Mobility Work: The Spatial Dimension of Collaboration at a Hospital
Computer Supported Cooperative Work, (2005)Abstract
We posit the concept of Mobility Work to describe efforts of moving
about people and things as part of accomplishing tasks. Mobility
work can be seen as a spatial parallel to the concept of articulation
work proposed by the sociologist Anselm Strauss. Articulation work
describes efforts of coordination necessary in cooperative work,
but focuses, we argue, mainly on the temporal aspects of cooperative
work. As a supplement, the concept of mobility work focuses on the
spatial aspects of cooperative work. Whereas actors seek to diminish
the amount of articulation work needed in collaboration by constructing
Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs), actors minimise mobility work
by constructing Standard Operation Configurations (SOCs). We apply
the concept of mobility work to the ethnography of hospital work,
and argue that mobility arises because of the need to get access
to people, places, of these four aspects emerge.
