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Toward the Microfoundations of Interorganizational Coordination: The Experience of Artifacts as a Coordination Mechanism Amid Pervasive Conflict

McBride, S. Mercedes
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4688-9119
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1656428336299382

Abstract Details

2022, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Organizational Behavior.
Interorganizational project structures, typified in the construction industry, are highly equivocal and interdependent contexts that require coordination amid pervasive conflict. Although organizations are typically considered the unit of analysis in interorganizational coordination, it is the individual organizational representatives who are responsible for the ‘on the ground’ coordinative efforts. In a two-year-long ethnography of an interorganizational construction project, I explored how individual organizational representatives used artifacts and their associated sensate experience to manage conflict and resolve felt tension in order to coordinate. The theorized process model I developed shows how the most productive interactions among organizational representatives involved creating an artifactual experience, comprising interaction with an artifact that evoked a meaningful aesthetic experience. In project team meetings, organizational representatives would use artifacts such as building plans, models, and prototypes to create an artifactual interaction comprising four interactive dimensions of revealing, engaging with, commentating on, and proximally positioning to the artifact. In so doing, the bodily senses of the organizational representatives were engaged in an aesthetic experience. Through the synchrony in attention and shared aesthetic experience, project team members experienced increases in collective energy that cut through the felt tension that would emerge in team meetings. Rather than resolving interorganizational conflicts, the collective energy helped project team members to co-construct a salient line of discourse for the team, which took the form of a decision or provisional agreement that became the next concrete step in a path forward. My findings on experience-as-coordination-mechanism suggest that embodied forms of knowledge such as felt tension, aesthetic experience, and collective energy are important for understanding interorganizational—and not just interpersonal or intrateam—coordination. The elements of the artifactual experience highlight how participants enact objects and materials as coordination mechanisms in interorganizational contexts, complementing accounts of boundary objects in interprofessional environments. These insights bear implications for coordinating teamwork in a range of boundary-spanning environments.
John Paul Stephens (Committee Chair)
Ronald Fry (Committee Member)
Hans Hansen (Committee Member)
Richard Boland, Jr. (Committee Member)
Diana Bilimoria (Committee Member)
202 p.
Aesthetics; Behavioral Sciences; Management; Organizational Behavior
Coordination; Interorganizational Coordination; Coordination Mechanisms; Artifacts; Aesthetic Experience; Tension; Conflict; Construction Industry; Qualitative; Grounded Theory

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McBride, S. M. (2022). Toward the Microfoundations of Interorganizational Coordination: The Experience of Artifacts as a Coordination Mechanism Amid Pervasive Conflict [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1656428336299382

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McBride, S. Mercedes. Toward the Microfoundations of Interorganizational Coordination: The Experience of Artifacts as a Coordination Mechanism Amid Pervasive Conflict. 2022. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1656428336299382.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McBride, S. Mercedes. "Toward the Microfoundations of Interorganizational Coordination: The Experience of Artifacts as a Coordination Mechanism Amid Pervasive Conflict." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1656428336299382

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1656428336299382
183
© 2022, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.