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Assistance: the work practices of human administrative assistants and their implications for it and organizations

Published: 08 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Assistance - work carried out by one entity in support of another - is a concept of long-standing interest, both as a type of human work common in organizations and as a model of how computational systems might interact with humans. Surprisingly, the perhaps most paradigmatic form of assistance - the work of administrative assistants or secretaries - has received almost no attention. This paper reports on a study of assistants, and their principals and managers, laying out a model of their work, the skills and competencies they need to function effectively, and reflects on implications for the design of systems and organizations.

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                  cover image ACM Conferences
                  CSCW '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
                  November 2008
                  752 pages
                  ISBN:9781605580074
                  DOI:10.1145/1460563
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                  Published: 08 November 2008

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                  Author Tags

                  1. administrative assistant
                  2. articulation work
                  3. intelligent assistant
                  4. personal assistant
                  5. secretary

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                  November 8 - 12, 2008
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