Abstract This paper places observational studies of women’s work in historical perspective. We present some of the very early studies (carried out in the period from 1900 to 1930), as well as several examples of fieldwork-based studies of women’s work, undertaken from different perspectives and in varied locations between the 1960s and the mid 1990s. We outline and discuss several areas of thought which have influenced studies of women’s work - the automation debate; the focus on the skills women need in their work; labour market segregation; women’s health; and technology and the redesign of work – and the research methods they used. Our main motivation in this paper is threefold: to demonstrate how fieldwork based studies which have focussed on women’s work have attempted to locate women’s work in a larger context that addresses its visibility and value; to provide a thematic historiography of studies of women’s work, thereby also demonstrating the value of an historical perspective, and a means through which to link it to contemporary themes; and to increase awareness of varied methodological perspectives on how to study work.

In this paper we outline a typology, which will be useful for those engaged in the design and customization of information systems in healthcare. Drawing on ethnographic case studies conducted in six healthcare settings in two countries, the typology outlined here is intended to identify possible sources of local variability of health care work practices, which need to be accommodated in local configurations of generic information systems.

In this paper we discuss configurability as a form of appropriation work. We suggest that making technology work requires an awareness of the multiple dimensions of configurability carried out by numerous actors within and outside of the organizations in which new technologies are introduced in efforts to support cooperative work. Through discussion of the introduction of a wireless call system into a hospital, we provide an overview of these dimensions -- organisational relations, space and technology relations, connectivity, direct engagement, and configurability as part of technology use and work - and we suggest that in increasingly complex technological and organisational contexts, greater attention will need to be focused on these dimensions of configurability in order to make things work.