Online Papers
Organizing Innovation – Innovating Organization. New Product and Service Development at an Internet Consultancy
Adobe PDF file [2.5 megabytes]
Book details and online order form at the University of Helsinki
Update: I hear the book is now out of print... so if you're interested to get a copy, I guess it's best to download & print the PDF above.
This book is based on my Master's Thesis in Sociology. It addresses the question: how does new organizational "structure" emerge in interpersonal communication during product development? The study focuses on the development of a mobile Internet service called the Mobile Messaging Board at Satama Interactive, an Internet consulting and design company. I use Mervi Hasu's concept of "critical transition" to discuss the interplay between sites of conversations, both face-to-face and online. The findings of the analysis are synthesized in the form of a double cycle model, which illustrates the antagonistic forces affecting new product and service development in modern organizations.
Research Reports 6. Helsinki: Center for Activity theory and Developmental Work Research, University of Helsinki 2002.
Sizing Up Social Capital
This article illuminates recent discourse around the concept of social capital. The concept has remained relatively open in terms of theory, and serves as a meeting point for researchers from various disciplines. These researchers share an interest in trust-based networks and communities, distinguished from arms-length market transactions between strangers. The question posed in this paper is: what makes these communities develop and survive?
Published in Engeström, Y. (ed.) (2001): Activity Theory and Social Capital. Technical Reports 5. Helsinki: Center for Activity theory and Developmental Work Research, University of Helsinki.
Software Agents: Towards Transparent Mediation
For better printing, download the high resolution version [788 kilobytes]
This paper is an overview of the field of software agents. The power of agents is in mediating communication, both by helping humans communicate with programs, and programs communicate with each other. But the agent metaphor promises both dangers and benefits. On the one hand, we need mediation in the forms of filtering and management to deal with information. On the other hand, we shouldn't design systems that take away the user's autonomy.
This paper was published as a Technology Report for Satama Interactive in 1999.
Virtually Local: Building Boundary Infrastructure
in a City District
This paper examines the development of an information system to serve a local city district. Operating within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory, it maps the positions of different actors in relationship to the new information system being developed. Geoff Bowker's and Susan Leigh Star's concept of boundary infrastructure is applied to emphasize the multi-perspective nature that this system acquires even before its production has properly begun. The paper concludes with an analysis of the emerging contradictions between the various perspectives and a discussion on the potential for innovations, as well as the danger that designers face in such a situation–that of supplementing assumptions and myths for first-hand experience of actual end-users.
This paper was written for a Master's course at the University of Helsinki in 2000. The work was carried out under a research project headed by Jonna Kangasoja.
