SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND GOAL STRUCTURE
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
...
When a
problem has a deeply nested goal structure , a social hierarchy can provide a
mechanism
for
distributing the attention to various parts of the goal structure . Social structure and problem representation
both interact with goal structure in the implementations of solutions to the
problem of sequential control of action .
Going Beyond the job
description
One
important aspect of the social disuibution of this task is that the knowledge
required to carry out the coordinating actions is not discretely contained
inside the various individuals . Rather, much of the knowledge is
intersubjectively shared among the members of the navigation team. This permits
the human component of the system to act as a malleable and adaptable
coordinating tissue, the
job of which
is to see to it that the proper coordinating activities are carried out
Shared Task Performances
This ad hoc
division of labor was based on a shared understanding of the microstructure of the task. There was
no verbal negotiation of the parts of the task to be done by each man; they simply
created this coordination in the doing of the task. The social skills required
to enter into shared task-performance relationships probably develop fairly
early in life.
Flexibility and Robustness
If one human
component fails for lack of knowledge , the whole system does not grind to a
halt . If the task becomes difficult or communications break down , the
navigation team does not have the option of stopping work . The task is driven by
events and must be performed as long as the ship is underway . In response to a breakdown , the system
adapts by changing the nominal division of labor .
The social
structure is not only the framework on which the communication is based, it is
also the mechanism that is in place prior to the interactions to ensure that
they take place as required .
Why should
the pelorus operator cooperate? Because adequate performance is the currency of
social interaction .
Performance as language of social
interaction
A student
was making a point about what people do at work, saying that in an auto factory
people mostly make cars. Roy said something like: "How do you know what
they are doing? Maybe
what they
are making is social relationships and the cars are a side effect."
