Carsten Østerlund

Last modified: May 2009

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Associate Professor, School of Information Studies,
309 Hinds Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-4100
E-mail: costerlu {at} syr {dot} edu OR carsten {dot} osterlund {at} sloan {dot} mit {dot} edu
Tel: (315) 443-8773, Web: http://carsten.syr.edu/

 

Education

Ph.D. MIT, Sloan School of Management, Organization Studies Group. October 2002.

Thesis Title: Documenting Dreams: Patient-Centered Records versus Practice-Centered Records. Committee: Wanda Orlikowski (chair), John Van Maanen, and Paul Carlile.

M.A. Social Psychology & Anthropology, University of Århus, Denmark, 1996.

Fulbright Scholar at Department of Social & Cultural Studies, UC Berkeley (1993-95). Advisor: Professor Jean Lave.

B.A. Psychology, University of Copenhagen & University of Århus, Denmark, 1993.

 

Research Interests

Investigations of everyday practices involved in the organization, creation and use of documents in organizations that go into documenting work. I refer to these as “documenting practices” and include in this category the activity of capturing knowledge in any media. 

 

Teaching Areas

• Information Systems & Organizations: Social and behavioral perspectives
• Research in Information Technology and Organizational Psychology
• Knowledge Management in Practice
• Introduction to the Information Based Organization

 

Awards & Honors

2008 Robert Benjamin Junior Faculty Award for my scholarly work at the iSchool, Syracuse University.

2006 Best Paper in the Genres of Digital Documents Mini Track and nominated for "best in track" in the Digital Media: Content and Management at HICSS, Hawaii.

2005 Winner of the Diana Forsythe Award 2005. Paper selected from a set of more than 200 peer-reviewed AMIA conference paper and peer-reviewed article published during the previous year, which best exemplifies the spirit and scholarship of Diana Forsythe's work at the intersection of medical informatics and the social sciences.

2003 CASE Center’s Summer Research Support, Syracuse University.

1997-2001 Research Fellowship, Center for Innovation and Product Development (CIPD) and its division on Enterprise Learning, MIT.

1997-2002 Fellowship, Danish Research Academy.

1997 Research Fellowship, Center for Organizational Learning, MIT.

1996 Emil & Therese Hjort’s Award for Distinguished Students.

1994 Xerox PARC, System and Practices Laboratory Award.

1993-1995 Fulbright Scholarship for Graduate Studies at UC Berkeley.

1993 Højgaard’s Travel Award.

1993 University of Aarhus Travel Award for Distinguished Students.

 

Publications: Articles

Østerlund, C. (2008). “The Materiality of Communicative Practices: The boundaries and objects of an emergency room genre.” Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS). 20(1):7-40.

Østerlund, C. (2008). “Documents in Place: Demarcating Places for Collaboration in Healthcare Settings.” Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). 17 (2), 195-225.

Østerlund, C. (2007). “Genre combinations: A window into dynamic communication practices.” Journal of Management of Information Systems (JMIS). 23 (4), 81-108.

Østerlund, C., & Carlile, P. (2005). “Relations in Practice: Sorting through practice theories on knowledge sharing in complex organizations.” The Information Society. 21 (2), 91-107.

Østerlund, C. (2004). “Mapping Medical Work: Information practices across multiple medical settings.” Journal for Information Studies.2004 (3), 35-44. Yokohama: Musashi Institute of Technology Press.

Østerlund, C. (2003). “Documenting Practices: The indexical centering of medical records.” Outlines: Critical Social Studies, 2003(2), 43-69.

Østerlund, C. (1997) “Sales Apprentices on the Move: A multi-contextual perspective on Situated Learning.” Journal of Nordic Educational Research 17, 3, 169-178. (Peer Reviewed)

 

Publications: Book Chapters & Reports

Østerlund, C., Dosa, N., & Arnott Smith, C. (Accepted). “Mother, My Medical Record: What role does patients with chronic conditions and parents play in the management of their medical information?” In B. Hayes & W. Aspray (Eds.) The Informatics of Diabetes. Boston: MIT Press.

Østerlund, C. (2008). “How Do You Advise Graduate Students on Qualitative Research Projects?” In Klaus Nielsen, Svend Brinkmann, et al. A Qualitative Stance. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. pp. 239-250.

Østerlund, C., & Carlile, P. (2003). “How Practice Matters: A relational view of knowledge sharing.” In M. Huysman, E. Wenger & V. Wulf (Eds.), Communities and Technologies (C&T 2003). Amsterdam: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Østerlund, C. (1999) “Salgslærlinge på Tværs.” [Salespeople’s Learning & Organizational Boundaries] In Klaus Nielsen & Steinar Kvale (Eds.). Mesterlære: Læring some Social Praksis. [Apprenticeship: Learning as a Social Practice] Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel's Press. (Published in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian translations.)

Østerlund, C. (1996) “Learning Across Contexts: An ethnographic study of salespeople's learning at work.” Skriftserie for Psykologisk Institut. Vol. 21, No.1, Aarhus University Press. (double blind peer reviewed monograph.)

Bechky, B. & Østerlund, C. (1994) “Qualifying the Customer: An ethnographic study of sales.” Report for the System and Practice Laboratory, SPL-94-069, P94-00021. Palo Alto Research Center: Palo Alto, CA.

Østerlund, C. & Lybeck, M. (1993) “Process Consulting and the Professional Student: New perspectives on teacher training.” A handbook published in Danish by the Teachers’ Training College in Haderslev, Denmark.

 

Publications: Conference Proceedings

Østerlund, C. & Boland, D. (2009). ”Document Cycles: Knowledge Flows in Heterogeneous Healthcare Information System Environments.” Proceedings of HICSS-42, Hawaii, January 5-8.

Dosa, N., Østerlund, C. Tamburo, J., Morley, C., & Liptak, G. (2008). “HEALTHYTransitionsNY: Curriculum and Interactive Tools to Facilitate Healthcare Transition of Youth with Developmental Disabilities.” Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of of the AACPDM, Atlanta, GA, Sept 17-20.

Haque, S.N., D’Eredita, M.A. & Østerlund, C. (2007). “Perceptions of Workflow and Information Exchange in an Academic Medical Center.” In Preparation for EHR Implementation: A Preliminary Field Study. Proceedings of the 2007 AMIA Symposium.

Østerlund, C. (2006). “Combining Genres.” Proceedings of HICSS-39, Hawaii, January 4-7, 2006.

Selected "best paper in mini track" by the Genres of Digital Documents Mini Track and nominated for "best in track" in the Digital Media: Content and Management Track.

Wei, K. & Østerlund, C. (2006). ”A structurational approach for studying knowledge sharing process in virtual teams.” In Proceedings to the Global Information Technology Management Association (GITMA) Conference, Orlando, FL, 11-13 June.

Østerlund, C., Dosa, N., & Arnott Smith, C. (2005). ”Mother Knows Best: Medical Record Management for Patients with Spina Bifida During the Transition from Pediatric to Adult Care.” Proceedings of American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Fall Symposium, Washington DC, October 22-26, 2005.

Winner of the Diana Forsythe Award 2005. Selected from a set of more than 200 peer-reviewed AMIA conference paper and peer-reviewed article published during the previous year.

 

Publications: Book Reviews & Annotated Bibliographies

Book Review of J. Lave & E. Wenger (1992), “Situated Learning.” In Newsletter: Center for Qualitative Research, 1993, Vol. 12.

Book Review of I. Andersen et al. “On the Art of Doing Field Research.” In Newsletter: Center for Qualitative Research, 1993, Vol. 13.

Annotated bibliography on apprenticeship (in English): “Ten Relevant Articles on Apprenticeship.” In Newsletter: Center for Qualitative Research, 1993, Vol. 13.

Annotated bibliography on group interviews: “Ten Books Relevant to Group Interviews.” In Newsletter: Center for Qualitative Research, 1992, Vol. 11, p. 14-18.

 

Conference Presentations

Documenting Work: Beyond the Notion of Information Technology. Presented at the Annual Conference for the Danish Association for Science and Technology Studies, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, May 2-3, 2007.

Outline of an Institutional Theory of Documents. Presented at DOCAM, UC Berkeley, CA, October 13-25, 2006.

A Structurational Approach for Studying Knowledge Sharing Process in Virtual Teams. Presented at the Global Information Technology Management Association (GITMA) Conference, Orlando, FL, June 11-13, 2006.

Mother Knows Best: Medical Record Management for Patients with Spina Bifida During the Transition from Pediatric to Adult Care. Presented at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Fall Symposium, Washington DC, October 22-26, 2005.

Combining Documents: The History of an Emergency Room Flowsheet. Presented at DOCAM ’05, SIMS, UC Berkeley, October 7-9, 2005

Same Old Thing: Productive & reproductive practices in civic networks, Presented by first author Murali Venkatesh at Learning in Community Workshop, University Park, Penn State, August 14-17, 2005.

Indexical Fields: Encoding, communicating and coordinating, Presented at Organizational Knowledge, Learning and Capabilities (OKLC), Bentley College, Mass. March 17-19, 2005.

Does Space have a Place in IS Research? Exploring explicit and implicit notions of space in IS research. Presented at ICIS - OASIS workshop: IFIP Working Group 8.2, Washington DC, December 12-15, 2004.

Two Doctors’ Documenting Practices: How the indexical centering of medical records integrates the encoding, communication and coordination of patient care. Presented at the Annual Meetings of the Document Academy at SIMS, UC Berkeley, October 22-24, 2004.

Where is the Doctor? Locating medical work. Presented at the Annual Meeting for Society for Social Studies of Science, Paris, August 25-28, 2004.

What is Medical Informatics? Brown Bag Presentation with Catharine Arnott Smith at the Information School, Syracuse University, September 17, 2004 .

Situating Medical Documents: NLP and the indexical centering of documents. Presented at Center for Natural Language Processing, Syracuse University, February, 17, 2004.

Situating Documents: Finding context in the text. Presented at ICIS - OASIS workshop: IFIP Working Group 8.2, Seattle, December 15-17, 2003.

Technology, Place, and Practice: An ethnographic perspective. Presented with Mimi Ito at Annual Meeting for Society for Social Studies of Science, Atlanta, October 15-19, 2003.

Electronic Records, Hospital Design, and Medical Rounds: My place or yours? Presented at Annual Meeting for the Society for Social Studies of Science, Atlanta, October 15-19, 2003.

Genre Systems & Documenting Practices: A theoretical perspective. Presented at Workshop for Theoretical Approaches on Information Ecologies, Musashi Institute of Technology, October 1-2, 2003.

Mapping Medical Work: Information practices across multiple medical settings. Presented at Participatory Design of Information: From the Perspective of Information Ecology, Musashi Institute of Technology, Japan, September 27-29.

Practice Matters: Knowledge sharing in communities of practice. Presented at Communities and Technology 2003, Amsterdam, September 19-21.

Documenting Dreams: Patient-centered records vs. practice-centered records. Presented at HICCNY (Health Informatics Consortium of Central New York), Syracuse University, January 14, 2003.

When & Where Matters: Why do people write medical records. Panel Presentation at AOM (Academy of Management), Denver, August 9-14, 2002.

E-Business. Invited as discussant to paper session at AOM (Academy of Management), Denver, August 9-14, 2002.

Documenting Practices Across Time and Space: Diverse approaches and organizational impacts. Panel presentation at ICIS (International Conference on Information Systems), New Orleans, December 16-19, 2001.

Locales & Intersecting Information Technologies. Paper presentation at Society for Social Studies of Science conference, Boston, November 1-4, 2001.

Patchworks of Documenting Practices: temporal & spatial analysis of overlapping documenting practices in distributed healthcare work. Paper presentation at Virtual and Distributed Work Conference; Miami, March 1-4, 2001.>

The Power of Whiteboards: Boundary objects and the politics of knowledge sharing. Paper presentation at symposium “Sharing Knowledge Across Boundaries,” sponsored by OCIS and OTM divisions at the Academy of Management, Toronto, August 4-9, 2000.

Moving Asthmatics: Knowledge sharing across boundaries and the management of patient trajectories. Paper presentation at the Conference on Non-Scholastic Learning, Denmark, June 2- 6, 2000.

Trajectories and Multi-Sited Ethnography: Methodological considerations. Paper presentation at the Conference on Non-Scholastic Learning, Denmark, June 2- 6, 2000.

Watching “E.R.” in the E.R.: Popular and local representations of work in two emergency rooms. Paper presentation at the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, Nov. 17-21, 1999.

From ER to OR: Knowledge creation, boundary crossing, and the management of patient trajectories. Paper presentation at the International Workshop at Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research. Boundary Crossing and Knotworking: Learning and Knowledge Creation as Movements within and Between Communities. Helsinki, Finland, September 2-3, 1999.

Apprenticeship at Work: Learning trajectories, communities of practice, and contexts of action. Paper presentation at Keynote symposium at 8th European Conference for Research on Learning and Instruction. Göteborg, Sweden. August 24-28, 1999.

Into the Black Box of the Whiteboard: Coordination and power at play in the use of information technology. Presentation at Computers & Work Conference, MIT, January 20, 1998.

Sales Apprentices on the Move: A multi-contextual perspective on situated learning. Presentation at 25th Nordic Educational Research Association Conference, Göteborg, Sweden, October, 1997.

Learning and Technology at Work in an American High Tech Corporation. Presentation at 24th Nordic Educational Research Association Conference, Lillehammer, Norway, August, 1996.

 

Talks & Presentations

Expenses paid invitation to present at the eighth annual UC Davis Conference on Qualitative Research will take place March 28-30th, 2008 in Davis, CA/ Napa, CA. This conference brought together a small group of qualitative researchers to present and discuss their work and work-in-progress.

All expenses paid invitation to speak at the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (NST) in Tromsø, Norway. Over a three day visit I presented three research papers and engaged with faculty and students. May 8-11, 2007.

All expenses paid invitation to present research paper at the Doctoral School of Organizational Learning (DOCSOL). Paper title: Documenting Work: Beyond the notion of information technology. School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark. May 23, 2007.

Invited to speak at Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Holland. I met with faculty and students and presented the paper “Document Cycles: Integration of Heterogeneous Health Information System Environments.” June 25-27, 2007.

Invited to speak at a workshop for Healthcare IT (HIT) an interdisciplinary program that focuses on IT-support for highly distributed and heterogeneous networks in the healthcare sector. http://www.healthcareit.dk/ The group bring together scholar from four Danish Universities. April 20, 2007
Invited to speak at Danish Center for Design Research at the School of Architecture. Paper Title: Locating Medical Work: Indoor Tracking and Hospital Design. April 21 2007.

Invited to speak at the Document Academy’s Summer Workshop in Tromso, Norway, June 27-July 2, 2005.

Invited participant at the workshop on “Work in the Era of the Global, Extensible Enterprise” at the IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA, March 24, 2004.

All expenses paid invitation to speak at the Workshop for Theoretical Approaches on Information Ecologies, Musashi Institute of Technology, Title of paper: Genre Systems & Documenting Practices: A theoretical perspective. Japan, October 1-2, 2003.

Invited speaker at the conference Participatory Design of Information: From the Perspective of Information Ecology, Musashi Institute of Technology, Yokohama. Title: Mapping Medical Work: Information practices across multiple medical settings. Japan, September 27-29, 2003.

Invited speaker at the Danish Pedagogical University, Copenhagen. Title: Dokument Drømme: Patient-Centrerede Journaler vs. Praksis-Centrerede Journaler. Copenhagen, December, 2002.

Invited speaker at Department of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Title of paper: Learning Trajectories Across Health Care Settings: A pedagogical perspective. November, 2002.

Human-Centered Product Innovation Conferences. Intel, Portland, 2000-2001.

Work Practice & Technology Conference: The next 20 years of research. Xerox PARC, June 15-17, 1999.

Network for Situated Learning; Participants from US, UK and Scandinavia including among others Professors Hubert Dreyfus and Jean Lave, UC Berkeley; Yrjö Engeström, U Helsinki; Ole Dreier, U Copenhagen; Cheryl Mattingly, USC. Scandinavia, 1997-2001.

Meeting on Workplace Research in the Service Sector; Sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, Sausalito, October 25-28, 1995.

Meeting on Workplace Research in the Service Sector; Sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, Cornell University, Ithaca, September 15-18, 1994.

Center for Qualitative Research Method; Annual Workshops; Topics: “Competence and Professional Knowledge. “The Rhetoric of Qualitative Research.” “Narrativity in Social Science Research.” Denmark, 1992-94.

 

Other Current Projects

I am also in the early stages of a new research stream studying indoor positioning systems in healthcare settings. Such tracking systems raise interesting questions about the role of documents in ubiquitous computing, in general, but also about the temporal and spatial organization of work in healthcare and beyond.

 

Professional Activities

Co-organizer

Annual Conference for Society for Social Studies of Science. Organized a session panel on “Space and Indoor and Outdoor Positioning Systems”; Paris, August 25-28, 2004.

Annual Conference for Society for Social Studies of Science. Organized four-session panel on Technology, Place, and Practice: An Ethnographic Perspective. Atlanta, October 15-19, 2003.

ICIS (International Conference on Information Systems) Panel on “Documenting Practices and Information Systems in Distributed Work Settings”; with Richard Boland, Wanda Orlikowski, Michael Barrett; New Orleans, December 2001.

Virtual and Distributed Work Conference; with Kuldeep Kumar, Mary Ann von Glinow, Paul C. van Fenema; Sponsored by Florida International University Ryder Center. Currently, we are turning the presented papers into an edited volume, to be published by Sanford University Press. Contributors include: Richard Boland, Case Western; Paul S. Goodman, Carnegie Mellon; Sirkka Jarvenpaa, University of Texas at Austin; Carol Saunders, University of Oklahoma; and Janet Fulk, University of Southern California. Florida, March 1-4, 2001.

Academy of Management Symposium on “Sharing Knowledge Across Boundaries,” With Paul Carlile, Nancy Dixon, Natalia Levina, Sponsored by OCIS and OTM, August 4th-9th, 2000.

Doctoral Course on Collaborative Work, MIT Sloan School of Management, Spring 1998.

Organization Studies Group Seminar (colloquium series), with Nils Fonstad, MIT Sloan School, inviting scholars to present their work and meet students and faculty, 1997-1998.

Conference Committee and Review Board, Discussant

Discussant at IFIP 8.2 – Designing Ubiquitous Information Environments Conference, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, August 1-3, 2005.

IT in Health Care: Socio technical Approaches, Second International Conference,” which will be held in Portland, Oregon 13 14 September 2004.

Information Technology in Health Care Track. Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) New York City; August 5 – 8; 2004.

Discussant at Organizational Communication and Information Systems (OCIS) at Academy of Management, Denver, August 9-14, 2002.

Ad hoc Reviewer

Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) 2004 - Special track on IT in Health Care

Organization Communication and Information Systems Division; Academy of Management

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)

International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) 8.2

International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS)

IT in Health Care: Socio-technical Approaches (ITHC)

Management of Information System Quarterly (MISQ)

The Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS)

Computer Supported Corporative Work (CSCW)

Information Technology and People (IT&P)

OUTLINE: Journal of Critical Social Studies

Human Resource Management Journal

Information Systems Journal (ISJ)

The Information Society

Organization Science

 

Research Experience

1997-2001 Research assistant at the Center for Innovation and Product Development (CIPD) and its division on Enterprise Learning, MIT. http://web.mit.edu/cipd 1997-01.

1997 Research assistant at the Center for Organizational Learning, MIT.

1994-1995 Researcher at Xerox PARC, System and Practices Laboratory. Supervised by Drs. Julian Orr and Lucy Suchman.