In this paper, we describe the collaborative work of hospital porters. The profession of hospital porter is understudied in sociology and in Computer Supported Cooperative Work, despite numerous studies of healthcare IT. We describe how a new IT system for hospital logistics provided porters with more influence on, and responsibility for their work; supported collaboration among porters, clinicians, and middle management; and effected a new ecology of visibility and accountability of porters’ work. We discuss how the new system simultaneously supported collaboration and generated representations and accounts of porters’ work. We discuss the configurability of porters’ work arrangement and argue for the importance of comparative studies, and further argue for moving beyond the dualisms of coordination and accountability.
Original language
English
Title of host publication
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2016 : Proceedings of the 2016 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work