Distributed Activities and Mobile Computing

The PSP mobile learning project was both an individual and a collective activity system at the same time. The individual PSP performed his central activity while the project authorities performed its culturally more advanced activity Because the objects of these two activities are different, they engendered contradictions in the motives driving them. The contradictions (described as inner) were experienced by the PSPs. The surgical team contained the learning object of the PSP, and so it performed an object activity. Because its object (the patient) was different from the object of the advanced activity (the PSP), the difference also engendered contradictory motives. These contradictions combined to result in metacontradictions which is a quality of postmodern organization, and of the organizational personality. However, the PSP was not understood by the project authorities as an organizational personality. Therefore, there was an imbalance in the personality of the PSP whereby he experienced metacontradictions which is a postmodern quality, and yet was deemed by the project authorities as a modern personality. The imbalance also combined with problematic learning conditions in the PSP’s hospitals to undermine flexible mobile computing. The organizational dimension is isolated for analysis of the relationship between control dynamics and mobile computing. Following a brief overview of control theory and technology use, the analysis leads to the formulation of four control categories. These categories are factors of the strength of contradictions between advanced and object activities on the one hand, and the strength of control of the distant authority. The categories are used to explain the possible mobile computing scenarios which included that of the PSPs. The relationship between coordination and mobile computing in both the mobile learning and mobile foreign exchange trading cases is analyzed. The analysis shows that the personal dimension is necessary for successful coordination with mobile computers. Therefore, explanations of both the individualization of coordination and duality of flexibility affirm that the inclusion of the worker’s person in the organization is necessary for flexible mobile computer usability. Individualization of coordination refers to the focus on the individual person in the management of interdependent relations in distributed work. Duality of flexibility refers to the dependence on successful coordination on workers’ combination of their personal and organizational motives, so that spatial and temporal routines and constraints are minimized.