responsible is specified. Object lessons: Workplace artifacts as representations of occupa-, Bechky, B.A. This exam-, ple also highlights that a critical element in the development of accountability, as an integrating condition for coordination is a reliance on trust: to the extent, that parties can count on a consistent and reliable performance of the work by, others (McEvily et al., 2003), establishing the scaffolding is sufficient to enable. The question is, however, whether this approach to coordination management can work in an increasingly complex organizational setting characterized by increasing uncertainty and a corresponding need for more coordination. For example, Symons et al. The, connections that are embodied in the routine, by facilitating interactions. However, by getting closer to the, work and tasks in the organization, more recent work transforms emergent, coordination from an informal and marginal activity to one that is central to, explanations of coordination, providing a more complete and accurate picture, of the process. However, the new wave of research spans multiple disciplines and, pays attention to different aspects of the problem of coordination, leaving us, without a coherent framework. but clearly this is an area that is ripe for future research. 0000030247 00000 n They also offer a common referent around which people interact, align their, Representation technologies enable direct, information sharing across groups in a variety of settings, from advertising to, medicine to engineering and navigation teams. Central to this were the ontological foundations in performances, and re-enacting As individuals come and go in, organizations, coordination can suffer because both new and old members are, less knowledgeable about each other, directly affecting the familiarity that, enables predictability. When we consider the relationship between predictability, the ease of, anticipating subsequent task activities, and common understanding, the, shared conception of those activities, we can see that integrating conditions, sometimes operate as substitutes for one another. For instance, early studies showed that people’s friendship, marriage choices, and general attraction to others were related to their distance. developing a shared conception of the activities they are performing. framework, which integrated roles and routines and served as the basis for towards explaining the effect of these mechanisms on how work is performed. Paradox of coordination and control. understanding of the context to the identification of role and routine patterns. (2001). For example, in most manufacturing operations the product of, the work is visible and measurable, so progress towards the task and its, completion can be monitored directly. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Meeting. We began thinking about the possibility, for a general framework when we noticed that many of the mechanisms that, authors explained seemed to fulfill similar requirements. For instance, in, Okhuysen’s (2005) description of police SWAT teams, the development of rou-, tines is integrally tied to the regimented and paramilitary nature of the approach, used by officers. (2002) Familiarity in groups: Exploring the relationship. Importance/Need 4. Examining an apparel and sporting, goods company, Austin (2003) showed how having well-developed transactive, memory systems in groups can help them accomplish their goals. Organizational routines as a source of continuous change. %PDF-1.3 %���� Also, knowing what tasks are associated with particular roles helps, coordinate across people, and negotiating behaviors in a role guides people in. The life and decline of the American railroad. In many instances, organizations provide services rather than. Originally conceived as a timekeeping system for the railroad system to, coordinate its activities, this innovation eventually permeated every aspect of. Predictability is achieved through plans and, objects that define the tasks that must be completed; through familiarity that, allows for an understanding of others’ preferences around the work on the, task; and through routines that establish the tasks that must happen. Determinants of coordination, Williamson, O.E. (1968). A focus on the, mechanisms of coordination has meant that the development of theory about, integration and integration processes is typically embedded in discussions of, how the mechanisms operate, rather than receiving attention on its own. We therefore sought, to find a way to reconcile the conflicting definitions, bring together the, disparate findings, and untangle the theoretical explanations to provide an, Our criticisms of the literature and our ultimate unifying framework will, come later. Performance in an organization is most often a mirage . Sharing meaning across occupational communities: The trans-. of the work, and adjust their own work accordingly. The integrating, conditions of coordination are necessary, but are not always sufficient for coor-, dination to occur. After presenting the historical background which frames, modern research on coordination in organizations, we proceed with our, The advent of railroads in the eighteenth century engendered considerable, interest in coordination. Plans, rules, routines and familiarity create common understanding at the level of, the whole interdependent task or work process. Scholars have also identified roles as a useful means for coordinating work, activity. In each of these cases, interdependencies between, different pieces of work may be uncertain or challenging to identify, making it, difficult to know who should be involved in work and whether there is a cor-. Similarly, Faraj, and Xiao (2006) demonstrate how dialogic coordination, time-sensitive, interaction among team members, is used in trauma centers when standard, procedures are insufficient to coordinate the work of saving patients. Kellogg, K.C., Orlikowski, W.J., & Yates, J. interest in the emergent nature of the process of coordination. which plans and rules coordinate is by explaining the actions that different, parties have to take to complete a task. Crowston’s work, (Crowston, 1997; Malone & Crowston, 1990, 1994), for instance, approaches. als gain experience working with each other. Intra- and interorganizational, Star, S.L., & Griesemer, J.R. (1989). Similarly, Taylor’s (1914) scientific manage-, ment, with its emphasis on standardizing work, tools, and parts is an extreme, instance of establishing predictability through material means. nance, potential partner organizations are unable to establish communication, sign a contract, or figure out when the product will be released by the commu-, nity. Another obstacle to comprehensive understanding of coordination is the, embeddedness of the findings in particular contexts. sionals are able to monitor tasks through their physical co-presence (Klein et al., 2006); in research in other hospitals, clinical rounds allow for professionals to, update one another about a patient’s condition (Gittell, 2002). tion, conscription devices, and boundary objects in design engineering. Several organizational design theories focused on, uncertainties rooted in the task or technology such as production technology, (Woodward, 1970), task complexity (Perrow, 1967), workflow integration. For exam-, ple, Bechky and Okhuysen (2009) show that schedules and location maps, built in both a SWAT team and film production crews by the members of, the groups themselves through an iterative process. future research on coordination in organizations. In these, cases, workers are not formally supervising one another, but can link their. The, adoption of the three integrating conditions as intermediate constructs, between coordination mechanisms and coordinated activity is helpful because, it provides us with an overarching framework that can explain many of the, findings of extant work, providing a richer and yet more parsimonious expla-, nation. When working interdependently, low status. The results suggest that the plug-and-play perspective on specialist teams is incomplete; rather, specialization and familiarity are complements in dynamic environments where team members coordinate extemporaneously. Last updated: December 13, 2020 by December 13, 2020 by 2006; ... Improvisation has been linked to crisis situations in the past (e.g., Hughes et al., 2020; Traditionally, flight simulator training is focussed on the reliable execution of procedures or combinations thereoff. Functional position is associated with a job or function designed to provide specialized knowledge and support operational work. One problem is created by the way coordinative action is treated in the, literature: the interdisciplinary range of coordination research results in a vari-, ety of approaches to the object that is being coordinated. For instance, from the interdependent nature of the activities that organization members perform” (p. 423), “[T]he act of managing interdependencies between activities performed to achieve a goal” (p. 361), individuals and groups in some problem domain” (p. 395), “In software development, it means that different people working on a common project agree to a, common definition of what they are building, share information, and mesh their activities” (p. 69), “Coordination of understandings refers to the development of shared perceptions and meanings among, members, including an appreciation of the ways in which members reliably see and interpret events, “Coordination of action is a synchronization and sequencing of member actions in time and place” (p.2), interdependence and uncertainty” (p. 1156), “A temporally unfolding and contextualized process of input regulation and interaction articulation to, realize a collective performance” (p. 1157), accomplish some goal, over and above what they would need to do to accomplish the goal individually”, Kellogg, Orlikowski and Yates (2006, p. 28) describe the coordination, practices used in an online advertising firm to “facilitate their dynamic, uncer-, tain, and ongoing accommodation to each other and clients”. (Eds). Routines act in a sim-, ilar fashion, by bringing groups together and guiding the understanding of the, collective achievement of the whole task. Coordination, the process of interaction that integrates a collective set of interdependent tasks, is a central purpose of organizations. enabled through a representation that makes the progress of the task obvious. Meaning of Coordination: The purpose of organising, division of work, departmentation, span of management, centralisation and decentralisation, delegation of authority and organisation structure is to optimally achieve the organisational goals. The paper describes how the case firms’ accountants responded to the necessity of ‘opening up’ the business perspective by adopting models (from a consulting firm) that took on a vital role in organising financial statements’ production and rendered it more manageable. 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