Special Issue in the JCSCW on Moving Back to the Control Room – Revisiting Centres of Coordination
In this call we ask for innovative studies of collaboration in control rooms and reflections on the consequences of recent technological and organizational developments on the control rooms of today. Some of the more recent research issues concern the fragmentation and decentralization of control rooms and how management tasks are distributed among several actors in distinct locales and organizations. Some control rooms have become larger, so-called ‘mega-control’ rooms, where previously distinct control rooms have been merged in one physical location. This presents challenges for the subtle practices of overseeing and monitoring identified in the early control room studies. We welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions on these broadly connected topics:
- With a perspective on CSCW’s history, how far have we come concerning centres of coordination work and technology use? Examples of central problems that are addressed, and what important problems that remain.
- What are the challenges of decentralized coordination “centres”? How is coordination affected as a practice when there is no localized centre of attention, but is distributed to the periphery of activities?
- Based on CSCW contemporary breadth, can a widened scope on coordination and interaction shed new light on the complex and critical coordinative control room work?
The complete call can be found here: https://www.springer.com/journal/10606/updates/18154090. Whilst we welcome submissions from a range of backgrounds, accepted papers need to show a clear contribution to themes, methods and concepts in CSCW. Deadline for submission: 29th September 2021.