Assistance: the work practices of human administrative assistants and their implications for it and organizations

ABSTRACT

Assistance - work carried out by one entity in support of another - is a concept of long-standing interest, both as a type of human work common in organizations and as a model of how computational systems might interact with humans. Surprisingly, the perhaps most paradigmatic form of assistance - the work of administrative assistants or secretaries - has received almost no attention. This paper reports on a study of assistants, and their principals and managers, laying out a model of their work, the skills and competencies they need to function effectively, and reflects on implications for the design of systems and organizations.

REFERENCES

• 1: Apple Computer, Inc.. Knowledge Navigator video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5144094928842683632
• 2: A. E. Blandford , T. R. G. Green, Group and Individual Time Management Tools: What You Get is Not What You Need, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, v.5 n.4, p.213-230, December 2001 [doi>10.1007/PL00000020]
• 3: Laura A. Dabbish , Ryan S. Baker, Administrative assistants as interruption mediators, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/765891.766127]
• 4: Susan F. Ehrlich, Social and psychological factors influencing the design of office communications systems, Proceedings of the SIGCHI/GI conference on Human factors in computing systems and graphics interface, p.323-329, April 05-09, 1987, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• 5: Susan F. Ehrlich, Strategies for encouraging successful adoption of office communication systems, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.5 n.4, p.340-357, Oct. 1987 [doi>10.1145/42196.42198]
• 6: Ellen Francik , Susan Ehrlich Rudman , Donna Cooper , Stephen Levine, Putting innovation to work: adoption strategies for multimedia communication systems, Communications of the ACM, v.34 n.12, p.52-63, Dec. 1991 [doi>10.1145/125319.125322]
• 7: Elihu M. Gerson , Susan Leigh Star, Analyzing due process in the workplace, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.4 n.3, p.257-270, July 1986 [doi>10.1145/214427.214431]
• 8: Jonathan Grudin, Managerial Use and Emerging Norms: Effects of Activity Patterns on Software Design and Deployment, Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 1, p.10038.3, January 05-08, 2004
• 9: Dan Gruen , Candy Sidner , Carolyn Boettner , Charles Rich, A collaborative assistant for email, CHI '99 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [doi>10.1145/632716.632839]
• 10: Claudio Gutierrez , Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Suggesting what to do next, Proceedings of the 1988 ACM SIGSMALL/PC symposium on ACTES, p.126-132, May 04-06, 1988, Cannes, France [doi>10.1145/62453.62480]
• 11: Beverly L. Harrison , Alex Cozzi , Thomas P. Moran, Roles and relationships for unified activity management, Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, November 06-09, 2005, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/1099203.1099245]
• 12: Thomas P. Moran , Paul Dourish, Introduction to this special issue on context-aware computing, Human-Computer Interaction, v.16 n.2, p.87-95, December 2001 [doi>10.1207/S15327051HCI16234_01]
• 13: Michael J. Muller , Rebecca Carr , Catherine Ashworth , Barbara Diekmann , Cathleen Wharton , Cherie Eickstaedt , Joan Clonts, Telephone operators as knowledge workers: consultants who meet customer needs, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.130-137, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223904.223921]
• 14: Michael J. Muller , Daniel M. Gruen, Working together inside an emailbox, Proceedings of the ninth conference on European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, p.103-122, September 18-22, 2005, Paris, France
• 15: Leysia Palen, Social, individual and technological issues for groupware calendar systems, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.17-24, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.302982]
• 16: Mark Rouncefield , John A. Hughes , Tom Rodden , Stephen Viller, Working with “constant interruption”: CSCW and the small office, Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.275-286, October 22-26, 1994, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States [doi>10.1145/192844.193028]
• 17: Schmidt, K. and Bannon, L. Taking CSCW seriously: Supporting articulation work. Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work 1, 1-2 (1992), 7--40.
• 18: Star, S. L. Invisible work and silenced dialogues in knowledge representation. In I.V. Eriksson, B. A. Kitchenham and K. G. Tijdens (Eds) Women, Work and Computerization. Elsevier Science Publishers, 1991.
• 19: Strauss, Anselm. Work and the division of labor. The Sociological Quarterly, 26, 11 (1985), 1--19.
• 20: Lucy A. Suchman, Office procedure as practical action: models of work and system design, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.1 n.4, p.320-328, Oct. 1983 [doi>10.1145/357442.357445]
• 21: Lucy A. Suchman, Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1987
• 22: Agnieszka Matysiak Szóstek , Panos Markopoulos, Factors defining face-to-face interruptions in the office environment, CHI '06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada [doi>10.1145/1125451.1125706]
• 23: Truss, C. The Secretarial Ghetto: Myth or Reality? A Study of Secretarial Work in England, France and Germany. Work, Employment & Society, 7, 4 (1993), 561--584.
• 24: Steve Whittaker , Candace Sidner, Email overload: exploring personal information management of email, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.276-283, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/238386.238530]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Computer-supported cooperative work

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human information processing; Human factors
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.1 Office Automation
          Subjects: Time management (e.g., calendars, schedules); Workflow management
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Organizational design; Theory and models

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Theory

Keywords:
administrative assistant, articulation work, intelligent assistant, personal assistant, secretary