When the term ‘organisation’ is used in common parlance, it is typically to label this or that place of work. People can say that an ‘organisation’ has acted in a certain way, that they have joined an ‘organisation’ or even that an ‘organisation’ has certain values. The term is clearly shorthand, a neat lexical gloss for something fairly complex and abstract. The minute we try to push the term analytically, things get quite complex. Does the term refer to an entity or a set of processes? Is it possible to say where an ‘organisation’ begins and ends? Is this a legal question or a matter of economic function? Is it a matter of where particular social and cultural boundaries lie?

These questions, concerning where organisations begin and end and with what material consequences, may seem purely theoretical in character, but they have practical counterparts. In different ways and towards different ends, everyone (at least tacitly) addresses these questions many times each day in the course of engaging with organisational members and settings. This is such a taken-for-granted feature of living in society that we often do not even notice.

Introduction

The studies in this volume are rather distinctive. For one, they all utilise audio and/or video materials. This alone is rare. With few exceptions, organisation studies has tended to rely on empirical materials that are removed from the flow of ‘real-time’ or ‘live’ conduct within organisations. Even where researchers have studied work activities up close (see Roy 1960; Burawoy 1979; Casey 1995), they have rarely established permanent records of work activity that can be viewed repeatedly and sustain detailed analysis (but see Gephart 1978; Gronn 1983; Boden 1994).

A second point flows from this. Historically, the discipline of organisation studies has been surprisingly uninterested in ‘work itself’. This is not the first time this point has been made. Anselm Strauss (1985), Harold Garfinkel (1986), Lucy Suchman (1987) and Julian Orr (1996) have made this argument with respect to the sociology of work; John van Maanen and Stephen Barley (1984), Barley and Gideon Kunda (2001), Jon Hindmarsh and Christian Heath (2007), Anne Rawls (2008) and Nick Llewellyn (2008) with respect to organisation studies.

Introduction

Contributions to this volume direct attention to the real-time achievement of organisational processes and practices. This demands distinctive data and methodological resources, and the chapters that follow adopt one particular empirical approach to engage the ethnomethodological (EM) project, one that draws heavily from conversation analysis (CA). In all cases, the authors subject recordings of everyday work and organisational conduct to detailed sequential and interactional analysis.

The use of audio and/or video recordings offers intriguing opportunities for studies of work. The equipment to produce them is cheap and reliable, and they deliver real-time recordings of work in progress that can be subjected to repeated scrutiny and evaluation. As Harvey Sacks suggested, ‘tape-recorded materials constitute a “good enough” record of what happened. Other things, to be sure, happened, but at least what was on the tape had happened’ (Sacks 1984: 26). So, as with other data types they are limited in coverage, but unlike other data types they offer a density and permanence that can be very valuable (Grimshaw 1982). They exhibit density in that they are rich in the details of the recorded events; it is very common to notice new and subtle features of activity upon repeated re-viewing of recordings. They are also persistent and cumulative, providing researchers with the opportunity of preserving and comparing data across various projects. Furthermore, recordings allow researchers to show and share materials, so that others can judge for themselves the persuasiveness of insights and analyses.

Introduction

The concept of ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) has gained significant purchase in the study of learning within and between organisations since it was originally introduced by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) and subsequently elaborated by Wenger (1998). The concept is bound up with a thoroughly social theory of learning that emphasises the inherently collective and participative character of becoming skilled in an occupation, a profession or indeed any activity in everyday life. A CoP involves members engaging in joint enterprise who inevitably develop a shared repertoire of skills, norms and competencies. Learning is then seen in terms of centripetal movement and shifting identity from peripheral (novice) to central participation (expert) within a particular community of practice.

The development of the concept was grounded in a series of ethnographic studies of apprenticeship, but as Ash Amin and Joanne Roberts (2008) and others (e.g. Cox 2005) argue, it is increasingly engaging a more formal, indeed managerialist, agenda:

Indeed CoPs are now often positioned as knowledge management ‘tools’ (Roberts 2006) which draws debate and discussion to consider the character of ‘communities’ and how they can be fostered.

In the past few years we have witnessed extraordinary pronouncements concerning the ways in which new technologies will transform the ways we work together. In both the popular press and in academic debate, an interest principally focused on extensions to existing computer networks, new forms of telecommunications and the potential of faster and cheaper systems, all have suggested that we are soon to be faced with a very different workplace. Workers will be more mobile when all the technological support they need can be provided wherever they are located and it may even be no longer necessary for individuals to travel to a particular site when they can work from home. The actual ‘organisation’ for which they work will become fragmented, geographically dispersed and possibly ‘virtual’, being transformed into a business with no physical location and little organisational structure.

Such pronouncements may seem curiously reminiscent to those familiar with the predictions associated with the microchip in the 1970s, or the motor car in the 1940s, or even earlier with the potential afforded in the nineteenth century by the telegraph, telephone and electricity (cf. Evans, 1979; Hall, 1988; Marvin, 1988). It is certainly the case that in the last few years the personal computer (PC) and electronic mail (email) have greatly transformed the way that work is accomplished in a large number of organisations. However, despite the grand intentions of proponents of novel technologies it is frequently the case that their impact is more modest. Indeed, it is not unusual for new systems once they have been introduced to be ignored, used to only a small degree of their capabilities or worse to be the cause of some great disaster.