Hasta junio de 1990 el volumen de las exportaciones aumentó en un 35%, y en un 19% en 1989, esfuerzo inú­

Human-Centred systems research in Britain has not received the recognition, or the resources, which became available to the Scandinavian Collective Resource tradition in the 1970s and 1980s. As demonstrated by British government vetoes on a number of progressive EC proposals on human rights and workers' rights in the late 1980s, the political climate in the UK has not been favourable towards the general tenor of initiatives such as HCS.

Nevertheless, HCS research has developed, p artly in cooperation with European partners. In a 1990 report, Karamjit Gill summarises its distinctive features as follows:

technology development and provides a powerful alternative philosophy for systems design and use. It rejects the idea of the 'one best way', 'one culture' and 'sameness' of scientific ideas. This focus on diversity provides a motivation to look at the structures which support innovation... Emerging European research on h u m a n ­ centredness builds on the idea of human-machine symbiosis and regards the social and cultural shaping of technology as central to the design and use of technological systems. It emphasises the interdependence between the subjective and the objective knowledge by placing practice, skill and dialogue at the centre of designing human-machine collaborative systems. This focus of research recognises the need for the active participation of citizens in shaping science and technology."

(Gill, 1990, p.3).

HCS, therefore, seeks to build both on epistemological critiques of the positivist tradition in science and technology, and on those developments in social science which reject technological determinism and seek to examine the ways in which technology itself is socially shaped. Four specific projects demonstrate both the scope and the limitations of HCS research to date, in Britain.

The first is Rosenbrock's research at UMIST, during the 1970s, into the development of CAD systems. Rosenbrock's aim was to develop systems designed to counter Taylorist views of automation, and to enhance human skill and autonomy, at workplace level, rather than marginalising

them. This led to the design and prototyping of a computerised 'human-centred lathe', which remained under the operator's control. As Gill comments, this project successfully addressed the issues of skill and autonomy at the level of an individual worker's job; however, 'human­ centredness' in use cannot be inscribed in a piece of equipment, and the issues of interaction among workers, between workers and management, and of organsiational change more generally, were not discussed.

The second relevant initiative was the now well-known 'Lucas Plan', devised by workers facing rationalisation and redundancy at Lucas Aerosapce in the 1970s (Cooley, 1980, 1985) . The aim here was to use high-technology skills and equipment to create 'socially-useful' products, rather than military ones, and thus to secure jobs and expand the company's scope. As Cooley has noted, the company rejected the Plan, but a number of its proposals were taken up both abroad, and by Labour local authorities in Britain (Cooley, 1985). This added a wider political dimension to HCS research.

The third relevant strand is what Gill describes as the 'Social Action Research' approach, exemplified by the 'Parosi' project at Brighton Polytechnic (Gill, 1986). Supported by the EC Social Fund, this project brought together health workers, computer scientists and women from Asian communities, to construct a knowledge-based system for providing advice on nutrition. This project appears to be unique, in British HCS research to date, in

having moved away from male-dominated, craft-based areas of work.

It is described by Gill as having helped to bring the focus on diversity into HCS research, whether in terms of cultures, of values or of disciplines. While this could help to create a basis for drawing gender issues into the HCS framework, these are not an explicit part of the 'diversity' Gill describes. His analyses of the project do not comment on whether or not gender appeared to be a significant issue in interactions between the different parties involved, or in the priorities they identified.

The fourth relevant project - the most recent, and perhaps the one with the highest profile - returns HCS firmly to its roots in craft engineering (Rosenbrock, 1989). This was a collaborative project, with British, Scandinavian and German partners, funded under the EC 'ESPRIT' programme from 1986 to 1989. The aim was to develop three aspects of a Computer Integrated Ma nufacturing system (CIM): a computer-aided design system, in Denmark; a computer-aided manufacturing system, in Britain; and a computer-aided planning system in Germany. A prototype product was indeed produced at each site by 1989. Unlike much other related research - for instance, in the Scandinavian context - the British and German project groups did not involve users directly. Apart from the prototypes produced, the project did usefully identify a number of issues and difficulties facing both HCS initiatives and other interdisciplinary projects. Gill cites a general example as follows:

"During the first meeting between social science and engineering gr ou p s , there was a feeling of distr ust, scepticism and misunderstanding. The engineers feared that social scientists and user groups would generate unrealistic demands concerning technical specifications and software development. The social scientists feared that engineers would develop technical specifications and models too quickly, thereby undermining the development of human-centred criteria."

(Gill, 1990, p. 12).

And the users, it would appear, were rather paradoxically not invited to comment at all. To his great credit, in his 1989 account of the project Rosenbrock appends a full transcript of an early project meeting at which the user representation issue was uneasily debated.

From this brief resume of the somewhat limited range of HCS projects which have taken place in the British context, we can identify a number of issues. Firstly, the three most prominent strands in HCS, as identified by Gill, are all based in craft engineering contexts. Implicitly, these areas - associated with craft status, strong union organisation, and of course masculinity - have been seen as the priority. This immediately indicates that it is important for new initiatives in HCS to examine the potential for intervention in other kinds of context - and particularly, from a gender perspective, in areas of work in which large numbers of women are

employed. HCS concerns with skill and autonomy have been shaped in terms which predominantly mirror men's experience, and these have been explored with a strong emphasis on product rather than on process. The 'Parosi' project - and to some extent the identification of 'process' issues and problems in Rosenbrock's latest analyses - do offer opportunities to investigate how HCS research could be defined in ways which include gender perspectives. But these are rather tentative and implicit openings, in need of detailed exploration (see Chapters Nine and Ten).

Conclusion.

In the first section of this chapter I reviewed research which has demonstrated the problems represented by the dominance of a functionalist paradigm in information systems development. In different ways, both Hirschheim (1987) and Jackson (1985) seek to develop alternative approaches by combining elements of existing methodologies with insights from Habermas' critical social theory and, in Hirschheim's case, from psychoanalysis. These initiatives usefully identify the relationships between existing information systems development methodologies and social theory, but they have yet to be fully elaborated in practice. Hirschheim's approach, in particular, shows weaknesses in relation to the acknowledgement of relations of power and inequality within and beyond organisations.

interdisciplinary research in Scandinavia. Here, a favourable political and economic context has facilitated quite extensive research, exemplified most clearly by the work of Ehn et al into 'designing for democracy at work'

(Ehn, 1988). This 'Collective Resource' tradition is the one with which Human-Centred Systems research has most affinity to date. During the 1970s and 1980s it generated a number of projects, producing both prototype systems and a range of more general principles to support further collaboration between workers and systems designers. Later examples, in particular, have integrated theoretical reflections with practical techniques or proposals; most recently these have included preliminary investigations into the links between gender relations and systems design, although these are still marginal in relation to the main body of Scandinavian research. Taken as a whole, the Scandinavian 'Collective Resource' approach generates both a number of possibilities and a number of unresolved issues for further examination in a British context.

In the third section of the chapter, I discussed the Human-Centred Systems research tradition itself, in Britain. Although far less well-established than the Scandinavian research, this too has combined philosophical and political debate with the development of prototype systems. The most recent project took the form of a collaboration between British researchers and European partners, seeking to develop complementary elements of a human-centred Computer-Integrated Manufacturing system

(Rosenbrock, 1989). HCS research to date has, however, tended to focus on traditionally male-dominated areas of craft work: only one of the four initiatives discussed departed from this model, and this was the least 'high- profile' of the four.

The literature discussed in this chapter indicates that the area of interdisciplinary research into information systems development is both diverse and expanding. The related themes of 'social factors' and user relations in systems design are being explored, both theoretically and empirically. The constraints represented by prescriptive methodologies of the kind discussed in Chapter Three are being challenged, creating an environment to which Human- Centred Systems research can usefully contribute.

Gender relations, however, feature very rarely in these areas of research. Here, recent Scandinavian initiatives can help to identify relevant issues for futher HCS research in Britain.