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In our study of an interactive marketing organization, we examine how members of different communities perform boundary-spanning coordination work in conditions of high speed, uncertainty, and rapid change. We find that members engage in a number of cross-boundary coordination practices that make their work visible and legible to each other, and that enable ongoing revision and alignment. Drawing on the notion of a "trading zone," we suggest that by engaging in these practices, members enact a coordination structure that affords cross-boundary coordination while facilitating adaptability, speed, and learning. We also find that these coordination practices do not eliminate jurisdictional conflicts, and often generate problematic consequences such as the privileging of speed over quality, suppression of difference, loss of comprehension, misinterpretation and ambiguity, rework, and temporal pressure. After discussing our empirical findings, we explore their implications for organizations attempting to operate in the uncertain and rapidly changing contexts of postbureaucratic work.
Key words: knowledge; information technology; new organizational forms; work practices; trading zone; cross-boundary coordination
Contemporary scholars have suggested that firms are shifting away from traditional modes of organizing to meet new demands for flexibility, speed, and uncertainty. Child and McGrath (2001, pp. 1139-1140) argue that in our new "postmodern world," economies are based on "flows of information" rather than on materials. As a result, systems are interdependent across firm boundaries, performance is disembodied from ownership of assets, production and communication change rapidly, and new power asymmetries arise as control of tangible assets loses influence to control of information. In the context of such economic and organizational shifts, the core competencies of firms become dependent on adaptive capacity rather than specialized routines (Rindova and Kotha 2001, Stark 2001, Volberda 1996), and on horizontal collaborations of diverse groups rather than vertical chains of command (Barley 1996).
This changing context raises an important question for organization theorists-do participants in emerging organizational circumstances use the same processes of coordination and knowledge sharing that are effective in more stable and hierarchical settings? And, if not, how do organizational actors coordinate across boundaries in the postbureaucratic conditions where operations are emergent and fast changing, goods and services are intangible and informational, authority is distributed, and accountability uncertain?
Prior organizational research has yielded valuable studies of cross-boundary coordination and knowledge sharing...