Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The application designed is an attempt to solve the problems that students face in writing well balanced academic essays. These are essays that are correct in structure and form, coherent and cohesive, well referenced, and not plagiarised. These concerns are addressed in five basic units. These are "Where to Start", "The Basic Structure", "Paragraphing", "Referencing" and "Exercises". The exercises serve as a summary of all the units. This application derived out of the needs of the students of the University of Botswana. The content was a result of a needs analysis done through observation and interviews. The evaluation of the application was done by the students themselves and fellow students at Stellenbosch University. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie voorlegging is 'n soeke na 'n oplossing vir die probleme wat studente ondervind om 'n goed-gebalanseerde akademiese essay (werkstuk, proefskrif, tesis) te skryf. Hierdie is essays wat in struktuur en vorm korrek is, duidelik en relevant is, korrekte verwysings het en nie nageskryf (plagiaat) is nie. Die probleme is in vyf afdelings bespreek; nl. "Waar om te Begin", "Die Basiese Struktuur", "Paragrawe", "Verwysings" en "Oefeninge". Die oefeninge dien as opsomming vir al die eenhede. Hierdie voorlegging het ontstaan uit ’n behoefte van die studente by die Universiteit Botswana. Die inhoud was die resultaat van 'n behoefte-analise wat deur observasie en onderhoude gedoen is. Die evaluasie is deur die betrokke studente en studente aan die Universiteit Stellenbosch gedoen.

Thesis (MPhil (Modern Foreign Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / This research is based on a study which was made in order to investigate why the students who study Education at the Eastern Cape Technikon fail to acquire competence in essay writing, in spite of going through the Computer program that is being used by the Department of Communication. The name of this program is the Writing Process Workshop, and will be referred to as the WPW throughout the study. This program has been in use at the Technikon as a form of supplementary program for those students who were perceived to have shortfalls1 in their essay writing communication skills. This perception came about from the Department of Communication which decided that those students who scored less than 40% overall in (in language, not in content) their assignments, class works, and tests should go through the program and work independently, in the hope that their performance will improve. The study spans over two years, with the first year being the period where the researcher collected data in the form of written errors that the students made in their essays. The second year of the research is the period when the main research took place. During the second year of the research, the researcher observed the students as they went through the WPW for three months. Upon completing the program, the students were asked to respond to a questionnaire. In addition to the questionnaire, the researcher examined the student errors that occurred in the students’ essays throughout 2003 (while they were on the program, together with the ones from last year (2003). The reason for this was to determine if the errors that were present in 2002 are still present even after the students had gone through the WPW. The researcher then found that there was still considerable occurrence of the same errors in the students’ essays, a fact which led the researcher to deduce that very little improvement in the writing skills of the students has occurred between 2002 and 2003. To explain the above point further, the research findings indicated that the essay-writing competence of the subjects did not improve in spite of the WPW intervention.The researcher then went on to evaluate the program, using a set of guidelines2, and found it consistent with the requirements of the evaluation; and therefore ruled it out as the cause of the failure of students to improve their competence in writing. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher found that the students do not put conscious effort to apply what they have learnt in the program, and that some have not even completed the required tasks from the program. She also found that there is lack of integration of the software into the curriculum. Specific recommendations in Chapter 9 are given on how to facilitate this integration and to motivate the students to apply what they have learnt from the WPW to the mainstream essay writing exercises.

企業將客服中心委外執行雖然能降低成本，但是企業與專業客服中心之間的交易過程會產生相當多成本，包括洽談合約、維持廠商關係及監督廠商依約行事等。這些和廠商有關的合約、管理費用即稱為交易成本。 本研究目的是以交易成本理論探討企業客服中心的委外服務決策，亦即以事前協商成本、資產專屬性、不確定性、供應商因素、委外的外顯單位效益成本等變數分析企業客服中心的委外決策，同時加入產業別、企業規模及企業態度三個組織特性因素，分析對企業客服中心委外決策的影響。 本研究是採用調查研究的研究方法，以郵寄問卷的方式來蒐集資料，回收有效問卷為103份。 本研究實證結果顯示，資產專屬性及委外的外顯單位效益成本愈高則企業客服中心的委外態度將愈低，對客服中心愈熟悉的產業其企業客服中心的委外態度愈高，企業規模愈大其企業客服中心的委外態度愈低。 本研究建議可進一步評估企業將客服中心委外執行的績效，或是以其他理論或其他變數進行企業客服中心委外服務之研究。此外，可以考慮改由專業客服中心的觀點進行檢驗，探討如果專業客服中心與企業的關係由現有的契約關係發展為較密切的策略夥伴，是否能夠為專業客服中心帶來更多委外的案件。 / Corporate which outsources the call center can reduce operating cost, but the transaction between corporate and call center outsourcing companies would generate much cost, including negotiation, keeping relation and monitoring companies. The cost mentioned above is so-called transaction cost. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the elements which influence the decision process of outsourcing of call center. This study uses negotiation cost, asset specificity, uncertainty, supplier, outsourcing cost / utility to analyze the outsourcing decision of call center, and incorporates organization characteristics such as category of industry, corporate scale, and corporate attitude to analyze the influence of outsourcing decision of call center. This study uses survey research method and then collects 103 copies of valid questionnaires. The results are as follows. Asset specificity, outsourcing cost utility, category of industry and corporate scale have significant influence on outsourcing decision of call center. It shows that both asset specificity and outsourcing cost / utility are negatively related to outsourcing possibility. Companies in certain industry familiar with call center tend to outsource call centers. Corporate of large scale is unwilling to outsource call center. This study suggests that further investigation of evaluating the performance of outsourcing call center can be taken and other theories or variables can be used to analyze the elements influencing the outsourcing decision of call center. Besides, following researchers can also explore that if corporates engage in close partnership rather than sign an outsourcing contract can bring more profit or cases to the call center outsourcing companies from its point of view.

<p>This research concerns exploiting knowledge of the user's environment (i.e., context information) to enrich a user's communication making it more personal, by ensuring that the user receives only relevant messages and calls in his/her current context, and to facilitate more opportunities for communication interactions with people that are in the same context and that share the same interests as this user. We describe in this licentiate thesis the concepts of context-addressed messaging and context-aware session control that enable users to: (1) send messages to others based on their context, rather than their network address and (2) to initiate, adapt, and terminate user's communication sessions based on this user's current context, respectively. These concepts address questions such as: how to discover, select, and switch to an optimal communication means to meet varying user, contextual, communication, and device resource requirements and preferences. A key to solving these problems is to create a representation of the user's context-dependent preferences and to process the user's context-dependent preferences which are part of context triggers. These context triggers can initiate a communication event upon a particular context update. Additionally, in order to provide the described context-aware communication functions, these mechanisms need timely access to the acquired (desired) context information. This in turn raises a plethora of other questions, such as how to discover sensors that provide the desired context information; how to acquire raw context data from these sensors; how to abstract, process, and model this data to become "understandable" to applications and system components; and how to distribute this context to applications that are running on different nodes.</p><p> </p><p>This research is split into three different parts. The first part concerns investigating and implementing context management functions. As part of this research we propose a novel approach for context synthesis using context operators. We also propose a design architecture for context-aware middleware that mediates between the sensors and applications, and that is able to share and retrieve context from other nodes in the network. The second part of our research concerns our proposed mechanism for context-addressed messaging. To implement this mechanism we designed our own message format, called the Common Profile for Context-Addressed Messaging (CPCAM) that is able to use any high level context to compose a context-based address. Additionally, we proposed to use context-based filtering to find the correct message recipients and determine if this message is relevant to these potential message recipients in their current context, as well as to deliver this message to the recipients' preferred device that is adapted using their preferred communication means. At the end of this second part we design context-addressed messaging system operations on top of a SIP and SIMPLE-based network infrastructure. The third part of our research describes context-aware session control mechanisms using context switch and context trigger constructs. A context-switch selects an action from a set of context-dependent actions upon an incoming communication event based on the receiver's current context. In contrast, a context trigger initiates an action based on a context update and the user's preferences that are specified in this updated context. This part illustrates in several examples the context-aware session control mechanisms, i.e. the initiation of a communication session based on the match of a user's preferences and current context, as well as adaptation and (if necessary) termination of an ongoing communication session based upon the user's context-dependent preferences.</p><p> </p><p>The research leading to this licentiate has created network and system level models necessary for implementation of a context-addressed communication system that would enable users to easily design their own personalized, context-aware communication services. The necessary constructs and properties of these models are designed and analyzed in the thesis, as well as in conference papers and other documents published in the process of doing the research for this thesis. A number of remaining open issues and challenges have been outlined as part of the future work.</p><p> </p> / EU FP6 MIDAS (Middleware Platform for Developing and Deploying Advanced Mobile Services) / EU FP6 MUSIC (Self-adapting Applications for Mobile Users In Ubiquitous Computing Environments)

現在的航空產業是一個高度競爭的產業。隨著全球化的來臨、競爭的增加、網際網路事業及相關觸及全球客戶之設備的發展。而電子購物的發展，及遠距服務可行性，使航空公司了解到將營運集中管理的綜效，能發揮更多的效益。藉由設立後勤支援平台，提供消費者一個簡單容易的銷售及服務渠道。 銷售與服務中心之于企業的地位日趨重要 ，在國際企業中更甚之。銷售與服務中心是企業在與消費者間搭建的橋樑， 它整合公司的資源， 提供公司及客戶相關的資訊。 並為公司蒐集有效消費行為資料。將顧客的要求調整到符合公司的政策。發展出各式的產品，並減少客製化的服務，能引導客戶消費於公司具利潤之產品政策。論文中，將以客戶管理與傳統傳呼中心為架構， 談及銷售與服務中心的演進， 對公司營運得貢獻， 何如去設立銷售與服務中心 本研究目的，是要以銷售與服務中心，去解決原組織銷售後勤作業不統一，公司資源分散 和 客戶資料不集中、不完整的問題。文中亦會完整說明它現階段性存在產業中的角色地位，及其階段性與未來使命 銷售與服務中心對於企業的最大貢獻，在於綜效和成本降低，並且讓企業給市場提供一個中央平台。它階段性任務將循企業電子商務的發展成為一個全方位的後盾，確保電子商務帶來的利潤及立即回應消費者的需求。企業更可進一步的從銷售與服務中心，取得有效的消費行為資料，以作為公司的營銷戰略方向，以反應市場的變化和以維持在直接銷售業務上的領先地位。 / The airlines industry is nowadays a highly competitive industry. Development of e-Purchase & the availability of distant services, airlines realized that Synergy, a centralization of the operation, can be expected even more. By creating a back-office support platform, airlines can provide a simple sales channel for their product with service. The Position of Sales & Service Center is becoming more and more important in the enterprises, especially in multi-national enterprises. Sales & Service Center is a bridge between Enterprises and customers. It integrates company’s resources, provides useful information to customers and company, and also collects and processes customer data for the use of marketing strategy or even new product development in order to reduce the tailor-made service and lead the customer to choose the designed products. In this research, it explain what Sales & Service Center is, descript the evolution of Sales & Service Center, the role and the contribution of Sales & Service Center to Enterprises and how to set up a Sales & Service Center in enterprises from the frame of reference of Customer Relationship Management and call center. The purpose of this research is to solve the problem of inconsistent service standard, a loose sales force organization and customer database not integrated in the enterprises. Per the theme of this paper, a complex discussion of Sales & Service Centre’s position will be explored then following by its future role within the enterprises. As result of Sales and Service Center’s role, Synergy and cost down are the benefits are the main benefits to a company by providing a central platform to the customers. And its periodical mission in the enterprises would follow the e-development to become its solid back-up to prevent the lost of E-commerce to reply the immediate needs from consumers. It would be also the source of company’s marketing strategic orientation with all the access of customers’ data base in order to react on the market’s change and strengthen its market position.

本研究探討「電視政論性談話節目」的第三人效果。第三人效果假說指出，人們會傾向認為，媒介訊息對自己的影響較小，對他人的影響較大。當媒介訊息產生第三人效果認知時，會使人們採取對應行動，為保護自己或他人不受訊息的負面影響而支持限制媒介，因此本研究的主要目的，在探討一般人對電視政論性談話節目的認知與態度，是否存在第三人效果（third-person effect），以及第三人效果是否會導致人們支持限制電視政論性談話節目。 　　本研究除了探討電視政論性談話節目是否會產生第三人效果外；並採用人口變項、電視政論性談話節目的社會需要性、政治注意及政治自我能等變項，來預測電視政論性談話節目的第三人效果認知，同時也進一步採用第三人效果認知來預測人們是否支持對電視政論性談話節目進行限制。 　　本研究的資料來自中央研究院2008 年台灣地區社會變遷調查計畫第五期第四次大眾傳播組的數據，這項研究共有1980 份有效問卷。資料分析顯示，電視政論性談話節目對台灣民眾會產生第三人效果，受訪民眾普遍認為電視政論性談話節目對於一般民眾產生的負面影響，大於對自己的負面影響。 　　其次，在電視政論性談話節目的社會需要性方面，受訪者認為社會越不需要電視政論性談話節目，第三人效果認知差距越大。對於政治的注意程度方面，研究結果發現，受訪者對政治注意程度較高，越傾向認為對自己和其他人的負面影響較大。同時，受訪者認為電視政論性談話節目的負面影響越大，也就越傾向支持對電視政論性談話節目進行限制；電視政論性談話節目「對自己的負面影響」、「對其他人的負面的影響」和第三人效果認知差距三變項，均是預測支持政府限制電視政論性談話節目的顯著變項。 / The research is about “third person effect” of political call-in program. The“third-person effect” hypothesis states that mass media have geater effect on others than on himself or herself. When “third person effect” occurs, people tend to protectthemselves or others from being influenced negatively by media, which lead them to favor the restriction of media. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to analyze the　existence of “third- person effect” among general pereception and attitude toward　television political call-in program and whether “third preson effect” would lead people to favor political call-in program. In addition to the analysis of third person effect of political call-in program, demographic variable, desirability of TV political call-in program, political attentionand external political self-efficacy are all adopted to predict the third person effect of political call-in program. In the mean while, the result of third person effect is used topredict whether people favor the restriction of political call-in program. The data of research comes from Academia Sinica, project of the Taiwan Social Change Survey, 2008 issue fifth, fourth time, section of mass communication. This research includes 1980 valid samples. The result of data analysis indicates that TV political call-in programs have effects on interviewees generally believe that TV political program have greater negative effects on others than on themselves. In addition, as to the desirability of TV political call-in program, interviewees think that less desirability of TV political call-in program lead to greater gap of the perception toward third person effect. As for the political attention, the result indicates that the higher political attention of interviewee, the high tendency for people to think greater third person effect on others and themselves. Mean while, interviewees think that the greater negative influence of political call-in program, there is higher tendency for them to favor the restriction of political call-in program. The influence of political call-in program on oneself, the others and third-person perception, the three significant variables are all favorable to the restriction of TV political call-in program.

In the last few decades, Internet mediated intercultural competence has received a great attention in the field of applied linguistics and foreign language (FL) education especially with the evolution of web 2.0 technologies and social networking sites that facilitate interaction and communication between different cultural communities and individuals. Research in the field of Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) is extremely varied and researchers have focused their attention on various aspects of OIE such as promoting intercultural communicative competence (Belz, 2002; O'Dowd, 2003; Schenker, 2011; Muller Hartman, 2000), facilitating online relationship building (Ware, 2005; Thorne, 2003, Jin & Erben, 2007) and improving writing skills (Ware, 2005; O'Dowd, 2003), developing pragmatic competence (Kinginger & Belz, 2005). Despite the plethora of research in this area, gaps in the literature still exist. First, literature lacks studies on language learners of less commonly taught languages (e.g. Arabic), (Thorne, 2006) and more importantly most of the studies are based on western contexts mainly in Europe and the USA. Second, few studies have explored the potentials of social networking sites on OIE projects in promoting intercultural learning (Aoki, 2009; Jin, 2015). In an effort to fill the gaps in the research, this study links English language learners (Saudis) with Arabic language learners (Americans) to investigate to what extent OIE on Facebook between these two groups of learners contributes to their intercultural communicative competence (ICC), specifically, exploring how and what are the components of Byram's model (ICC) manifested in the OIE project. Furthermore, it examined the affordances of Facebook in the OIE project according to students' use, practice and perception. Informed by a sociocultural framework, this study took a constructivist mixed methods approach to analysis of data from learners' online discourse on Facebook, the researcher's journal and observations, pre-survey, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire. Data analysis and interpretation revealed that when students' participation were mutually compatible, the students were able to build meaningful relationships, used a range of various questioning techniques, and engaged in genuine dialogue, OIE has a great potential for developing students' intercultural competence, as many objectives of Byram's ICC model were manifested. Findings also revealed that the project has strengthened Saudi students' cultural identity as they found the space to present their culture and country beyond the stereotypical image that dominates the media. As with regard to Facebook affordances, findings showed that the semiotic design and various semiotic resources of Facebook (e.g. multimodal posts, sharing, notification, friending, semi-automated features, etc.) afford students' engagement in intercultural discussion, students' collaboration, and students' interpersonal relationship building. The study also identified some of Facebook's constraints that limited students' participation due to technological, cultural and social factors. In sum this study illuminates the nature of online intercultural communication between Arabic and English language learners, contributing to the scarce research on this population. It also uncovers the unique affordances as well as constraints of Facebook on an OIE project. Based on this study, several pedagogical implications and suggestions are made for future research in the field of online intercultural exchanges.

This dissertation is a conversation analytic examination of recurrent practices of interaction in medicalemergency calls. The study expands the analytical focus in past research on emergency calls betweenemergency call operators and callers to pre-hospital emergency care interaction on the phone betweennurses, physicians and callers. The investigation is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Swedish emergencycontrol centre. The data used for the study consists primarily of audio recordings of medical emergency calls.Fundamental procedures in medical emergency calls examined in the dissertation are: (1) questioning; (2)emotion management; (3) risk management and (4) instruction giving. Emergency call-takers ask questions toelicit descriptions by callers of what is happening and to manage symptoms of patients to help keep them safeuntil ambulance crews arrive. In the questioning practice about acutely ill or injured patients call-takers usemainly yes-no questions and clarify problems by questioning callers making a distinction between defined andundefined problems. The analysis reveals four core types of emotion management practices: (1) call-takerskeep themselves calm when managing callers’ social displays of emotions; (2) promising ambulanceassistance; (3) providing problem solving presentations including emergency response measures to concernsof callers, and (4) emphasising the positive to create hope for callers. Call-takers use seven key procedures tomanage risk in medical emergency calls: (1) risk listening through active listening after actual and possiblerisks; (2) risk questioning; (3) risk identification; (4) risk monitoring; (5) risk assessment; (6) making decisionsabout elicited risk and (7) risk reduction. Instruction giving using directives and recommendations isaccomplished by call-takers in four main ways: (1) acute flow maintaining instruction giving when callers areprocedurally out of line; (2) measure oriented instructions for patient care and emergency responsemanagement; (3) organisational response instructions and (4) summarising instruction giving. Callers routinelyacknowledge risk identifications and follow instructions delivered by call-takers to examine statuses and lifesigns of patients such as breathing, movement and pulse, and perform basic first aid and emergency responsemeasures.The findings generated from this study will be useful in emergency call-taker training in carrying out interactiveprocedures in medical emergency calls and add to the larger research programmes on on-telephoneinteraction between professionals and citizen callers. This is an essential book for pre-hospital emergency careproviders and institutional interaction researchers and students. / <p>At the Faculty of Social Sciences in the subject of Sociology</p>

客服中心是企業提供客戶服務的關鍵部門，隨著商業模式不斷創新，各企業紛紛運用客服中心作為提升顧客體驗及拓展客群的手段。尤其近來雲端技術的興起，導入新技術勢必造成客服中心在服務流程上的驟變，如何安排客服中心業務流程、提供客服人員舒適的工作環境、強化顧客滿意度以及提高客服中心的營運效率，已成為一個亟需解決的問題。 精實原則致力於消除生產流程中的浪費並專注於加強業務流程中有價值的部分。在過去精實原則常被應用於製造業的生產工廠中，用以改善流程中的浪費，以達成無縫的拉式生產，然而近年來許多研究顯示此法應用於純服務環境亦同樣能有效的降低成本。 本研究起因於研究對象電力公司之客服中心面臨營運問題，包括過高的營運成本、人力配置不均以及人員流動率過高，另外還包含未妥善利用訊系統導致客服人員話務量增加與組織內部各單位資訊不同步造成資訊不準確等問題。為了解決這些問題，以客服中心之電話服務流程為主要研究範圍，採用精實方法之價值流圖(Value Stream Mapping, VSM)作為流程分析方法，剖析造成上述問題的原因，並基於精實原則(Principles of Lean)來思考，除了找出客服中心營運上的浪費之外，並針對個案公司所面臨的問題提出改善建議。 / Call center is an important unit in contemporary enterprise. As more and more innovative business model appears, enterprises use call center as a means to provide high quality services and explore more customers. Along with importing advanced information technology, there would be a drastic change in the process of customer service. It has become an essential issue to arrange customer service process efficiently, provide comfortable working environment, and promote customer satisfaction in the call center. The concept of the principles of lean concentrates on eliminating waste and focuses on enhancing valuable parts in business process. Lean principles were usually used in manufactory in the past to create smoothly seamless pull production. However, there are some researches show that using it in pure service environment will efficiently reduce costs as well. The objective of this study is to use principles of lean to eliminate wastes and find the potential problems in the phone call service process of call center in the case company. The value stream mapping is used to analyze and assess the process of information and material flows currently required in the phone call customer service process. First, we establish a current state map, then we refine it iteratively and build Kaizen burst map. Finally, based on the kaizen burst map we provide some advices for optimizing phone call process of customer service for the case company.

Notre thèse s’intéresse à la restructuration du service social d’une plate-forme téléphonique de santé – Santé Info. Au moment de l’étude le service social de ce centre de contact venait de faire l’objet d’une importante réorganisation, qui s’est concrétisée par la création d’une équipe de télé-opérateurs spécialisés. Dans ce contexte de changement organisationnel, notre travail vise à comprendre les incidences du développement de l’activité sur les pratiques situées des acteurs et saisir comment celles-ci nourrissent ce développement en retour. Nos réflexions autour de cette question sont inspirées par les théories de l’activité ainsi que les courants de la cognition et de l’action située. Nous nous appuyons sur la notion de perspective professionnelle et proposons la notion de saillance afin de rendre compte du développement de l’activité en pratique. Nous avons conduit une enquête ethnographique de près de deux ans au sein de cette organisation. Le dispositif méthodologique que nous avons mis en œuvre privilégie l’observation in situ des pratiques. La stratégie observationnelle choisie était celle du suivi, celui i) des acteurs, ii) des affaires c’est-à-dire des demandes traitées par plusieurs intervenants et iii) des situations de communication collective (formations, réunions d’équipe). Nous avons par ailleurs mobilisé la méthode de l’autoconfrontation à partir d’enregistrements audiovisuels. Nos résultats mettent en évidence deux axes de développement contradictoires de l’organisation, à savoir, d’une part, une tendance à l’intégration aux services des mutuelles fondatrices et une tendance à l’autonomisation de Santé Info en tant que prestataire de service externe. D’autre part, la restructuration du service social peut être appréhendée comme actualisant une contradiction sous-jacente au système d’activité, celle entre travail d’information (informer) et conseil (conseiller). Nous analysons les pratiques de prise et de construction de configurations d’indices informationnels des professionnels que nous qualifions de saillances. Nos analyses mettent en évidence que connaître son travail revient à connaître le travail des autres c’est-à-dire à anticiper leurs contraintes, leurs éventuelles difficultés, à reconnaître et tenir compte des impératifs auxquels ils doivent faire face (temporels et de production). La restructuration du service social de Santé Info au travers de la création d’une équipe spécialisée de téléconseillers – le pôle social - contribue à transformer ces pratiques. Par ailleurs, les nouvelles exigences que cette restructuration fait peser sur les professionnels participent de la redéfinition des enjeux de leurs actions en situation. En d’autres termes connaître le travail d’autrui est une ressource pour le collectif mais aussi pour le sujet. Les contributions de ce travail de thèse se situe à trois niveaux : théorique, méthodologique et disciplinaire. L’apport théorique réside dans la recherche d’une articulation entre une analyse orientée par les théories de l’activité et les approches situées de la cognition et de l’action. Ces questions nourrissent des enjeux méthodologiques pour notre travail, qui constituent le second apport de notre recherche. Il s’agit également de construire un dispositif d’observation et de collecte systématique de données dans un environnement professionnel exigeant où le travail est, à la fois, intellectuel et relationnel, la coopération latente et différée, et qui s’étayent sur une infrastructure sociotechnique complexe. Du point de vue de la psychologie du travail, notre étude ouvre à une réflexion autour des compétences collectives et du bien-être au travail. / Our research deals with the organizational change within Health Info, the inbound call center for a number of mutual health insurance companies. Health Info provides users with health information and referral for the purpose of helping them to make better choices in healthcare and to reduce their expenses. In order to improve the service delivered to the clients of the mutual insurance companies, call operators’ activity was redesigned. Some of the most experienced call center agents formed a new team (referred as the « social team »), which had the responsibility to process the information requests of users in need of financial support, different kind of allowances, within outbound calls. In this context, the goals of this doctoral thesis is to understand this organizational change as a development, that of Health Info’ collective activity but also that of the local individual practices. We build upon three approaches to the study of context - activity theory, situated action and situated cognition. Our research is based on a two years ethnographic study. We have used various data collection techniques. Those included ethnographic observation, video recordings of naturally occurring situations as well as interviews with staff members. We systematically attended and video recorded the regular staff meeting of the « social team ». We also shadowed staff members and followed specific « client cases » as first identified by call operators, then processed by the members of the « social team » and eventually transferred for further analysis to the social worker. Our results highlight several contradictions underlying Health Info’ current development. On one hand, Health Info is an additional service designed to fit within the those already existing of the mutual insurance companies. But it is also an autonomous service provider whose clients are the mutual companies. On the other hand, the « social team » reveals another contradiction between different work perspectives, namely that of informing users and helping them or providing them with support. Furthermore, our study underlines the practical dimensions of Health Info’ restructuring. The analysis of situated practices shows that works perspectives are grounded on salient configurations which are both emergent in situ and collectively elaborated cultural resources. The contributions of this doctoral thesis are to address some of the a) methodological and b) conceptual challenges arising from the use of activity theory as a theoretical framework in empirical studies, c) triggers off some interesting considerations on collective competencies and on well-being in the workplace.