An excellent account of how a social network within an environment of practice can shape and define that practice. The authors recount the observations of organisational consultant Julian Orr of the Xerox technical representatives (reps) who would visit customers on site to repair their photocopiers.

Attempts to structuralise and formalise the process by which these reps worked would result negatively. Orr's observations discover that the geographical convergence of the reps first thing each morning before the 9am start when they meet up to have breakfast. At this breakfast the reps swap "war stories", accounts of memorable errors and fixes they have employed. These stories are of great benefit to collegues. As they are told complete with surrounding detail, how the engineer felt, what he was thinking, how the customer reacted, what state their offices were in, the stories have colour and become far easier to memorise for the listening reps than a proceedure stripped of all but the essential detail. Failing to remember the detail or the fix they would usually remember the error and the story teller. Also as a part of the social environment these other engineers were able to lend their experience to the struggling rep.

Also the rote proceedure laid out in the process manuals hampered the reps scope for improvisation. This is one of the most important qualities in any type of engineer as seperate situations can often be alike but are rarely identical.

I can relate to this account personally. Whilst working as an internet technical support engineer, exactly these types of "war stories" helped me fix a good number of weird and wonderful errors back in the days when the Microsoft network stack was none too stable and Macs didn't have a network stack built into the operation system. Others have told me that my own stories have helped them similarly.

After my departure, accounts from former collegues informed me of the introduction of a proceedural fault management system which the engineers were required to follow in the course of dignosing and resolving a customers technical issue. This entirely prevented my former collegues from using intuition and social experience to help them do their job. When I left this role the ISP I was working for consistantly rated number 1 in the good service guides. After the introduction of the fault diagnosis proceedure they dropped to 14th within a matter of months.