Distributed Cognition in Self-Organizing Teams

This chapter considers the nature of distributed cognition in self-organizing teams. This frame of reference was motivated by the observation that, in sociotechnical workplaces, new or different organizational structures emerge from individual, interacting actors’ spontaneous behaviors, in ways that migrate toward becoming fitted to the demands of a continually evolving task environment, so that these systems are self-organizing. The chapter demonstrates how Hutchins’s classic field studies of cognition in the wild support the argument that the computational processes of work are not only distributed, but are also self-organizing. Further, the chapter examines the implications of the self-organization phenomenon for modeling and designing computational work in these systems, presenting the diagram of work organization possibilities as a suitable tool for this purpose. Ultimately, this chapter leads to an understanding of how complex cognitive work can be supported through design to promote the inherent capacity of sociotechnical systems for self-organization, a phenomenon that is essential for dealing with instability, uncertainty, and unpredictability in the task environment.