Abstract
Coordinating creative group work remains a major organizational challenge, especially in teams with specialists representing distinct knowledge domains. The author defines coordination as the process through which people arrange actions in ways that they believe will enable them to accomplish their goals. An increase of complex tasks, specialization and interdependencies among specialists make the question of how coordination occurs in teams of diverse experts particularly relevant to the study of organizations.
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2.1 Coordination and Creative Groups
Coordinating creative group work remains a major organizational challenge, especially in teams with specialists representing distinct knowledge domains. The author defines coordination as the process through which people arrange actions in ways that they believe will enable them to accomplish their goals (Quinn & Dutton, 2005). An increase of complex tasks (Spitz-Oener, 2006), specialization (Alvesson, 1993; Becker & Murphy, 1992) and interdependencies among specialists (Burton & Obel, 2004; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967; Thompson, 1967) make the question of how coordination occurs in teams of diverse experts particularly relevant to the study of organizations. Coordination at its core is thus about the integration of organizational work under conditions of task interdependencies and uncertainty (Faraj & Xiao, 2006), where managing interdependencies among activities (Malone & Crowston, 1994) consists of making relevant domain-specific details transparent and arranging empirical manifestations of contributions according to a shared objective (Bruns, 2013).
Creativity is defined as the generation or production of ideas that are both novel and useful, and is typically viewed as a key precursor to innovation, that is the successful implementation of creative ideas (Scott & Bruce, 1994; Amabile, 1996; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). In creative group work group members coordinate via integration (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) where they generate ideas, share their ideas with one another, listen and focus on one another’s ideas, and then generate new associations, building on one another’s ideas to integrate them into a truly novel solution (Baer, Leenders, Oldham & Vadera, 2010; Brophy, 2006; van Knippenberg, de Dreu, & Homan, 2004; Taggar, 2002; Brown, Tumeo, Larey, & Paulus, 1998). Literature on creativity however, argues that creativity may also require deviance (Warren, 2003), divergence (George, 2007), and dissensus (Nemeth, Personnaz, Personnaz, & Goncalo, 2004). These dynamics have the potential to pull a group apart or cause the group to regress to earlier, more chaotic stages of group development (Tuckman, 1965). Thus, coordinating a creative group needs to enable integration while also allow for de-integration, or individually disrupting a sense of predictability and common understanding in the pursuit of a new idea (Harrison & Rouse, 2014) which helps explain why coordinations that generate group creativity are considered to be fragile (Ford, 1996).
Recent literature on multi-disciplinary team coordination suggests that the coordination of efforts from interdependent specialists relies on formal structures that shape the actions of organizational members and activities and thus constrain their actions (Davis, Eisenhardt, and Bingham, 2009), as well as on informal emergent aspects of coordination (McEvily et al., 2014; Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) that can deal with unplanned contingencies and emergent interdependencies (Kellog et al., 2006). Practice theory treats informal aspects as a function of formal structures (Bruns, 2013) and suggests that the two elements, formal structure and informal practices, are embedded within each other (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) and continuously and mutually interact.
2.2 Temporary Organizations
While these theories are suggestive, there is little empirical evidence showing how coordination happens in temporary organizations, mostly because few organizational scholars have systematically examined the internal functioning of temporary organizational forms (Meyerson, Weick & Kramer, 1996; Powell 1990). Those who have studied these organizations focus on the flexibility for example to contend with environments that are complex and variable, where temporary organizations have been found to reduce costs and control risk through the fluid movement of specialized personnel (Christopherson and Storper 1989, Faulkner and Anderson 1987). Instead of training, supervision, and formal rules and hierarchy, they rely on short-term workers with the requisite ability and experience to perform the tasks assigned to them (DeFillippi and Arthur 1998, Faulkner and Anderson 1987). These analyses thus depict temporary organizations as having little structure. People change positions frequently across these fluid projects (Baker and Faulkner 1991), these organizations engender mobile and boundaryless careers (Jones and DeFillippi 1996) and are therefore ephemeral and unstable (Kanter 1995), lacking formal or normative structure (Meyerson, Weick, & Kramer, 1996).
However, recent studies of team-based organizational structures indicate that organizational flexibility does not necessarily occasion unstructured work organization. Self-managed teams although lack the controls of bureaucracy and hierarchy, tend to develop alternative control mechanisms (Bechky, 2006), including normative control, that constrains and structures the behavior of team members (Smith 1997, Prechel 1994, Barker 1993), creating groups whose value-based work ethic turned gradually into a strong source of normative rules (Barker, 1993). Thus, temporary organizations have both industry structures and emerging practices that coordinate and control activity (Bechky, 2006)
Consequently, the author believes that in order to explain creative group coordination in a temporary organization, it is important to ask how formal structures and informal practices dynamically interact, that is the evolution of organizational interactions, and consider their formal and informal bases jointly, that is the extent to which informal interactions “follow” from the formally designed and imposed organizational elements. In other words there is a need to contemplate the mechanisms describing the interplay between formal and informal elements (McEvily et al., 2014), and aim to do so by building on the stream of practice-based coordination which recognizes practice as an observable phenomenon, an approach that enables closing a gap in research between theory and real world occurrence (Orlikowski, 2010).
To date, theory has not provided a clear answer to the question above that is considered important because it is in the interplay between formal and informal that several key issues in organizational theory are most effectively addressed (Barley, 1996, 1990, 1986; Salancik, 1995) and as organizations constitute patterns of interaction, formal and informal are inextricably intertwined elements that explain how actors coordinate efforts, exchange information, and access resources that affect a variety of outcomes and behaviors across different levels of analysis (Kilduff & Brass, 2010; Ibarra, Kilduff, & Tsai, 2005). Thus, to understand how patterns of interactions in temporary organizations emerge, evolve, and dissolve over time (Ahuja, Soda, & Zaheer, 2012) necessitates integrating theories of formal and informal elements to also articulate the logic by which formal and informal elements are co-organized and co-determinant of outcomes (Soda & Zaheer, 2012).
In this research the author develops three basic ideas as a theoretical entry point into the question of how creative groups in a temporary organization coordinate through a dynamic integration of formal structures and informal practices. First, what formal coordination structures exist and how they operate. Second, what informal coordination practices can emerge from formal structures. Third, how the two dynamically interact leading toward team coordination, highlighting a team developmental process. In the remainder of this section I elaborate the theoretical foundations of these three key ideas, and do so through a parallelization of creative and normal groups.
2.3 Formal Structures of Coordination
Relevant theory on coordination starts with a deliberate attempt to plan systems to produce coordinated activity through the design of either work or relationships between positions in the organization (Taylor, 1916; Fayol, 1949). Such formalization continues to be seen as an essential feature of organizations, in which the “rules governing behavior are precisely and explicitly formulated”, and “roles and role relations are prescribed independently of the personal attributes and relations of individuals” (Scott & Davis, 2007).
Scholars of organizational design thus argue that the coordination of efforts from interdependent specialists relies on formal structures that shape the actions of organizational members by shaping activities of their constituent elements and thus constrain more action (Davis, Eisenhardt & Bingham, 2009). These structures enable coordination by grouping and prioritizing interactions among organizational members with epistemic interdependence (Purana et al., 2012), thus allowing specialised team members to better integrate their individual efforts and prevent coordination failures.
A clear role structure falls within the category of formal coordination structures according to the structural role theory where a role is a bundle of tasks and norms, the behaviours that are expected of those who occupy a position in a social structure (Hughes 1958, Linton 1936, Biddle and Thomas 1966). This theory focuses on the ways in which role expectations, arising from norms and demands from other role occupants and audiences, constrain and circumscribe individuals’ behaviour (Bechky, 2006) as it is illustrated in studies of high-reliability organizations that require careful coordination of complex, interdependent activity (Weick and Roberts 1993; Bigley and Roberts 2001) where members use the role structure to organize their behaviour in relation to one another.
Role theory can thus help explain how temporary groups coordinate as roles delineate expertise and responsibility so that anyone in a particular role will know her individual responsibilities and interdependencies with those in other roles, even in the absence of interpersonal familiarity (Bechky, 2006; Griffin, Neal & Parker, 2007). Roles allow coordination to be de-individualized: people do not rely on knowing others’ unique skills, weaknesses, or preferences to figure out how to work together; instead they rely on knowing one another’s position in the role structure (Klein, Ziegert, Knight & Xiao, 2006).
In order for role structures to support effective coordination the literature suggests that certain conditions need to exist. First, effective coordination in temporary role-based groups depends on whether and how the group is bounded, which by definition makes it clear whom to work with, on what, and possibly where (Hackman, 2002; Wageman, Hackman & Lehman, 2005). A second condition is stability of membership which means that the same group of individuals compose the team over time. Finally, interdependence, meaning that the people on the team have to “work together for some common purpose for which they bear collective responsibility rather than having their own jobs to do with little need to work together” (Wageman, et al., 2005). These conditions allow group members to coordinate effectively because they get to know each other well and are able to anticipate each other’s moves and adjust to each other’s strengths and weaknesses (Valentine & Edmondson, 2015). Under these conditions group members engage in constructive coordination team processes like active communication, knowledge sharing and problem solving (Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2001; Wageman, et al., 2005; Wageman & Fisher, 2014).
Formal structures in the form of constraints can also provide the formalization relating to rules governing behaviour (Scott & Davies, 2007) that enables the coordination of creative group work. Constraints, defined by Stokes (1999) as boundaries that “promote or preclude a certain kind of response”, can reinforce temporary group coordination by either supporting integration (Harrison & Rouse, 2014) or providing boundaries that preclude the sort of group chaos or dissensus that emerges when individuals disrupt group coordination patterns (Barker, 1993; Van Dyne & Saavedra, 1996). In relation to the former, constraints help group members come together, focus on a common problem domain, and exchange information, whereas in relation to the latter, although constraints can serve a destabilizing function they can simultaneously prevent disruption of group coordination (Harrison & Rouse, 2014).
2.4 Informal Practices of Coordination—Emerging Patterns
A different perspective in practice-based coordination emphasizes the importance of the informal emergent aspects of coordination (McEvily et al., 2014; Valentine & Edmondson, 2015; Bruns, 2014; Okhuysen & Bechky 2009; Bechky, 2006). This perspective is less concerned with optimizing structures for a given environment, and instead considers coordination as it happens, thus under conditions of task interdependence and uncertainties (Faraj & Xiao, 2006), assuming that people in organizations must coordinate to work regardless of the organizational design (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). It highlights a dynamic nature of coordination thus focusing on dynamic issues like communication (Ballard & Seibold, 2003), dialogic coordination (Faraj & Xiao, 2006), cooperation (Pinto, Pinto, & Prescott, 1993), knowledge sharing (Bechky, 2003; Charlile, 2002) and interaction (Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 1999), noting that formal structures and planned responses are inadequate for the task and that emergent group responses are necessary to achieve group coordination (Majchrzak et al., 2007).
Informal emergent aspects of coordination are important to consider as they help deal with unplanned contingencies and emergent interdependencies (Kellogg et al., 2006), focusing on the need for a dynamic understanding of emergent, adaptive coordination in teams (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). By exploring coordination practices in the context of high task uncertainty, widely distributed expertise, and fluid interdependencies, practice studies adopting a dynamic view of coordination add important insights into how creative temporary teams integrate specialist knowledge (Bruns, 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2012).
For example, in a study of expertise coordination in medical trauma teams facing high uncertainty, Faraj and Xiao (2006) show that complex and highly interdependent medical work relied on emergent, partially improvised coordination practices, while Bechky and Okhuysen (2011) demonstrated that for unexpected events, police SWAT teams and film production crews coordinated expertise by flexibly shifting roles, reorganizing routines, and reassembling their work.
This perspective also associates with formal role coordination where several authors argue that roles might coordinate activity not only through formal role structure but also through action (Barley and Kunda 2001). This interactionist approach to roles focuses on the way individuals can construct and reconstruct social arrangements through role-taking: role structures are a general framework, but individuals enact their own roles in relation to particular tasks (Turner, 1986). It suggests that to understand how roles might function as coordinating practices, role structures cannot be taken as given, but must be viewed in light of the actions taken by people who occupy them. Sociological literature on role theory explains that there is a interplay between role structure and role enactment where roles represent expectations associated with social positions, and therefore can facilitate continuity of behaviour over time while at the same time, roles can be loosely and dynamically structured, as expectations are negotiated in interaction (Bechky, 2006).
Therefore, many studies show and many operating environments rely on, the efficacy of roles in facilitating temporary non-programmed coordination in creative dynamic settings like fire-fighting, trauma departments, or film crews (Bechky 2006; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Klein et al. 2006) suggesting that even when roles encode responsibility, some unscripted interaction is required to execute shared work often referred to as “constrained improvisation” (Bigley and Roberts 2001). People must flexibly react to changing environments or changing task demands within the scope of their highly specified roles (Valentine & Edmondson, 2014).
Coordination mechanisms therefore need to have sufficient flexibility to cope with the uncertainty (Argote 1982, Thompson 1967), novelty (Adler 1995), and problem complexity (Adler 1995, Ching et al. 1992, Crowston 1997) of the organizational activities and the outputs that they are intended to organize, something that recognizes their dynamic nature.
2.5 Dynamic Interaction Between Formal and Informal—Team Developmental Process
As the dynamic coordination mechanisms described above need to adapt to the interdependent working of actors, there is a tension in the coordination literature between their reification as standardized procedures and the way that they are enacted in practice, identifying both structural and enacted dimensions of coordinating mechanisms (Jarzabkowski, Lê, & Feldman, 2012). Consequently, the rather static view of coordinating mechanisms based on standardized rules and procedures (Ching et al., 1992) adopted in much research has a number of limitations (Okhuysen and Bechky 2009; Bate et al. 2000; Adler 1995) including that it tends to overlook the processual way that people perform activities on an on-going basis in order to cope with the challenges of coordinating tasks that may change over time (Adler 1995, Bate et al., 2000). Research based on a static view of coordination has focused on those activities that can be measured and formalized at a point in time, rather than examining how such activities emerge as actors attempt to perform coordinated organizational outputs over time (Okhuysen and Bechky 2009).
Following a structurationist perspective, recent analyses of organizational routines in temporary organizations therefore describe routines not as fixed programs or rules, but as patterns of action that emerge in the context of organizational structures (Pentland and Rueter 1994, Feldman and Pentland 2003). These and other practice-oriented examinations of organizations (Orlikowski 2002, Carlile 2002) thus implicate an approach to coordination that analyzes how structure and action interrelate in accomplishing the work (Bechky, 2006), giving support to the view that it is in the interplay between formal organization and informal structures that several key issues in organization theory are most effectively addressed (Barley, 1996, 1990, 1986; Salancik, 1995).
According to McEvily et al., (2014), an organization is an elaborate architecture of multiplex ties, both formally designed and informally emergent, that channels information, knowledge, and resources to actors, therefore the complex chemistry between formal and informal elements, and their joint impact on outcomes and performance, calls for an integrated approach.
Along this line, in creative temporary groups, recent work on coordination hints at how formal and informal mechanisms can be integrated in such a way to infuse flexibility into their coordination patterns. For example, research focusing on how organizations or groups respond to disasters, crises, or surprises emphasizes how collectives prepare or repurpose existing resources to coordinate for the unexpected, drawing from work on improvisation (Harrison & Rouse, 2014), where the more simultaneous planning and action allows groups to manage unexpected challenges (Moorman & Miner, 1998). Harrison & Rouse (2014) suggest that this literature hints at the need for autonomy and constraints in the same way jazz musicians coordinate during a jam through improvisation, and more specifically by using autonomy to riff or diverge from the group while working within the constraints imposed by the song’s structure and a shared vocabulary of licks (Barrett, 1998). Similarly, SWAT teams are afforded the freedom to elaborate on tasks, but they also draft plans that constrain their actions (Bechky & Okhuysen, 2011).
Research focusing on the dynamic interaction between formal and informal coordination mechanisms in a temporary organization also suggests a set of structuring mechanisms that can be used to rapidly alter formal organizational structure through the enhancement of organizational flexibility and reliability (Bigley & Roberts, 2001), including role switching, where personnel are either moved into newly created roles or discharged whenever the appropriate role structure for an emergency situation changes, and authority migrating which relates to the distribution of critical expertise for solving problems associated with a particular situation. Through these mechanisms supervisors provide subordinates with a degree of latitude to improvise, that is, to activate and coordinate their own routines and to apply novel tactics to unexpected problems. As a result the detailed pattern of behaviors occurring at any point in time is a consequence of the interplay between relatively centralized and explicit structuring and more diffuse local accommodation and improvisation (Bigley & Roberts, 2001).
The different perspectives described offer key insights into the coordination of creative groups in temporary organizations operating in uncertain conditions and environments which lead to conclude that an integrated approach should go beyond simply considering the independent effects of formal and informal elements on organizational functioning and patterns of interaction (McEvily, et al., 2014) to also articulating the logic by which formal and informal elements are co-organized and co-determinant of outcomes (Soda & Zaheer, 2012). This way we can also comprehend how patterns of interactions in organizations emerge, evolve, and dissolve over time (Ahuja, Soda, & Zaheer, 2012; Zenger, Lazzarini, & Poppo, 2002).
In this line, McEvily et al (2014) suggest that due to the fact that “the mechanisms describing the interplay between formal and informal elements are less well-understood” we first need to clarify the conditions under which formal and informal elements interact, and second, study the origins and evolution of organizational interactions by jointly considering their formal and informal bases, that is understand the extent to which informal interactions “follow” from the formally designed and imposed organizational elements.
More specifically, in the case of multidisciplinary teams, the literature on formal structural designs has largely overlooked the process whereby coordination unfolds when interdependencies among specialists are partly unknown and change unpredictably (Grandori & Soda, 2006; Puranam & Raveendran, 2013; Sherman & Keller, 2011), even though formal structural designs appear critical for coordinating the integration of specialists (Puranam et al., 2012). But even practice based literature on how coordination unfolds on the ground that offers important insights on how emerging interdependencies are informally managed under uncertainty (Bechky & Okhuysen, 2011; Faraj & Xiao, 2006) has paid little attention to the structural context in which coordination practices unfold, and thus overlooks the possibility that existing formal structures may not only inhibit but also support the integration of specialists’ efforts under a variety of unpredictable circumstances (Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai, 2004; Hollenbeck, Ellis, Humphrey, Garza, & Ilgen, 2011; Jelinek & Schoonhoven, 1990; Pennings, 1992).
In line with McEvily et al.’s (2014) more general observation that “it is essential to clarify the conditions under which formal and informal elements interact and study the origins and evolutions of these interactions by jointly considering their formal and informal bases”, this study draws on qualitative fieldwork in temporary organizations to illuminate how formal coordination structures and informal coordination practices not only co-evolve (Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, & Shneider, 2016) but can also lead toward creative group coordination via methods that go against current coordination beliefs.
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Georgiades, S. (2022). Literature Review. In: Organization Management – Dynamic Creative Team Coordination. Edition Digital Science(). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37509-6_2
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