Records appraisal in network organizations

Archivaria

Volumn 49, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 161-191

  Botticelli, Peter ^a  

^a Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749032859     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. In a recent lecture, eminent sociologist Paul DiMaggio highlighted the problem of building conceptual models for networks, given the institutional diversity one finds within this category of organization. See Paul DiMaggio, ed., The Twenty-First-Century Firm: Changing Economic Organization in International Perspective (Princeton, forthcoming). See also Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society. Vol. 1, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Cambridge, 1996).
2. Brien Brothman, "Orders of Value: Probing the Theoretical Terms of Archival Practice, " Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991), p. 81.
3. Robert McIntosh, "The Great War, Archives, and Modern Memory, " Archivaria 46 (Fall 1998), p. 2.
4. I should emphasize that the analysis and conclusions offered here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the principal investigators and other project team members.
5. Paul Marsden, "When is the Future: Comparative Notes on the Electronic Record-Keeping Projects of the University of Pittsburgh and the University of British Columbia, " Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997), pp. 158-73.
6. In fact, both principal investigators at the University of Michigan were directly involved in drafting the list of functional requirements produced by the Pitt project.
7. A notable example being the U.S. Department of Defense, which was recently involved in a records management collaboration with researchers at the University of British Columbia. See: (last visited 16 May 2000).
8. See the Models for Action report: (last visited 22 May 2000).
9. See John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, "Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation, " Organization Science 2, no. 1 (1991), pp. 40-57. See also Theodore Schellenberg, Modern Archives: Principles and Techniques (Chicago, 1956), pp. 139-60.
10. This concept has been most fully developed by Jean Lave. See Jean Lave and Seth Chaiklin, eds., Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context (Cambridge, 1993).
11. See Daniel Atkins, "The Collaboratory Concept, " (last visited 22 May 2000).
12. See the work of Thomas Malone and his colleagues in the Center for Coordination Science at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (last visited 5 May 2000).
13. The tradition of "grounded" research grew out of early work in sociology and anthropology, which focused on empirical observation as the basis for developing a theory to explain complex social behavior. As an ethnographer, Anselm Strauss and his collaborators have been particularly receptive to the use of narrative to structure their field accounts of work practices. On Strauss's pioneering study of doctor-patient interactions, see Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, Awareness of Dying (Chicago, 1965).
14. See JoAnne Yates for a discussion of the limits of a static view of information flows in an organization. JoAnne Yates, Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Baltimore, 1989). A grand, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to model information in a dynamic way can be found in Jay Forrester, Industrial Dynamics (Cambridge, 1961).
15. This point has been made most convincingly by sociologist Paul DiMaggio and his colleagues. See Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago, 1991).
16. The study of informal or ad hoc organizational forms, for example, is often described as an emerging area of scholarly interest, and yet it has been a visible feature of the literature of organization studies for decades. See Chester Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cam bridge, 1962). Also see Peter Blau and W. Richard Scott, Formal Organizations: A Comparative Approach (San Francisco, 1962), and Henry Mintzberg, The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1979).
17. This view is strongly reflected in JoAnne Yates, Control Through Communication (Baltimore, 1989)
18. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand (Cambridge, 1977).
19. This is a highly simplified account of the theory of structural-functional view of organizations, which stems from ideas developed in great depth by Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, among others, at the turn of the twentieth century. See Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, W.D. Halls, trans. (New York, 1984).
20. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, 1962).
21. Theodore R. Schellenberg, Modern Archives: Principles and Techniques (Chicago, 1956), p. 142.
22. The practicality of this method for analysing the production of records in large organizations continues to lead many in the archives world to seek ways to update and maintain its relevance. See, for instance, Victoria Lemieux, "Applying Mintzberg's Theories on Organizational Configuration to Archival Appraisal, " Archivaria 46 (Fall 1998), pp. 32-85.
23. Thus far the most influential theorist in organizational behavior is Herbert Simon. His essential works are: Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization (New York, 1947) and Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, 1969).
24. See Paul Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, 1996).
25. See also Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, 1990).
26. Herbert Simon, "Will the Corporation be Managed by Machines?" in The Shape of Automation: For Men and Management (New York, 1965.
27. On the definition and analysis of organizational routines, see Richard Cyert and James March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963)
28. Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Cambridge, 1982).
29. For a review of this literature, see Barbara Levitt and James March, "Organizational Learning, " Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988), pp. 319-40.
30. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the social mechanisms affecting the composition and recall of social memory. See David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985).
31. Terry Cook, "Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal, " in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The Canadian Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992), p. 46.
32. One sign that provenance is under scrutiny is the recent willingness of some in the profession to explore the epistemological problems raised by assigning agency to records creators. Richard Brown thus situates the problem of defining a records creator within the pragmatist tradition, as reflected in modern hermeneutics. Richard Brown, "Macro-Appraisal Theory and the Context of the Public Records Creator, " Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), pp. 121-72. In the context of Expanding the Options, I have been mainly concerned with the practical, or organizational, implications of the records appraisal process, as opposed to the more academic pursuit of a coherent appraisal philosophy.
33. Terry Cook, "Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modernist Era, " Archives and Manuscripts 22, no. 2 (November 1994), p. 303.
34. Linda Henry, "Schellenberg in Cyberspace, " American Archivist 61, no. 4 (Fall 1998), pp. 309-27.
35. Not that objectivism is without its merits as a practical strategy for avoiding political conflicts over the meaning, and hence the control, of the archives. For several decades now, the historical profession has been grappling with much the same dilemma, and with less-than-encouraging results. See Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, 1988).
36. Terry Cook, "Easy to Byte, Harder to Chew: The Second Generation of Electronic Records Archives, " Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92), p. 206.
37. Tom Nesmith, "Still Fuzzy, But More Accurate: Some Thoughts on the 'Ghosts' of Archival Theory, " Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999), pp. 145-46.
38. The need for, and the difficulty of constructing, models of such interactions is a frequent theme in organization studies, as well as in the work of David Bearman, among others, in the archives field. See, for instance, David Bearman, "Archiving and Authenticity, " Research Agenda for Cultural Heritage on Information Networks: The Getty Art History Information Program, , p. 2 (last visited 22 May 2000). From the management science perspective, see Thomas W. Malone, Kevin Crowston, Jintae Lee, Brian Pentland, Chrysanthos Dellarocas, George Wyner, John Quimby, Charles S. Osborn, Abraham Bernstein, George Herman, Mark Klein, and Elissa O'Donnell, "Tools for Inventing Organizations: Toward a Handbook of Organizational Processes, " Management Science 45, no. 3 (March 1999), pp. 425-43.
39. Catherine Bailey, "From the Top Down: The Practice of Macro-Appraisal, " Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997), pp. 89-128.
40. Margaret Hedstrom, "Building Record-Keeping Systems: Archivists Are Not Alone on the Wild Frontier, " Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997), p. 65.
41. See Richard Brown, "Macro-Appraisal Theory and the Context of the Public Records Creator, " Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), pp. 121-72.
42. Margaret Hedstrom, "Understanding Electronic Incunabula: A Framework for Research on Electronic Records, " American Archivist 54, no. 3 (Summer 1991), p. 350.
43. See Frank Boles and Julia Marks Young, "Exploring the Black Box: The Appraisal of University Administrative Records, " American Archivist 48, no. 2 (Spring 1985), pp. 121-40. Also, Hans Booms makes the absurdity of this strategy abundantly clear, yet, as he acknowledges, the black box has the advantage of political neutrality, albeit at the expense of political impotence for the archives. See Hans Booms, "Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal of Archival Sources, " Archivaria 24 (Summer 1987), pp. 69-107.
44. For a cautious, indeed rather tepid, endorsement of this approach, see Francis Blouin, "A Framework for a Consideration of Diplomatics in the Electronic Environment, " American Archivist 59, no. 4 (Fall 1996), pp. 468-69.
45. Luciana Duranti, "The Concept of Archival Appraisal and Archival Theory, " American Archivist 57, no. 2 (Spring 1994), p. 343. On the role of diplomatics in archival practice and theory, see Luciana Duranti, Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science (Lanham, Md., 1998).
46. See Hilary Jenkinson, A Manual of Archive Administration, new and revised ed. (London, 1937).
47. Tora Bikson, "Organizational Trends and Electronic Media: Work in Progress, "American Archivist 57, no. 4 (Winter 1994), p. 66.
48. David Bearman, "Record-Keeping Systems, " Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 19-33.
49. See Terry Cook, "The Impact of David Bearman on Modern Archival Thinking: An Essay of Personal Reflection and Critique, " Archives and Museum Informatics 11, no. 1 (1997), pp. 28-30. Also, along these same lines, Paul Marsden has cautioned archivists against drawing a firm line between "records systems" and "information systems" which produce documents not deemed to fit the requirements of an archival record. Paul Marsden, "When is the Future? Comparative Notes on the Electronic Record-Keeping Projects of the University of Pittsburgh and the University of British Columbia, " Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997), pp. 162-63.
50. Margaret Hedstrom, "Electronic Archives: Integrity and Access in the Network Environment, " American Archivist 58, no. 3 (Summer 1995), p. 323.
51. See Frank Upward, "Structuring the Records Continuum-Part One: Postcustodial Principles and Properties, " Archives and Manuscripts 24, no. 2 (November 1996).
52. Glenda Acland, "Managing the Record Rather than the Relic, " Archives and Manuscripts 20, no. 1 (1992), pp. 58-59. See also Sue McKemmish, "Are Records Ever Actual?" in Sue McKemmish and Michael Piggott, eds., The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and Australian Archives First Fifty Years (Clayton, 1994). This work is also available at: (last visited 24 May 2000).
53. Margaret Hedstrom, "Descriptive Practices for Electronic Records: Deciding What is Essential and Imagining What is Possible, " Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 53-63.
54. Indeed, from a theoretical point of view, I would argue that all management decisions require, as a first step, the appraisal of information sources. See, for instance, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Pierre S. Du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation (New York, 1971). In this book, Chandler describes Pierre Du Pont's struggle to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of DuPont, and later General Motors, by raising the quality of information generated at the higher staff levels.
55. This argument is inspired directly by Shannon and Weaver's classic analysis of "signal-to-noise ratios" in information systems. See Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana, 1949).
56. For a full discussion of hierarchies as tools for decision making, see Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, 1969).
57. On the relevance of routines in the formation of organizational memory, see Barbara Levitt and James March, "Organizational Learning, " American Review of Sociology 14 (1988), pp. 319-40.
58. See Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Cambridge, 1987).
59. Following Marshall McLuhan, we could think of records as "media" insofar as they act as "extensions" of human intellect and sense perception. See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York, 1964).
60. This argument is a central feature of Maurice Halbwachs's classic study of social memory. See Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, Lewis Coser, trans. (Chicago, 1992).
61. Hugh Taylor, "'My Very Act and Deed': Some Reflections on the Role of Textual Records in the Conduct of Affairs, " American Archivist 51, no. 4 (Fall 1988), pp. 467-68.
62. The interrelationship between tacit and explicit knowledge is a much-discussed feature of activity theory. See Yrjo Engestrom, Perspectives on Activity Theory (Cambridge, 1999).
63. See, for instance, Edwin Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, 1995).
64. See Lucy Suchman, "Making Work Visible, " Communications of the ACM (New York: Association for Computing Machinery) 38, no. 9 (September 1995), pp. 56-64.
65. Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (Reading, Mass., 1987).
66. Lucy Suchman, Plans and Situated Actions (Cambridge, 1987).
67. Marc Berg, "The Politics of Technology: On Bringing Social Theory in [sic] Technological Design, " Science, Technology and Human Values 23, no. 4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 456-90.
68. The most complete statement of this approach is Chapter 9, "Categorical Work and Boundary Infrastructures, " in Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 285-317. See also Susan Leigh Star, "Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work, " lecture, University of Michigan, (last visited 22 May 2000).
69. See Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Baltimore, 1983).
70. Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out (Cambridge, 1999).
71. This has proven to be an effective move in the field of social studies of science and technology. See, for instance, Wiebe E. Bijker, Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, 1995).
72. Joan Haas, Helen Samuels, and Barbara Simmons, Appraising the Records of Modern Science and Technology: A Guide (Cambridge, 1985), p. 23.
73. On the relationship between plans and actions in a practical setting, see Lucy Suchman, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Cambridge, 1987).
74. See Charles C. Ragin and Howard Saul Becker, eds., What is a Case?: Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry (Cambridge, 1992). See also Anselm L. Strauss, Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists (Cambridge, 1987).
75. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, "The Social Life of Documents, " First Monday 1, no. 1 (May 1996) at (last visited 8 May 2000).
76. See Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge, 1991).
77. On the role of boundary objects in socio-technical systems, see Bowker and Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out. Star and Bowker's research offered many key insights for this project as I sought to extend their ideas to the world of archives.
78. Personal interview (5 December 1999).
79. On communications in such projects, see Thomas Finholt and Lee Sproull, "Electronic Groups at Work, " Organization Science 1, no. 1 (1990), pp. 41-64. See also Janet Fulk and Geraldine DeSanctis, "Electronic Communication and Changing Organizational Forms, " Organization Science 6, no. 4 (1995), pp. 337-49. For a discussion of records management in distributed work groups, see Rich Lysakowski and Leslie Doyle, "Electronic Lab Notebooks: Paving the Way of the Future in R&D, " Records Management Quarterly (April 1998), pp. 23-30.
80. After the UARC project was officially completed in 1998, the group was awarded a new grant by NSF for a new project, the Space Physics and Aeronomy Research Collaboratory, or SPARC. Our research includes this project, but for the sake of simplicity this section is limited to our findings from the UARC project. See .
81. This work will only summarize results from the case study, which will be reported in much greater detail elsewhere.
82. Gary M. Olson, Daniel E. Atkins, Robert Clauer, Thomas A. Finholt, Farnum Jahanian, Timothy L. Killeen, Atul Prakash, and Terry Weymouth, "The Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC), " Interactions 5, no. 3 (1998), pp. 48-55, (last visited 22 May 2000).
83. See Helen Willa Samuels, Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities (Metuchen, N.J., 1992).
84. th Century, Sian Reynolds, rev. trans. (New York, 1981).
85. Ironically, we found it unlikely that any of the collaborations we studied could implement a record-keeping system like the electronic notebook being developed by the Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association. See (last visited 6 June 2000).