers, corresponding to about 11% of all papers.
Dourish, P.; Bellotti, V. (1992). "Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 107-114,, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Hughes, J.A.; Randall, D.; Shapiro, D. (1992). "Faltering from ethnography to design". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 115-122, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Shen, H.H.; Dewan, P. (1992). "Access control for collaborative environments". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 51-58, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Gaver, W.W. (1992). The affordances of media spaces for collaboration, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Orlikowski, W.J. (1992). Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Leland, M.D.P.; Fish, R.S.; Kraut, R.E. (1988). "Collaborative document production using quilt". Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 206-215, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Bentley, R.; Hughes, J.A.; Randall, D.; Rodden, T.; Sawyer, P.; Shapiro, D.; Sommerville, I. (1992). "Ethnographically-informed systems design for air traffic control". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 123-129, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Roseman, M.; Greenberg, S. (1996). "TeamRooms: network places for collaboration". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work: 325-333, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Resnick, P.; Iacovou, N.; Suchak, M.; Bergstrom, P.; Riedl, J. (1994). GroupLens: an open architecture for collaborative filtering of netnews, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Shen, C.; Lesh, N.B.; Vernier, F.; Forlines, C.; Frost, J. (2002). "Sharing and building digital group histories". Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work: 324-333, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Reder, S.; Schwab, R.G. (1990). "The temporal structure of cooperative activity". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 303-316, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Fish, R.S.; Kraut, R.E.; Chalfonte, B.L. (1990). "The VideoWindow system in informal communication". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 1-11, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Haake, J.M.; Wilson, B. (1992). Supporting collaborative writing of hyperdocuments in SEPIA, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
MacKay, W.E. (1990). "Patterns of sharing customizable software". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 209-221, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Trigg, R.H.; Suchman, L.A.; Halasz, F.G. (1986). "Supporting collaboration in notecards". Proceedings of the 1986 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 153-162, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Patterson, J.F.; Day, M.; Kucan, J. (1996). "Notification servers for synchronous groupware". Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work: 122-129, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Myers, B.A.; Stiel, H.; Gargiulo, R. (1998). "Collaboration using multiple PDAs connected to a PC". Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work: 285-294, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Ackerman, M.S.; Halverson, C. (1998). "Considering an organization's memory". Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work: 39-48, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
Teasley, S.; Covi, L.; Krishnan, M.S.; Olson, J.S. (2000). "How does radical collocation help a team succeed?". Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work: 339-346, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
^ Wilson, P. (1991). Computer Supported Cooperative Work: An Introduction, Kluwer Academic Pub.
^ Dourish, P.; Bellotti, V. (1992). "Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces". Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 107-114, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
^ MacKay, W.E. (1990). "Patterns of sharing customizable software". Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 209-221, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
^ Dourish, P. (2003). "The Appropriation of Interactive Technologies: Some Lessons from Placeless Documents". Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Kluwer Academic Publishers) 12 (4): 465–490. doi:10.1023/A:1026149119426.
^ Schmidt, K. (1991). "Computer Support for Cooperative Work in Advanced Manufacturing". International Journal of Human Factors in Manufacturing1 (4): 303–320. doi:10.1002/hfm.4530010402.
^ Grudin, J. (1988). "Why CSCW applications fail: problems in the design and evaluation of organization of organizational interfaces". Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work: 85-93, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.
^ "Ackerman, M." (2000). "The Intellectual Challenge of CSCW: The gap between social requirements and technical feasibility". Human-Computer Interaction15: 179–203. doi:10.1207/S15327051HCI1523_5.
^ Baecker, R.M.; Others, (1995). Readings in human-computer interaction: toward the year 2000, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
^ ab Jacovi, M.; Soroka, V.; Gilboa-freedman, G.; Ur, S.; Shahar, E.; Marmasse, N. (2006). "The chasms of CSCW: a citation graph analysis of the CSCW conference". Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work: 289-298, ACM Press New York, NY, USA.