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Dissertation Abstract
In our efforts to understand how collaborative work can be accomplished, we often turn to discussions of “coordination” for help. However, the concept of coordination is inadequate for explaining the many interdependent processes at work within successful collaborations. In this dissertation, I examined a collaborative construction project – the Woods Avenue Bridge (WAB) Project – with many coordination demands. I used data from this project to develop the concept of adaptive capacity – the set of capabilities a team develops that enable them to adjust to internal and external stresses.

Through analyzing meeting minutes, interview transcripts, and documents the project team developed, I was able to identify behaviors and approaches the team took that may have enabled them to better respond to changes in their environment. I use a specific example of a time when the team successfully redesigned the structure they were building in the field to illustrate the kind of coordination work adaptive capacity enables.

From data about the WAB Project, I identified components of adaptive capacity including perspective taking, multimembership, affect, and social capital. Understanding these components and the adaptive capacity they can develop helps us understand what about a team enables them to accomplish coordination work. Without adaptive capacity, we lack an integrated explanation of the ways in which different components interact and how those components address coordination.

This dissertation contributes to our understanding of how collaborative teams accomplish coordination by refining the concept of adaptive capacity and integrating earlier literatures on coordination, collaboration, and adaptation. The concept of adaptive capacity helps us understand the resources collaborative teams develop that make it possible for them to find flexible and creative solutions to their coordination problems.

The red parts represent the inductive, qualitative portion of our study. I am primarily responsible for those stages of the project. I am currently collecting data, and that’s why that piece looks different. Erik is primarily responsible for the deductive portions, those in blue. This diagram was inspired by process diagrams of grounded theory and deduction from

Gasson, S. (2003) Rigor in Grounded Theory Research: An Interpretive Perspective on Generating Theory from Qualitative Research. In Whitman, M.E. and Woszczynski, A.B., eds. The handbook of information systems research. Hershey, PA: Idea Group.

Gill, J. and Johnson, P. (1997) Research Methods for Managers, 2nd Ed., London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Cox and Townsend argue in their introduction, and throughout the book, that best practice thinking is wrong-headed and leaves us playing catch up. One of my favorite bits of the introduction reads:

They will be searching for the ‘Holy Grail’ of best practice. By this one means practitioners are looking for the answer that provides the solution to all of the problems which they face managerially. Unfortunately, this desire to discover the single solution (best practice), that will allow the practitioner to avoid the need for thought and risk taking, is an illusion.

They go on to discuss concepts such as appropriateness and leverage and recognize that many practitioners would call their discussions “common sense.” Their response?

Some of the practitioners who read these pages may accept what has been said, and argue that this is just common sense (which it is), and that they already know this. If that is the case then this book may have little to teach them, however, because experience leads the authors to conclude that such a form of sense (in a business context) does not appear to be all that common.

I wish I’d written something like that in the paper Andy and I submitted recently that was rejected for having results that were not surprising enough. The results we found in our onboarding study were surprising because we found them and not necessarily in their content. For instance, it’s surprising that teams still behave as though new employees will be immediately productive even though the sense that onboarding takes time is apparently common. Much like Cox and Townsend find that strategic procurement is not all that common, neither are teams who smoothly onboard their new members.

My questions as I continue to read Cox and Townsend’s book are really about how one encourages strategic, reflective thinking over best practice thinking and how one should present research results that show just how uncommon common sense can be. See, one can learn things by studying construction projects. This message brought to you by my dissertation, a work in progress.

Related links:
Human Interactions in Programming Group at Microsoft Research
ACM’s Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference (CSCW08)