Peter & Turdy Johnson-Lenz [] suggest that today's approach to groupware is mechanistic, i.e. based upon some social theory of human interaction or upon a task-oriented approach that can be modelled by a machine. At the other extreme is groupware as context, based on the social theory that human systems are self-organising and arise out of the unrestricted interaction of autonomous individuals. While systems should nourish conversation and stimulate interaction amongst group participants, they should not directly regulate the actual meeting process. Instead, the technology should be supple enough to allow the group itself to define its own,perhaps changing, conventions, structures and constraints.
The post-mechanistic approach considers the model of group behaviour as not rigidly codified into the system but evolves with the group.