Boundless and bounded interactions in the knowledge work process: the role of groupware technologies

This article discusses how the disembedding of social relations and their rearticulation across different tracts of time and space are implicated in knowledge working. We explore this theme within the context of the UK selling division of a multinational pharmaceutical company. We will examine how the use of a groupware technology was used to work across the functional, geographic and temporal boundaries that separated many employees, and most notably the sales force from those who were located at the head office. Specifically, we will consider the opportunities and limitations that surrounded the use of groupware to work within and between these boundaries. We will also discuss the innovative strategies that some employees devised to work around these difficulties. Knowledge production is conceptualised from a communities of practice perspective, and further sensitised with reference to Giddens thesis on the nature of contemporary society.