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Coordination Neglect: How Lay Theories of Organizing Complicate Coordination in Organizations
Abstract
We argue that organizations often fail to organize effectively because individuals have lay theories about organizing that lead to coordination neglect. We unpack the notion of coordination neglect and describe specific cognitive phenomena that underlie it. To solve the coordination problem, organizations must divide a task and then integrate the components. Individuals display shortcomings that may create problems at both stages. First, lay theories often focus more on division of labor than on integration. We discuss evidence that individuals display partition focus (i.e. they focus on partitioning the task more than on integration) and component focus (i.e. they tend to focus on single components of a tightly interrelated set of capabilities, particularly by investing to create highly specialized components). Second, when individuals attempt to integrate components of a task, they often fail to use a key mechanism for integration: ongoing communication. Individuals exhibit inadequate communication because the ‘curse of knowledge’ makes it difficult to take the perspective of another and communicate effectively. More importantly, because specialists find it especially difficult to communicate with specialists in other areas, the general problem of communication will often be compounded by insufficient translation.
... To examine the dynamics of team coordination, we embed this game in a repeated framework with recurring interactions between team members. Following the literature on coordination in organizations (e.g., Aggarwal et al., 2011;Cyert and March, 1963;Heath and Staudenmeyer, 2000;March and Simon, 1958), we only require team members to be boundedly rational. They may have limited foresight and capability to process information, and may occasionally experiment or make mistakes. ...
... Following a long line of organizational and strategy literature (e.g., Aggarwal et al., 2011;Cyert and March, 1963;Heath and Staudenmeyer, 2000;March and Simon, 1958;Williamson, 1985), we allow for agents that are boundedly rational. However, the number of ways agents' rationality may be bounded is very large (e.g., Stango and Zinman, 2020), and there is no agreed upon model of belief formation in coordination games (Faillo et al., 2017). ...
... Examining models that do not take the team and the communication routines as given, but instead examine team formation and choice of routines would also be interesting. The importance of communication routines for efficient team coordination may be one explanation of why interorganizational collaborations -an example of team formation which is often characterized by both high task interdependence and lack of communication routines -are often fraught with coordination failures (e.g., Heath and Staudenmeyer, 2000;Hoopes and Postrel, 1999;Zollo et al., 2002). ...
Team collaborations in which each member’s output is critical to the overall success present organizations with difficult coordination problems. Despite the need for communication in such situations, team members often fail to share essential information. To examine why team communication and coordination fail, we develop a formal model with boundedly rational team members that links team size with the incentives to coordinate and the costs of communication. We show that even very small communication costs are enough to offset the expected individual benefit of sharing information with the team. Absent effective routines, the least efficient outcome is the most likely in the short and long run. Further, simulations lend support to a number of organizational routines and responses: mandating communication improves coordination and more so if the mandate recurs periodically. Increasing the incentives to coordinate is more important than subsidizing communication costs, which often adds little value unless the subsidies cover the costs completely. The results match a broad range of findings from the experimental and organizational literature, help to explain and provide a theoretical foundation for why team collaborations involving several organizational units often fail, and suggest new tests for promising communication routines.
... On the one hand, these interdependencies allow exogenous change to have ripple effects on the viability of systemic processes even when the change's immediate impact is confined to specialized tasks. On the other hand, understanding these interdependencies well enough to foresee such ripple effects is difficult: making sense of complex interdependencies is a cognitive challenge to begin with, and the division of labor within organizations can reinforce this difficulty by creating an illusion of separability across tasks (Heath and Staudenmayer, 2000;Valentine, 2018). ...
... While specialization into roles can help individuals learn the interdependencies between their and others' tasks (Bechky, 2006;Kremser and Blagoev, 2021), their perception is often incomplete. Specialization can lead individuals to hold separate, incomplete representations of their organization's overall task environment (Valentine and Edmondson, 2015;Nigam, Huising, and Golden, 2016;DiBenigno, 2018;Sackett and Cummings, 2018), generating an illusion of separability, as individuals make sense of their own work in isolation and overlook interdependencies with others (Heath and Staudenmayer, 2000). As a result, organizational members may treat stimuli around them as relevant only to their own tasks in isolation (Dearborn and Simon, 1958;Valentine, 2018). ...
I develop and test a theory that explains why organizations may struggle to adapt in the face of change even when their members are aware of change, are motivated to adapt, and have the resources to do so. I build on complex-systems theory, which posits that organizations face a hierarchy of interdependent problems: they must choose how to fulfill different specialized tasks and choose processes to integrate the outputs of these tasks. Because these choices are interdependent, environmental change that directly affects only a few tasks in isolation can indirectly affect the viability of major organizational processes. Recognizing these ripple effects is difficult, however: understanding complex interdependencies is challenging for decision makers, and the division of labor within organizations can create an illusion of separability between tasks. As a result, organizations may respond to such change by engaging in “modular search” for new ways to fulfill specialized tasks, but they may fail to engage in “systemic search” for new processes integrating the outputs of specialized tasks unless they can rely on information-processing structures that help decision makers better understand interdependencies among choices. I test my theory by applying sequence analysis methods to micro-level behavioral data on competitive video gaming (esports) teams. Qualitative fieldwork and an online experiment provide additional evidence of my proposed mechanisms.
... The inadequate coordination among actors in the watershed is a case of coordination neglect attributable to the theoretical concepts of partition focus and component focus whereby; in partition focus concept, the actors tend to be more concerned with the process of partitioned function than with the process of integration and in component focus, the actors tend to concentrate on the individual component while evaluating issues or formulating solutions rather than the entire system (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). This means that due to decentralization, actors in the watershed tend to function within their institutional mandates and jurisdiction, and they concentrate on the tasks themselvesespecially the division of responsibilitiesrather than the entire system (Mercado, 2018). ...
... Another critical cause of coordination neglect in the Migori River watershed governance is inadequate communication, whereby the actors lack sufficient opportunities for interactions (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000 as cited by Okok, 2015). In the study area, the barriers to effective communication among actors could be related to the lack of a proper forum for effective coordination, confusion about which entity to cooperate with, and a sluggish willingness to collaborate because of long and inefficient bureaucratic processes. ...
A research gap exists in the understanding of multi-level governance for watersheds in Kenya under the current devolved framework. This paper uses Migori River watershed as a case study to elaborate on the institutional arrangement in the management of the watershed and how it influences the nature and level of coordination among the actors involved. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews and content analysis of secondary data. The target institutions were selected based on existing policy and legal frameworks, press releases, and published administrative reports. Respondents for the semi-structured interviews were identified through purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The qualitative data was then analyzed through content analysis. After analysis on the nature of coordination, a panel of experts rated each coordination dimension based on a comparison between the findings and the baseline indicators The results on the structure and roles of institutions revealed adequate representation of the river basin management actors, but the associations among actors are weak due to overlapping mandates, and gaps in the administration processes of river basin management programs. Coordination exists, but it is not all-encompassing; whereas efforts to collaborate were noted, they were inconsistent and tended to be on a per-need basis due to lack of a common forum for stakeholder interactions and a common management plan for a clear vision and direction of actors’ activities. There is unclear delineation of roles in the institutional structure and thus causing institutional complexity which further undermined coordination. To address the coordination gaps, the paper recommends the creation of a management council for the watershed to provide a central forum for the stakeholders’ interaction, with a designated lead agency that organizes and facilitates meetings, oversees communications, and manages any emerging challenges, gaps and opportunities in collective actions.
... Task ownership, which makes task allocation more effective, refers to individuals believing that they are accountable for the outcome of the tasks, both in terms of quality and timeliness. The integration of efforts involves mapping a set of rewards to organizational agents to incentivize them to cooperate in accomplishing specific tasks 1 (Gulati et al. 2005;Heath and Staudenmayer 2000). There is significant research on conceptualizing, formulating, and identifying solutions to these problems of organizing (refer to Puranam 2018 for a concise review). ...
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets based on blockchain technology that are increasingly being used for various applications in organizations. Given NFTs’ unique technological features, we posit that traditional, centralized organizations can adopt them to introduce novel solutions to the fundamental problems of organizing, namely, division of labor and integration of efforts. We examine the prospects and promises of NFT-enabled organization design and suggest how organizations can navigate its potential hurdles. We discuss critical boundary conditions for the deployment of NFTs in organization design and conclude by articulating how our Point of View article contributes to scholarship on blockchain technology and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
... The integration of efforts involves mapping a set of rewards to organizational agents to incite them to cooperate in accomplishing specific tasks 3 (Gulati et al., 2005;Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). There is significant research on conceptualizing, formulating, and identifying solutions to these problems of organizing (refer to Puranam 2018 for a concise review). ...
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets based on blockchain technology that are increasingly being used for various applications in organizations. Given their unique technological features, we posit that organizations can adopt NFTs to introduce novel solutions to the fundamental problems of organizing, namely, division of labor and integration of efforts. Adopting a design-centric perspective, we discuss the prospects and promises of NFT-enabled organization design and highlight potential hurdles along the way.
... There are multiple reasons why change bias may have occurred in research. One reason may be that research is often prey to the same biases people have in practice (similar to coordination neglect, where practitioners neglect to coordinate and researchers neglect to research coordination; Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). The change bias we have revealed in the literature seems to mirror actual base rates in human behavior (see Table 6 for studies showing the low base rate of lower change-oriented strategies in practice). ...
... There are multiple reasons why change bias may have occurred in research. One reason may be that research is often prey to the same biases people have in practice (similar to coordination neglect, where practitioners neglect to coordinate and researchers neglect to research coordination; Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). The change bias we have revealed in the literature seems to mirror actual base rates in human behavior (see Table 6 for studies showing the low base rate of lower change-oriented strategies in practice). ...
... (Howard, 2019;Lourenco and Baird, 2020). It affects businesspeople, who may overestimate the level of knowledge widely held within a firm about that firm's organizational structure, impairing intra-firm coordination (Heath and Staudenmayer, 2000). Accountants and financial regulators may suffer CoK effects by overestimating knowledge relevant to predicting outcomes (Kennedy, 1995). ...
Purpose: Could the curse of knowledge influence how antagonized we are towards political outgroups? Do we assume others know what we know but still disagree with us? This research investigates how the curse of knowledge may affect us politically, i.e., be a cause of political polarization.
Background: Research on the curse of knowledge has shown that even when people are incentivized to act as if others do not know what they know, they are still influenced by the knowledge they have.
Methods: This study consists of five studies consisting of both experimental and non-experimental and within- and between-subjects survey designs. Each study collected samples of 152–1,048.
Results: Partisans on both sides overestimate the extent to which stories from their news sources were familiar to contrapartisans. Introducing novel, unknown facts to support their political opinion made participants rate political outgroup members more negatively. In an experimental design, there was no difference in judging an opponent who did not know the same issue-relevant facts and someone who did know the same facts. However, when asked to compare those who know to those who do not, participants judged those who do not know more favorably, and their ratings of all issue-opponents were closer to those issue-opponents who shared the same knowledge. In a debiasing experiment, those who received an epistemological treatment judged someone who disagreed more favorably.
Conclusion: This research provides evidence that the curse of knowledge may be a contributing cause of affective political polarization.
... In addition to promoting high-quality interprofessional cooperation, leadership is crucial in ensuring effective teamwork [45]. Teamwork problems in healthcare are often the result of a lack of coordination [46,47]. Moreover, teamwork effectiveness is likely to be impacted by psychological and cultural issues, such as interpersonal conflict, which can stimulate or impede communication within healthcare teams [41]. ...
Background: There is compelling evidence to suggest that leadership behaviour and teamwork are critical success factors in healthcare organisations facing increasingly complex demands and limited resources. Effective teamwork is essential to deliver high-quality care, requiring integrating different professionals in the healthcare sector. Leaders play a significant role in facilitating teamwork by managing conflicts and promoting cooperation among team members. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of leadership in supporting the mental health and well-being of team members. Methods: A cross-lagged research design was used to examine the relationship between mental health-specific (MHS) leadership and teamwork. Participants were 118 healthcare professionals (76.3% female; 44.9% aged between 45 and 54 years old). Results: A serial mediation model was confirmed, showing an indirect effect of mental health leadership on teamwork through interpersonal conflict and cooperation. Conclusions: Effective (MHS) leadership can positively impact the teamwork of healthcare professionals, particularly during times of crisis.
... H2a: Ex-post trust mainly derives from the renewal of ex-post trust and the foundation of emotional connections, which are in turn characterized by cognitively based trust and emotionally based trust. Ex-post trust encourages the transparent and intensive exchange of information; it helps reduce information asymmetry, and with it, contract parties learn how to coordinate among organizational interfaces [48]. At the same time, ex-post trust is generated and maintained through long-term and regular communication reciprocity, which is symbolic of inter-organizational cooperation and encourages all parties to coordinate interests and commit to common goals; in this way, it reduces the occurrence of OB. ...
The importance of project governance in curbing opportunistic behavior (OB) has been clearly established in the project literature. Although contract governance and trust are considered critical factors that explain project governance, there is a lack of understanding regarding their interplay at various stages of project development. The current study takes a dynamic perspective and breaks down contract governance into contract completeness (CC) and contract enforcement (CE), while differentiating ex-ante trust from ex-post trust. As such, the current study takes a dynamic perspective and the Grossman-Hart-Moore (GHM) model, which aims to investigate how each of the two facets of contract governance and trust intertwine during the management of construction projects as well as their effects on OB. We undertook a questionnaire survey of individuals involved in 342 construction projects in China, and our research results show that, first of all, governance mechanisms at different stages have different inhibitory effects on OB. Taking contract-signing as the boundary, the governance effect of a contract is gradually enhanced, while the governance effect of trust is gradually reduced. Second, ex-ante trust is more important than ex-post trust: the former moderates not only the relationship between CE and OB, but also the influence of CC on OB. Finally, a contract that is overly complete is not conducive to precluding OB, as such completeness can give the contract parties a sense of security that is guaranteed. The current study not only garners insights into project governance research but also provides implications for architectural practitioners in deploying resources that relate to governance mechanisms.
... Coordination success equates to a higher degree of integration (Puranam et al. 2012), which is necessary to sustain an organization (Choi and Chandler 2015). However, public organizations are not designed for ultimate coordination (Chandler 1962;Perrow 1967;Hickson et al. 1969;Thompson 1967), nor can one assume that activities must be coordinated in organizations regardless of their design (Faraj and Xiao 2006;Heath and Staudenmayer 2000;Ballard and Seibold 2003;Gulati et al. 2012). Given that the goal of public sector programmes and policies is to create public value (Moore 1995;Try and Radnor 2007), vertical coordination is needed to bridge public programs and policies with their implementation. ...
Involving several levels ranging from policy-making to service delivery, the coordination of regional public organizations is a complex matter. This paper explores how relational preconditions affect regional public organizations' coordination activities and outcomes. A model is developed that links relational preconditions to coordination outcomes. Even though the coordination mechanisms and instruments are used, the coordination outcome might vary based on the individuals and the relationships among individuals. This study suggests that the use of coordination mechanisms and in turn coordination outcome, is affected by the individuals' personal beliefs and personal relationships as well as trust in the vertical organization.
... What tasks can be assigned to -or left up to -the community? What coordination mechanisms can be applied to ensure there is overall coherence, or at least that coordination is not neglected (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000), conflicts do not arise, or the work does not become fragmented? Another relevant direction for future research would be to investigate how both the optimal division of labour between professional responders and the affected community and the communication strategy adopted are linked to the cultural context. ...
A common operational picture is often seen as a valuable contribution to a networked response to crises and emergencies. The constituent parts of the network maintain and share their own picture of the emergency situation as part of the common operational picture, and in so doing they continually and iteratively frame, elaborate, question and reframe the situation.
This thesis sets out to look at three areas in which there are knowledge gaps:
> What patterns of involvement can be discerned in organisational networks that respond to emergencies?
> How can the communication strategy of a collaboration of emergency response organisations make a difference to an emergency’s overall impact on the community?
> How does maintaining a common operational picture during an emergency response contribute to collaborative sensemaking between those at the front line and those in more remote parts of the response network?
A key finding from the study is that the common operational picture can be seen as a two-way, semi-transparent mirror between the emergency situation and the emergency response network, providing a coherent view on both. A second important finding is that, to be effective, this view needs to be both multi-faceted and multi-level. It needs to be multi-faceted in that it is made up of the different perspectives that the collaborating teams and organisations have on the emergency situation. These different perspectives need to be available to all teams and organisations to help with the continuous and cyclical collaborative sensemaking process of framing, questioning and reframing the emergency. The common operational picture needs to be multi-level in that it is used to share not only factual information but also higher levels of knowledge. Significant effort is required to provide a multi-faceted and multi-level common operational picture that is both up to date and sufficiently rich in content; it may therefore not always be possible to codify complex and rapidly evolving situations and to share this codified perspective with others in the network in real time.
The common operational picture provides a solid basis for command and control throughout the organisational emergency response network, as it reflects both the goals and interests of the organisations involved and the response measures. In this way, it can easily be used to monitor the progress of the response and to ensure that all interests are properly weighed against each other. Because the common operational picture also provides a view on the emergency response organisation itself, it also provides a basis for continuously shaping the response network.
... Relatedly, 1 In the economics literature, the theory of the firm views coordination problems as one of two key organization hurdles (the other being the much more studied "agency problem"; Milgrom and Roberts, 1992). It has been suggested that the coordination problem of organizations is inherently due to people's cognitive limitations, in that individuals often lack a common understanding of the tasks they must integrate and coordinate upon (e.g., Heath and Staudenmayer, 2000). This line of research implies that individuals come to develop a different understanding of their tasks as a result of a different focus or background; different viewpoints may in turn entail different solutions to an identical or similar task (Arrow, 1974;Kreps, 1990;Okhuysen and Bechky, 2009;Kets and Sandroni, 2021). 2 The class of coordination problems contains any situation in which there exist multiple ways players may "match" their behavior for mutual benefit. ...
We investigate how strategic behavior is affected by the set of notions (frames) used when thinking about the game. In our games, the action set consists of visual objects: each player must privately choose one, trying to match the counterpart’s choice. We propose a model where different player-types are aware of different attributes of the action set (hence, different frames). One of the novelties is an epistemic structure that allows players to think about new frames, after initial unawareness of some attributes. To test the model, our experimental design brings about multiple frames by varying subjects’ awareness of several attributes.
... In open-source software development, a user experience (UX) engineer who contributes to customer database design likely understands how proposed modifications affect the quality of UX features but may have only a partial understanding of how they affect the database's processing speed. More generally, our conceptualization builds on the well-established idea that the decision makers base their choices upon reduced representations of reality and often overlook the impact of their decisions on areas in which they are not experts (Dearborn et al. 1958, Heath and Staudenmayer 2000, Martignoni et al. 2016. ...
Innovation often involves processes of collaborative search among individuals who are experts in some domains of a problem
but not others. We develop an agent-based simulation to show when and why organizations can improve the outcomes of collaborative search by allowing experts and non-experts to share control over the different domains of a search problem. Shared control can improve search by allowing individuals to foster decisions in domains outside of their expertise which produce positive ramifications in their own domain of expertise. This allows experts to generate improvements in domains which they understand, but also helps experts of other domains explore alternatives which they otherwise would not. We
show that the benefits of shared control materialize differently in the presence or absence of organizational hierarchy.
... The teamwork and communication challenges in health care manifest the problem of coordination neglect in organizational systems. 13 Interventions and reforms vary, but frequently include efforts to improve the coordination of care delivery. 14 Consequently, research on how to improve team-work and streamline the siloed approach to produce a more coordinated system is needed in the perioperative environment. ...
Without the appropriate administrative structure, even well-thought-out strategic plans or detailed process improvement initiatives will fail. Developing a strong foundation for governance and leadership is a critical element of any high-functioning organization, and applies just as well in the perioperative setting.
Yet perioperative patient care teams and operating room management structures can be very complex, due to relationships both within the operating room (OR) and between the OR and other departments. Frequently, reliable management of the perioperative process is lacking.
We aim to provide an overview of the structural and elemental components and roles of perioperative management teams and the administrative structure that guides them, since effective perioperative care teams and OR leaders are of paramount importance for any successful hospital.
... The resulting partitioning creates efficiencies (Malone et al. 1999), but it also introduces biases. One of them is a "component focus" (Heath and Staudenmayer 2000), namely a tendency by project members to focus on individual tasks to the detriment of the boundaries between them (Von Hippel 1988). In practice, this creates a coordination problem that will compromise performance unless "the collective set of interdependent tasks … is integrated" (Okhuysen and Bechky 2009, p. 463). 2 The magnitude of a given project's coordination problem depends on its particular characteristics. ...
Many new products and processes originate from projects. In two studies, the authors consider how a project’s organizational design, as captured by its particular task configuration, impacts its ability to promote product and process innovation. Study 1 involves an analysis of panel data spanning 2001 through 2015 and involving 429 business-to-business (B2B) projects in the construction industry. The authors test hypotheses regarding the role of project size, subcontractor diversity, and task configuration on product and process innovation. Their empirical tests show a pattern of nuanced effects on the two innovation types. A project’s task configuration, as reflected in the general contractor’s participation in project tasks, plays a coordination role that helps unlock a positive effect of project size on product innovation. At the same time, such participation impedes process innovation due to subcontractor concerns about information leakage. Study 2 bolsters the first study through a survey of 230 subcontractors in the U.S. construction industry to show how leakage concerns arise, their outcomes, and how they are mitigated. The authors also bolster their central study through 1) interviews with professional construction managers and 2) survey evidence across five different industries. They draw on their findings to develop implications for innovation management, B2B marketing, and marketing organization.
... The dynamic nature of coordination becomes even more evident in creative group coordination because creativity seems to require a sense of independence from rules, restrictions, and even close relationships (Perry- Smith & Shalley, 2003) as creative work seems to happen outside the "ordinary grooves of thought and action" (Jevons, 1877; cited by Becker, 1995). On the one hand coordination of creative groups requires that group members enable the "fitting together" of activities (Argote, 1982) and the "organizing of individuals so that their actions are aligned" (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000) within an agreed upon "problem domain" (Bailetti, Caooahan, & DiPietro, 1994), the sum of these activities being labelled by Okhuysen and Bechky (2009) as "integration". On the other hand coordination also requires allowing for independent work, which potentially enables "mis-fitting" interactions that can "mis-align actions" or push the group into unfamiliar "problem domains", Harrison & Rouse (2014) labelling these countervailing interactions "de-integration". ...
Being interested in elaborating theory on coordination in creative group work, the author conducted an inductive qualitative study using grounded theory approaches. Inductive qualitative research is appropriate when the research question focuses on developing theory, especially theory about process. The author thus conducted two case studies, allowing for an in-depth qualitative investigation of the coordination process.
... The dynamic nature of coordination becomes even more evident in creative group coordination because creativity seems to require a sense of independence from rules, restrictions, and even close relationships (Perry- Smith & Shalley, 2003) as creative work seems to happen outside the "ordinary grooves of thought and action" (Jevons, 1877; cited by Becker, 1995). On the one hand coordination of creative groups requires that group members enable the "fitting together" of activities (Argote, 1982) and the "organizing of individuals so that their actions are aligned" (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000) within an agreed upon "problem domain" (Bailetti, Caooahan, & DiPietro, 1994), the sum of these activities being labelled by Okhuysen and Bechky (2009) as "integration". On the other hand coordination also requires allowing for independent work, which potentially enables "mis-fitting" interactions that can "mis-align actions" or push the group into unfamiliar "problem domains", Harrison & Rouse (2014) labelling these countervailing interactions "de-integration". ...
... The dynamic nature of coordination becomes even more evident in creative group coordination because creativity seems to require a sense of independence from rules, restrictions, and even close relationships (Perry- Smith & Shalley, 2003) as creative work seems to happen outside the "ordinary grooves of thought and action" (Jevons, 1877; cited by Becker, 1995). On the one hand coordination of creative groups requires that group members enable the "fitting together" of activities (Argote, 1982) and the "organizing of individuals so that their actions are aligned" (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000) within an agreed upon "problem domain" (Bailetti, Caooahan, & DiPietro, 1994), the sum of these activities being labelled by Okhuysen and Bechky (2009) as "integration". On the other hand coordination also requires allowing for independent work, which potentially enables "mis-fitting" interactions that can "mis-align actions" or push the group into unfamiliar "problem domains", Harrison & Rouse (2014) labelling these countervailing interactions "de-integration". ...
The shooting of a film involves coordination of crew members within emerging sub-teams. The author will first describe the scene shooting process, including the rehearsal process taking place just before the actual shooting, highlighting the way crew members coordinate through formal structures. The author will next discuss how a creative team subsequently turns into uncoordinated methods—in the form of informal practices—and more specifically the way an initial sub-team is formed and then develops into a revised sub-team with a different member formation and new roles and responsibilities for existing members, in order to manage job interdependencies and emerging issues, explaining how the dynamic interplay between formal coordination structures and informal coordination practices evolves and the team developmental process unfolds, before finally describing how the revised sub-team dismantles in order for the same process to develop during the shooting of the scenes to follow, emphasizing a cyclical team coordination process.
... Only a handful of systematic studies consider this issue, most focusing on integration rather than separation. Heath and Staudenmayer (2000) describe a study where they asked MBA students to assemble a Lego man to match a model. Students could choose how to divide up the work, for example, having one person assemble the torso, and another person the arms. ...
... That requires cross-functional experts to draw on and contribute their unique knowledge to a collective problem, and to overcome differences with other experts whose knowledge is deeply rooted in the norms, language, and beliefs of a different domain (Dougherty, 1992). This is challenging because, while groups tend to be effective at breaking tasks down into subparts and completing those components, they are less effective at considering how their work relates to others and coordinating (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). Thus, experts may not see their knowledge as relevant to other collaborators. ...
To manage knowledge differences, existing research has documented two sets of practices: traversing and transcending knowledge boundaries. What research has yet to explore, however, is the dynamics through which traversing or transcending practices emerge in response to a particular problem situation. Using a qualitative, inductive study of the problem episodes encountered by groups of experts working on a large-scale project to build the safety system for a nuclear power plant, we observed that the emergence of traversing or transcending depended on how experts interpreted problems and initiated dialogues around specific problems. Our work provides insight into the condition through which knowledge integration trajectories may emerge.
... In the words of Payan (2007, p. 228) "coordinative behavior is not prima facie evidence that there is also a cooperative orientation between organizations". Clearly, in managing interorganizational relationships, firms need to both agree to cooperate and align their interests as well to effectively align and coordinate their actions to achieve mutual goals (Camerer & Knez, 1996, 1997Foss, 2001;Gulati et al., 2012;Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000;Høgevold et al., 2019). If coordination (i.e. ...
Purpose
To test a research model consisting of hypothesized relationships within and between the domains of action and social alignment based on buyer and seller perspectives in B2B relationships.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Based on two cross-industrial samples of 218 buyer B2B relationships and 208 seller B2B relationships in Taiwan.
Findings
Findings relate to the dual facets of the domain of membership theory. Cooperation represents more likely intangible and subjective interests of alignment, and coordination represents more likely tangible and objective actions of alignment, in buyer and seller B2B relationships.
Research limitations/Implications
Validates a research model of action and social alignment in the context of buyer and seller B2B relationships. Contributes to comparing buyer and seller perspectives in relation to existing theory and previous studies on quality constructs in B2B relationships. Offers suggestions for further research.
Managerial Implications
Practitioners in B2B settings need to focus on joint actions as well as joint interests, and vice versa, as the economic and non-economic satisfaction of a business relationship complement each other.
Originality/Value
Validates the research model of action and social alignment in the context of buyer and seller B2B relationships. Provides multiple contributions to existing theory and previous studies of relationship quality based on buyer and seller perspectives in B2B settings.
... While these mechanisms provide significant value to organisations, such as increased efficiency under normal operations and creation of more manageable units of work, they simultaneously lead to challenges related to managing complexity. In situations where more effort is devoted to dividing areas of responsibility between multiple actors and departments than to coordinating the different units, problems may emerge when responsibilities fall between the cracks (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). Moreover, when the goals or time perspectives of different units or organisations are not aligned, there is a risk of individual actors working in ways that are collectively detrimental, or even at cross purpose (e.g. ...
Resilience is defined as “the intrinsic ability of a system to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions” (Woods & Hollnagel, 2006, p. xxxvi). If there was ever an industry that has demonstrated this ability, it is the aviation industry. The industry has continually demonstrated the ability to adjust and sustain operations after unexpected events, and has improved both reliability and safety in the midst of increasing complexity of the aircraft, economic challenges, and aviation systems that are dependent on a range of different organizations to succeed (Høyland & Aase, 2008). It has been proposed that resilience is a characteristic of system performance, not the system itself (Hollnagel, 2011), and therefore it is fitting to examine the aspects of aviation that enable it to demonstrate resilient performance. This chapter presents a discussion of resilient performance in aviation, including what resilient performance looks like in aviation, how it is currently achieved, and methods to further advance resilient performance in the future.
... HPHR practices shape individuals' perceptions of what the organization is like in terms of its goals and the appropriate means of goal attainment (i.e., psychological climate, Reichers & Schneider, 1990) and the nature of the relationship between employer and employee (i.e., psychological contract, Ostroff & Bowen, 2000). The effects of HPHR practices on employee perceptions result in organizational performance to the extent that they solve what Heath and Staudenmayer (2000) refer to as the "agency problem." That is, HPHR practices enable performance when they align individual and organizational goals and motivate individuals to behave in a manner consistent with organizational goals. ...
Prior research in strategic human resource management has consistently shown a positive relationship between high performance human resource (HPHR) practices and organizational performance. However, this research has left the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms underlying this relationship both largely unexplored. I argue that the mechanisms previously proposed (employee skills, commitment, and effort) are necessary and sufficient only when one makes overly restrictive assumptions about employees (effort averse), work (routine and decomposable), and organizational performance (equal to the sum of individual performances). When these assumptions are relaxed, collective sensemaking and coordination become equally critical sources of high performance. In theorizing the HPHR practice---organizational performance relationship I assert that HPHR practices are sensegiving structures by which managers attempt to influence employee sensemaking and behavior. HPHR practices specifically define both the employment relationship and work practice. In defining the employment relationship, HPHR practices signal a strong and long-term investment in employees that engenders employee commitment and discretionary effort. HPHR practices also define expectations for how employees are to carry out their work and to the extent these practice signal an interpersonally safe work climate, they increases the richness of interactions, the system-awareness of action, and the mindfulness of ongoing processes. I empirically test my hypotheses by surveying registered nurses and nurse managers in 99 acute-care hospital nursing units. In analyzing these data I found that HPHR practices are positively associated with respectful interaction, but not with commitment. The cognitive mechanisms were also positively associated with their corresponding behavioral mechanisms and the behavioral mechanisms influenced performance, but not entirely as predicted. Discretionary effort was positively associated with quality of care while mindful organizing was not. Mindful organizing, however, was associated with significantly lower levels of errors and falls, while discretionary effort actually increased medication errors and patient falls. This suggests that in dynamic and interdependent knowledge work, discretionary effort may actually compromise performance when it distracts employees from their core tasks. In sum, my study demonstrates a much more nuanced relationship between HPHR practices and performance than anticipated by the prior literature that depends on the work setting studied and the performance measure examined.
... Miscommunication of critical information about the patient status can lead to wrong treatments. In health care, coordination and teamwork have been ignored as central mechanisms to address complex work tasks (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). Therefore, teamwork is fundamental, as no individual can guarantee the best standard of care, or protection from potential errors, derived from challenging and sophisticated therapies (Rosen et al., 2019). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested health care professionals to the extreme. This study investigated the re-enchanting effect of shared leadership and passion at work in the context of public health care. This study advances on the Self-Determination Theory to suggest that shared leadership has a positive effect on resilience and performance through passion at work at different levels of analysis. A sample of 518 physicians working in Spanish public hospitals was used. The results showed that shared leadership was associated with team and individual outcomes via passion at work at team level, while no significant mediating effect was found for passion at work at the individual level. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed, limitations are considered, and future research directions are suggested. JEL CLASSIFICATION: M12, M54
... réunions, plénières, courriels, feuilles d'information). Les réunions de travail sont nécessaires à un partage d'informations institutionnelles ou professionnelles, mais suscitent parfois des interruptions du travail, des contraintes temporelles, un caractère formel, un cadre « rigide » à suivre qui limite les « écarts de conversations » pouvant véhiculer des éléments-clés d'information (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). Les interactions informelles permettent des transmissions d'informations libres, souples, ajustables, brèves, au travers d'une communication non régulée ou contrôlée. ...
... In open-source software development, a user experience (UX) engineer who contributes to customer database design likely understands how proposed modifications affect the quality of UX features but may have only a partial understanding of how they affect the database's processing speed. More generally, our conceptualization builds on the well-established idea that the decision makers base their choices upon reduced representations of reality and often overlook the impact of their decisions on areas in which they are not experts (Dearborn et al. 1958, Heath and Staudenmayer 2000, Martignoni et al. 2016. ...
... Comme le soulignent Wolbers, Deux grandes approches dans la littérature sur la coordination semblent avoir émergé pour analyser la manière dont différentes trajectoires d'action interdépendantes peuvent être synchronisées. La première met l'accent sur les logiques d'intégration et la structure centralisée de la coordination(Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000) pour assurer la cohésion et l'efficacité d'un ensemble d'actions et d'activités. La deuxième montre que la coordination peut aussi être d'une nature fragmentée(Faraj & Xiao, 2006;Schakel, Van Fenema, & Faraj, 2016 ;Wolbers et al., 2018), où chaque partie devient responsable de sa propre contribution et une pluralité d'interprétations coexistent, s'opposant ainsi à la perspective dominante et intégrative de la première approche. ...
L’accélération et l’intensification du rythme de l’innovation sont des traits majeurs des mutations contemporaines. Cette évolution de fond oblige les organisations à faire évoluer leurs modèles et dispositifs de gestion pour être résilientes dans le temps, en développant une capacité à renouveler fréquemment tout à la fois leurs compétences, produits, services et même modèles d’affaires. Or, tant d’un point de vue théorique que pratique, la manière dont se développe une telle capacité reste relativement peu comprise et étudiée, de même que les enjeux que sa mise en œuvre soulève.
Pour commencer à apporter des éléments de réponse à ces questions, cette thèse interroge les modalités d’émergence et d’organisation d’une forme d’organisation adaptée à un régime d’innovation intensive pour des populations de concepteurs expérimentés. C’est-à-dire pour des collectifs d’employés qui ont la particularité d’être à la fois très autonomes, très qualifiés et d’avoir le métier de concevoir et de créer des connaissances, des produits, des méthodes et des procédés nouveaux. Notre travail s’appuie pour cela sur une ethnographie de près de trois ans au sein de l’Institut de recherche d’Hydro-Québec (IREQ), qui a voulu développer des capacités d’innovation qui pourraient convenir à la nouvelle réalité de l’industrie de l’énergie en réponse à une multitude d’avancées technologiques et de l’apparition de nouveaux joueurs dans une industrie autrefois très centralisée.
Travaillant sur un certain nombre d’enjeux et de limites qui n’avaient pas ou peu été vraiment abordé par les auteurs en management de l’innovation à partir d’anomalies détectées sur le terrain, notre recherche nous a amenés à conceptualiser et à caractériser un nouveau modèle d’organisation pour l’innovation adapté à ces collectifs de concepteurs expérimentés que nous avons appelés la fonction d’innovation disséminée. Une forme d’organisation a la particularité de laisser beaucoup d’autonomie pour renouveler les voies d’explorations et les territoires d’actions aux individus et aux collectifs qui la compose.
Au-delà de ce travail de caractérisation, cette démarche nous a permis de dégager deux grands résultats principaux pour répondre aux deux grandes questions adressées par cette thèse : Comment faire émerger une fonction d’innovation disséminée ? Quels dispositifs pour coordonner et organiser de manière pérenne une fonction d’innovation disséminée ?
1) Notre étude permet premièrement de mieux saisir les enjeux de la dissémination d’une fonction d’innovation et de travailler sur les conditions initiales permettant son émergence, notamment en montrant les effets que des dispositifs comme la formation à des méthodes d’innovation peuvent induire. De plus, elle permet de préciser les tensions et les limites que peut rencontrer un tel modèle pouvant créer de l’anxiété et de l’ambigüité, demandant de repenser les leviers de coordination de l’organisation.
2) Dans un contexte de plus en plus fréquent où l’action collective nécessite une coordination du travail entre des domaines, très différents et sujets à évoluer dans le temps, avec des concepteurs expérimentés très autonomes au sein de leur champ d’expertise, la thèse permet de discuter des dispositifs et des rôles de gestion aux frontières permettant de dépasser le dilemme coordination-autonomie. Elle met notamment en évidence qu’une telle gestion aux frontières nécessite le déploiement de trois grandes fonctions - une fonction instrumentale, une fonction symbolique, une fonction politique.
The ability to organize is our most valuable social technology and the successful organizational design of an enterprise can increase its efficiency, effectiveness, and ability to adapt. Modern organizations operate in increasingly complex, dynamic, and global environments, which puts a premium on rapid adaptation. Compared to traditional organizations, modern organizations are flatter and more open to their environments. Their processes are more generative and interactive – actors themselves generate and coordinate solutions rather than follow hierarchically devised plans and directives. They also search outside their boundaries for resources wherever they may exist, and co-produce products and services with suppliers, customers, and partners, collaborating – both internally and externally – to learn and become more capable. In this volume, leading voices in the field of organization design demonstrate how a combination of agile processes, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms can power adaptive, sustainable, and healthy organizations.
Purpose
Strategy implementation is a critical component of firm performance and middle managers play a key role in the implementation process. This study was conducted to enhance the authors’ understanding of how middle managers influence strategy implementation (SI) effectiveness by investigating the impact of leadership and work team coordination.
Design/methodology/approach
A field study was conducted using interviews and survey data gathered from executive managers, middle managers and work team members within a large municipal organization undergoing a major strategic change.
Findings
Middle manager transformational and instrumental leadership have a direct positive impact on work team SI effectiveness. Additionally, middle manager transformational leadership has an indirect positive effect on work team SI effectiveness through coordination.
Practical implications
The study offers insights into managers and practitioners seeking to improve SI effectiveness by highlighting the importance of middle manager leadership development and the coordination of interdependent tasks within work teams.
Originality/value
The study provides valuable insight into an important but previously unstudied relationship between middle manager leadership and SI effectiveness. The work also helps bridge the chasm between leadership research and strategy research by linking leadership behavior to SI effectiveness – a key ingredient of firm performance.
As the COVID-19 pandemic is a multi-agency, long-lasting crisis with a complex information structure, the netcentric approach in the crisis operations would be expected to show its advantages. However, the implementation of netcentric operations seems to be met with challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research investigates the capability of organizations to adapt the netcentric approach, specifically in relation to information sharing in changing contexts. Thereby, the factors that influence inter-organizational information sharing within netcentric operations are examined. It can be concluded that in practice, re-applying the principles of netcentric operations to a different context can be challenging. More specifically, over time, the netcentric operations become ingrained in process, systems, and tools. While this codified and institutionalized netcentric approach supports the daily information exchange in emergencies, it also reduces the ability of organizations to adapt their approaches to new requirements dictated by changing circumstances.KeywordsNetcentric OperationsInformation SharingCrisis ResponseCOVID-19Information Systems
A synthesis of the relationship between alliances and defense spending is offered. From a policy goods perspective, the chapter discusses how members manage economic and political risks alongside defense and security risks to sovereignty given different geographic perspectives and capacities. The final portion focuses on NATO burden sharing research identifying gaps across research this book rectifies. It argues NATO burden sharing analysis must go beyond a discrete number, more symbolic than significant at operationalizing the concept of ‘credible defense contributor.’KeywordsDefense & security institutionsLiterature reviewRussia-Ukraine 2022
Purpose
This study aims to study research on franchise chain performance that has focused on franchisors’ efforts to align their interests with those of franchisees to address partner uncertainty. In contrast, the question of what a franchisor should do to address another type of uncertainty and task uncertainty remains understudied. The authors suggest a franchisor’s coordination as a key means of alleviating task uncertainty and ongoing support and plural form as two mechanisms of coordination. The authors also posit that aligned interests between the franchisor and the franchisee improve, whereas one-sided interest impedes, chain performance. Furthermore, providing greater ongoing support or deploying plural form amplifies the positive effect of aligned interests on chain performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors relied on secondary data to test the hypotheses. The authors collected data for analysis from Bond’s franchisee guide and Nation’s Restaurant News restaurant database. They also tested the framework by analyzing 17-year, panel data of 71 restaurant chains operating in the USA and Canada using system generalized method of moments.
Findings
Results show that aligning interests does improve chain performance, but that the positive effect is amplified when aligned interests are matched with a chain’s provision of ongoing support or use of plural form.
Originality/value
The authors explicate why it is not enough to address the misaligned interests or lack of coordination alone; a chain manager needs to address both of these problems together. In addition, the authors explicate how two franchisee coordination mechanisms – ongoing support and plural form – help a chain augment the beneficial effect of aligning interests on chain performance. Without solving the twin problems of misaligned interests and coordination simultaneously, a chain is unlikely to achieve its full performance potential.
Although building information modelling (BIM) is endowed with the potential for collaboration, the nature of the relationship between BIM application and collaboration has not been well-elaborated. This research classifies collaboration into the two dimensions of cooperation and coordination and empirically tests a model to understand not only the effect of BIM application on collaboration in construction projects but also the moderating effects of fairness perception and contract specificity. Using 296 samples from the Chinese construction industry, this research reveals the existence of a positive relationship between BIM application and collaboration. In addition, fairness perception weakens the relationship between BIM application and both collaboration dimensions of cooperation and coordination, while contract specificity strengthens the effect of BIM application on the coordination dimension only. These findings offer new insights through a nuanced understanding of the nature of the relationship between BIM application and collaboration, providing useful guidance for BIM application in the construction industry.
We investigate the search processes that dyads engage in when each human agent is responsible for one module of a complex task. Our laboratory experiment manipulates global vs. local incentives and low vs. high cross-modular interdependence. We find that dyads endogenously learn to coordinate their joint search efforts by engaging in parallel and sequential searches that, over time, give rise to coordinated repeated actions. Such collaborative search emerges despite complexity and misaligned incentives, and without a coordinating hierarchy.
Prior research on collaboration and creativity often assumes that individuals choose to collaborate to improve the quality of their output. Given the growing role of collaboration and autonomous teams in creative work, the validity of this assumption has important implications for organizations. We argue that in the presence of a collaboration credit premium—when the sum of fractional credit allocated to each collaborator exceeds 100%—individuals may choose to work together even when the project output is of low quality or when its prospects are diminished by collaborating. We test our argument on a sample of economists in academia using the norm of alphabetical ordering of authors’ surnames on academic articles as an instrument for selection into collaboration. This norm means that economists whose family name begins with a letter from the beginning of the alphabet receive systematically more credit for collaborative work than economists whose family name begins with a letter from the end of the alphabet. We show that, in the presence of a credit premium, individuals may choose to collaborate, even if this choice decreases output quality. Thus, collaboration can create a misalignment between the incentives of creative workers and the prospects of the project.
Structural secrecy refers to a systematic undermining of attempts to know and interpret situations in organisations, which significantly challenges their abilities to perform resiliently. In this chapter, we briefly share some insights drawn from a collaboration with the municipality of Malmö, Sweden, for a period of more than three years that has provided knowledge about the needs and constraints to better addressing challenges related to structural secrecy. To deal with this problem, it is essential to find ways of sharing insights about the criticality and interconnections between organisational units. The chapter outlines a method implemented in the departments in Malmö municipality used for compiling and spreading such information within the organisation as a means to become better equipped for managing both daily tasks and surprises. By contributing to an alignment of diverging views on “work as done” versus “work as imagined” this type of effort lays the groundwork for nurturing an ability to perform resiliently in suddenly emerging situations that are outside the organisation’s normal operations.
We use fine-grained federal personnel data to examine how work group diversity is related to the distribution of monetary rewards among employees who are working collectively on a team project. We focus on two types of diversity—demographic and functional—and hypothesize that the former will be positively associated with egalitarianism in reward distributions while the latter will be negatively associated with egalitarianism. Our theory is that managers’ distributional decisions will account for the likelihood of meeting with disagreement, and that this likelihood covaries in different ways with demographic and functional diversity. We argue that managers of demographically heterogeneous groups will deploy egalitarian rewards to avoid exacerbating intra-group conflict along demographic fault-lines. By contrast, managers of functionally heterogeneous groups will be able to justify non-egalitarian rewards because group members accept that functional heterogeneity is associated with intra-group status differences. Additionally, we argue that functional heterogeneity can, by legitimizing intra-group status differences that are correlated with race and gender, activate the negative potential for demographic diversity to be a driver of inequality. Our results suggest that functional heterogeneity and demographic heterogeneity are negatively associated with egalitarianism in group rewards, and that functional heterogeneity interacts with demographic heterogeneity to further reduce egalitarianism.
This paper offers insights on how digital artefacts foster coordination of individuals in distributed innovation projects by limiting the divergence of team members’ representations of the project. This role is particularly important when coordination mechanisms such as leadership and modularity show some limits. Using distributed innovation in open-source software as a setting, we develop and test the hypotheses that (1) the release of initial code in open-source software projects limits the divergence of team members’ representations and (2) limiting divergence of team members’ representations triggered by initial code release implies a higher probability of project survival, a non-trivial goal in such a setting. To test our hypotheses, we draw on a dataset of 5,703 open-source software projects registered on SourceForge.net. Both our hypotheses are supported, pointing towards fruitful directions for expanding research on the way distributed innovation processes are carried out when digital artefacts are involved.
Drawing upon positive psychology and organizational learning literature, this study examines the relationship between well-being-oriented management (WOM) and unit-level ambidexterity. Building on the social exchange theory, our multilevel model sheds light on the relationship between individual perceptions of WOM, organizational learning, and unit-level ambidexterity in public hospitals. Based on the two-wave data obtained from 507 medical specialists, from 151 medical units, our multilevel analysis provides support for our two hypotheses. First, a positive relationship between WOM and unit-level ambidexterity was found. Second, organizational learning capability (OLC) moderated the relationship between WOM and unit-level ambidexterity. This study is one of the first to clarify the learning mechanisms through which WOM increases the development of unit-level ambidexterity in complex public organizations.
The goal of the current manuscript is to embed the theory of mindsets about malleability in workplace contexts. We first define fixed-growth mindsets and the methods that have to date been used to study them. We then briefly review the domains in which mindsets have been documented to shape outcomes meaningfully, linking each to exciting research questions that we hope will soon be studied in workplace contexts. We also highlight some of the fascinating, new questions scholars can study by considering how mindsets might shape outcomes across a diversity of workplaces (e.g., the workforce of low wage and vulnerable populations). We further propose that studying mindsets in workplace contexts can develop mindset theory. We first ask whether workplace contexts provide opportunities to test for moderation on mindset expression. Second, we see opportunity for studying moderation of mindset processes – evaluating whether the psychological processes through which mindsets shape outcomes may differ based on contextual factors that vary across workplaces. We argue that investigating these possibilities will advance both the theory of mindsets about malleability and the study of human flourishing in the workplace. We invite scholars to join us in this endeavour.
In dit opiniestuk bediscussieer ik een reeks inzichten die voortkomen uit eigen wetenschappelijke studies naar commandovoering tijdens politieachtervolgingen en terreurgevolgbestrijding, waaronder de tramaanslag in Utrecht. Deze studies heb ik uit-
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operaties hebben allemaal een hoge tijd/tempo dynamiek, wat een specifieke uitdaging vormt voor commandovoering. In de operaties komen gebruikelijke problemen terug met communicatie, coördinatie en informatiedeling. Ik zal beargumenteren dat deze problemen te relateren zijn aan het niet aanpassen van het principe van organiseren en de vorm van commandovoering naar gelang de tijd/tempo factor van de operatie toe- of afneemt. De succesfactor om grip te houden op een operatie ligt met name in het tijdig leren schakelen tussen verschillende principes van organiseren. Hieruit volgen belangrijke inzichten die het debat in het ‘command & control’-paradigma kunnen verrijken.
There is growing interest in management and organizational research to study the relocation of knowledge workers, defined as a move by the knowledge worker to a different place of work. Relocation has been well studied as a potential source of losses or gains in human and social capital. However, our understanding of whether and how it disrupts a scientist’s innovation activities is limited. Relocation could disrupt innovation activities in the new workplace by making it difficult for a scientist to coordinate work with prior collaborators with whom the scientist has relational experience and forcing the scientist to work with new collaborators. In this study, we develop a conceptual framework assessing the effectiveness of the scientists’ research and development (R&D) experience to counter these disruptions arising from relocation and develop valuable patented innovations. We hypothesize that both the scientist’s relational experience and working with new collaborators decrease the value of innovations the scientist creates after relocation. Scientist R&D experience, however, is double-edged in nature: It leads to less valuable innovations prior to relocation but facilitates the creation of more valuable innovations after it. Our theory suggests that this is because R&D experience facilitates the scientist’s adaptation to the new context and helps coordinate her or his activities in new collaborations. Nevertheless, R&D experience is less effective in sustaining the efficacy of relational experience with prior collaborators after relocation. Using a longitudinal dataset from the knowledge-intensive genomics industry, we find support for our hypotheses. This study yields important managerial and policy implications.
Engineering sketches and drawings are the building blocks of technological design and production. These visual representations act as the means for organizing the design to production process, hence serving as a "social glue" both between individuals and between groups. The author discusses two main capacities such visual representations serve in facilitating distributed cognition in team design work As conscription devices, they enlist and organize group participation. As boundary objects, they facilitate the reading of alternative meanings by various groups involved in the design process. The introduction of computer-aided design into this visual culture of engineering restructures relationships between workers in ways that can hamper the flexibility necessary for these crucial capacities to take place. The data are drawn from a study of the daily practices of engineers engaged in redesigning a turbine engine package. The method is participant observation.
Recent popular and theoretical literature emphasizes the significance of communication technology for collaboration and information sharing across organizational boundaries. We hypothesize that due to the collaborative nature of their work and the way they are organized in work groups, technical employees, as compared with administrative employees, will communicate laterally, and will use the telephone and email for this purpose. We studied technical and administrative employees in seven departments of a large telecommunications firm. From logs of communication over two days, we examined vertical and lateral communication inside and outside the chain of command and department, and the use of telephone, email, and voice mail for this communication. Technical employees did have more lateral communication than administrators did, but all lateral communication (not just that of technical employees) tended to be by telephone. Over 50% of employees' communication was extradepartmental; extradepartmental communication, like lateral communication, tended to be by telephone. When employees used asynchronous technology, technical employees used email whereas administrators, especially those at high levels, used voice. Differential boundary-crossing by technical and administrative employees could be explained in part by the flatter structure of the technical work groups. Our results are consistent with Powell (1990), Barley (1994) and others who have argued that the rise of technical work and the horizontal organization of technical workers increases collaboration and nonhierarchical communication. Organizations can encourage communication flows across organizational boundaries by strengthening horizontal structures (for technical workers, especially) and supporting old and new technology use by all employees.
This paper explores the case for a general threat-rigidity effect in individual, group, and organizational behavior. Evidence from multiple levels of analysis is summarized, showing a restriction in information processing and constriction of control under threat conditions. Possible mechanisms underlying such a multiple-level effect are explored, as are its possible functional and dysfunctional consequences.
This chapter presents the description of research on social influence that moves rather freely between laboratory settings and organizational contexts. The laboratory studies follow several well-developed research paradigms, with variations in conditions and resultant findings occurring in a cumulative fashion. The organizational studies of social influence have tended to draw on a wide variety of psychological and sociological theories, resulting in a more disparate set of findings that have rarely been drawn together. Whereas the social psychological work has typically been experimental, the organizational research ranges from quantitative experiments and surveys to more qualitative case studies. Thus, the integration of work on social control and innovation will necessitate mixing results with varying levels of internal and external validity. The chapter explains the discussion of social control and innovation that moves freely between the microscopic and the macroscopic. The chapter explores the way the studies of organizational behavior can profit from knowledge of more basic social influence processes and the way experimental group research can be enriched by an understanding of more complex organizational processes.
A comparative model of organizations as interpretation systems is proposed. The model describes four interpretation modes: enacting, discovering, undirected viewing, and conditioned viewing. Each mode is determined by (1) management's beliefs about the environment and (2) organizational intrusiveness. Interpretation modes are hypothesized to be associated with organizational differences in environmental scanning, equivocality reduction, strategy, and decision making.
Power is an inescapable feature of human existence. It plays a role in all social contexts and is particularly important in the functioning of organizations and work groups. Organizational researchers have certainly recognized the importance of power but have traditionally focused on its negative aspects. Yet power can also have very positive effects. Power and Interdependence in Organizations capitalizes on significant developments in social science over the past twenty years to show how managers and employees can manage power in order to make it a constructive force in organizations. Written by a team of international academics, the book explores both the positive and negative aspects of power, identifying opportunities and threats. It shows that harnessing the positive aspects of power, as well as controlling its more destructive effects, has the potential to revolutionize the way that organizations function, making them both more humane and productive.
Many decisions are based on beliefs concerning the likelihood of uncertain events such as the outcome of an election, the guilt of a defendant, or the future value of the dollar. Occasionally, beliefs concerning uncertain events are expressed in numerical form as odds or subjective probabilities. In general, the heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors. The subjective assessment of probability resembles the subjective assessment of physical quantities such as distance or size. These judgments are all based on data of limited validity, which are processed according to heuristic rules. However, the reliance on this rule leads to systematic errors in the estimation of distance. This chapter describes three heuristics that are employed in making judgments under uncertainty. The first is representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event belongs to a class or event. The second is the availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development, and the third is adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
The literature on product development continues to grow. This research is varied and vibrant, yet large and fragmented. In this article we first organize the burgeoning product-development literature into three streams of research: product development as rational plan, communication web, and disciplined problem solving. Second, we synthesize research findings into a model of factors affecting the success of product development. This model highlights the distinction between process performance and product effectiveness and the importance of agents, including team members, project leaders, senior management, customers, and suppliers, whose behavior affects these outcomes. Third, we indicate potential paths for future research based on the concepts and links that are missing or not well defined in the model.
A summary is presented of the current state of the art and recent trends in software engineering economics. It provides an overview of economic analysis techniques and their applicability to software engineering and management. It surveys the field of software cost estimation, including the major estimation techniques available, the state of the art in algorithmic cost models, and the outstanding research issues in software cost estimation.
The literature in cognitive psychology has described a variety of shortcomings that prevent individuals from learning effectively. We review this literature and provide examples of a number of organizational practices that may effectively repair the cognitive shortcomings of individuals. We call these practices cognitive repairs. We then discuss six tradeoffs that affect the success of cognitive repairs. We close by considering how a cognitive perspective might benefit those who study organizational learning and those who manage it.
Theorists have often acknowledged the importance of equifinality in organization design, and, in recent years, several studies have demonstrated the concept empirically. This article exposes the assumptions regarding function and structure that underlie contingency theory and develops a functional equivalence view of design. By examining the degree of conflict in functional demands together with the latitude of structural options available, we reveal and describe three different types of equifinality: suboptimal, tradeoff, and configurational. The functional equivalence approach implies a different agenda and emphasis for research on structure and design and has normative implications for how managers should design to achieve performance.
This article examines the impact of downsizing on product innovation. It compares the experiences of product innovators in companies with a high degree of downsizing with those in companies with less downsizing. Higher downsizing hinders innovation by reducing people's ability to connect their product strategically to the firm. Specifically, downsizing breaks the network of relationships that innovators use to make these vital strategic connections. To overcome the negative consequences of downsizing on product innovation, managers should support innovation sponsors and champions, and retain "old timers" who constitute the network. They should also bolster the network by building more connections among departments, and between new and established businesses. Finally, they should incorporate innovation directly into their firm's strategy.
The issue of how to manage an organization so that employees are both happy and productive is an old and overworked topic, but one that remains a source of confusion and controversy. This article examines the psychological perspective to provide a realistic appraisal of where we now stand in the search for satisfaction and productivity in work settings. It explores the consistency of job attitudes and the intransigence of job performance. It then presents three systems commonly used in organizational change efforts and draws some conclusions about their alternative uses. Organizations must lower their expectations, but at the same time they must be committed to taking action that is flexible enough to allow for mistakes and adjustments in a sustained pursuit of the happy/productive worker.
I present argument and evidence for a structural ecology of social capital that describes how the value of social capital to an individual is contingent on the number of people doing the same work. The information and control benefits of bridging the structural holes-or, disconnections between nonredundant contacts in a network-that constitute social capital are especially valuable to managers with few peers. Such managers do not have the guiding frame of reference for behavior provided by numerous competitors, and the work they do does not have the legitimacy provided by numerous people doing the same kind of work. I use network and performance data on a probability sample of senior managers to show how the value of social capital, high on average for the managers, varies as a power function of the number of people doing the same work.
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A number of proposals have been advanced in recent years for the development of “general systems theory” which, abstracting from properties peculiar to physical, biological, or social systems, would be applicable to all of them. We might well feel that, while the goal is laudable, systems of such diverse kinds could hardly be expected to have any nontrivial properties in common. Metaphor and analogy can be helpful, or they can be misleading. All depends on whether the similarities the metaphor captures are significant or superficial.
This study investigated the differential effects of task design and reward system design on group functioning; the effectiveness of ''hybrid'' groups, in which groups' tasks and/or rewards have both individual and group elements; and how individuals' preferences for autonomy moderate their responses to interdependence at work. An intervention in the reward system at a large U.S. corporation created group, individual, and hybrid rewards for 150 existing teams of technicians that had group, hybrid, or individual tasks. Groups performed best when their tasks and outcomes were either pure group or pure individual. Hybrid groups performed quite poorly, had low-quality interaction processes, and low member satisfaction. Task and outcome interdependence affected different aspects of group functioning: Tasks influenced variables related to cooperation, while outcomes influenced variables related to effort. Individuals' autonomy preferences did not moderate the effects of task and reward interdependence but, instead, were themselves influenced by the amount of interdependence in the work. These findings have implications for the design of work and reward systems for work groups.
We investigate the impact of two kinds of integration-internal and external-on dynamic capability. We use product development activities as a lens with which to focus on the capability-building process in a firm. We first develop a conceptual model of the capability-building process that relates specific problem-solving activities to the generation of organizational capabilities. We derive a measure, 'ynamic performance', that estimates the level of dynamic capability in an organization based on the consistency of its performance. Furthermore, we use the model to motivate a series of hypotheses which link specific processes to the achievement of high dynamic performance. We conjecture that the capacity to integrate diverse knowledge bases through problem solving is the basic foundation of knowledge building in an organization, and is therefore a critical driver of dynamic performance. The hypotheses are tested by drawing on extensive cross-sectional empirical studies of product development in the automobile and mainframe computer industries. The work follows by providing detailed longitudinal cases describing the impact of integration on competence-building processes at Nissan and NEC.
An important practical problem for many managers is finding alternative processes for performing a desired task, for example, one that is more efficient, cheaper, or that is automated or enhanced by the use of information technology. Improving processes also poses theoretical challenges. Coordination theory provides an approach to the study of processes. In this view, the design of a process depends on the coordination mechanisms chosen to manage dependencies among tasks and resources involved in the process.
In this paper, I use coordination theory to analyze the software change process of a large mini-computer manufacturer. Mechanisms analyzed include those for task assignment, resource sharing, and managing dependencies between modules of source code. For each, I suggest alternative mechanisms and thus alternative designs for the process. The organization assigned problem reports to engineers based on the module that appeared to be in error, since engineers only worked on particular modules. Alternative task assignment mechanisms include assignment to engineers based on workload or market-like bids. Modules of source code were not shared, but rather “owned” by one engineer, thus reducing the need for coordination. An alternative resource sharing mechanism would be needed to manage source code if multiple engineers could work on the same modules. Finally, engineers managed dependencies between modules informally, relying on their personal knowledge of which other engineers used their code; alternatives include formally defining the interfaces between modules and tracking their users.
Software bug fixing provides a microcosm of coordination problems and solutions. Similar coordination problems arise in most processes and are managed by a similar range of mechanisms. For example, diagnosing bug reports and assigning them to engineers may have interesting parallels to diagnosing patients and assigning them to specialists.
While the case presented does not formally test coordination theory, it does illustrate the potential of coordination theory for exploring the space of organizational processes. Future work includes developing more rigorous techniques for such analyses, applying the techniques to a broader range of processes, identifying additional coordination problems and mechanisms and developing tools for collecting and comparing processes and automatically suggesting potential alternatives.
This paper contributes to the research on the relationship of subunit work characteristics to subunit structure and performance. Information-processing ideas are used to develop a set of hypotheses to test a contingency approach to subunit structure directly; whether high-performing subunits with different information-processing requirements have systematically different degrees of communication structure. Results indicate that task characteristics, environment, and interdependence each have an important impact on subunit communication structure, and that these effects are accentuated for high-performing subunits. This research supports the idea that there is no one best way of structuring subunit communication. Rather, for high-performing subunits, communication structure is contingent on the subunit's work.
Complex organizations are conceptualized in terms of their technologies, or the work done on raw materials. Two aspects of technology vary independently: the number of exceptions that must be handled, and the degree to which search is an analyzable or unanalyzable procedure. If there is a large number of exceptions and search is not logical and analytic, the technology is described as nonroutine. Few exceptions and analyzable search procedures describe a routine technology. Two other types result from other combinations--craft and engineering technologies. Task structures vary with the technology utilized, and are analyzed in terms of control and coordination and three levels of management. Social structure in turn is related to technology and task structure. Finally, the variations in three types of goals are weakly related to the preceding variables in this conceptualization. The perspective provides a basis for comparing organizations which avoids many problems found in other schemes utilizing structure, function or goals as the basis for comparison. Furthermore, it allows one to selectively utilize competing organizational theories once it is understood that their relevance is restricted to organizations with specific kinds of technologies. The scheme makes apparent some errors in present efforts to compare organizations.
