W e investigate how multiple actors accomplish interdependent routine performances directed at novel intended outcomes and how this affects routine dynamics over time. We report findings from a longitudinal ethnographic study in an automotive company where actors developed a new business model around information-based services. By analyzing episodes involving interdependent routines, we develop a process model of routine work and dynamics across routines. We identify three types of routine work (flexing, stretching, and inventing) that generate increasingly novel actions and outcomes. Flexed, stretched, and invented performances create emerging consequences for further actions across routines and surface differences between actors that could lead to breakdowns of routine work. Actors respond to such consequences through iterative and cascading episodes of routine work. We discuss how our findings provide new insights in efforts to create variable routine performances and the consequences of interdependence for routine dynamics.
In this paper, we explain how managers establish resource complementarity during their strategizing efforts for interorganizational collaboration. Based on a longitudinal field study at an automotive company, we show that resource complementarity is not given but jointly constructed in interactions with multiple potential partners through recursive cycles of what we refer to as "prospective resourcing." Prospective resourcing mediates the interplay of strategizing and collaboration, thereby reversing the prevailing logic that strategy precedes and determines collaboration. Our findings offer insight into resourcing as a mechanism for developing strategic initiatives and shows how external actors may influence strategizing. We thank a large number of AutoCo employees and their (potential) partners for participating in this research. We are grateful for the helpful and challenging comments on earlier versions of this paper by Elco van Burg,
Qualitative process research is becoming increasingly popular, yet authors often struggle with creating an effective write-up. Process articles must demonstrate a close-knit link between process data and process theory, and, at the same time, engage the reader. This requires trade-offs among options for composing the presentation of narratives, concepts, and theoretical process models. This essay distinguishes three compositional structures authors can use to write up their findings—inductive, conceptualized, and model-led. We discuss their key characteristics, pros and cons, and conditions for effective use and offer exemplars for inspiration.
This paper aims to advance our conceptual understanding of design collaboration, a domain-specific subset of collaboration skills that emphasises knowledge-sharing and knowledge-integration processes. This paper explores how design collaboration skills develop along with design expertise across three stages of experience. First-year bachelor students, master students, and design professionals took part in a design game to investigate their design collaboration skills. We assessed their design collaboration skills by analysing their sessions for the degree and quality of knowledge sharing and integration using a reflective practice analysis and an interpretative analysis of their conversation. It was found that the first-year bachelor students and the professionals outperformed the master students in terms of collaborative design performance. In finding this nonlinear relationship, we highlight the need to distinguish between design expertise and design collaboration skills and to treat them as independent concepts when assessing design team performance. Finally, through an interpretive analysis, we developed a typology of design collaboration approaches at the three stages of experience.
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