Joint Cognitive Systems

Patterns in Multi-Threaded Work 107

partially satisfied simultan eously. An adequate analysis of JCSs at work requires

explicit description of the interacting goals, how they create tradeoffs and

dilemmas, and how the se are reso lved in practice ( Woods e t al., 1994).

Some dilemmas are embedded in the very nature of technical work in that field

of practice . Thes e include technic al dilemmas that arise from demands inherent in

the process to be managed and controlled. For example, s ome situations demand

that anesthesiologists attempt to keep blood pressure both high and low to meet

different goals on the patient’s cardiac system. For an anesthetized cardiac patient,

a high blood pressure works to push blood through the coronary arteries and

im