Thinking, saying and doing across boundaries of practice: Cognition, norms and performances in collaborative projects

Transcription

1 Thinking, saying and doing across boundaries of practice: Cognition, norms and performances in collaborative projects Nick Marshall CENTRIM Centre for Research in Innovation Management University of Brighton Building Cultural Alliances in Projects, ESRC Seminar Series on Cultural Issues in Project Organisation, University of Manchester, 17 th May 2012

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3 Introduction Multiple boundaries of project work Roles, functions and organisational affiliations assumed to have their own language, beliefs, norms, and identities Differences depicted as deeply embedded and difficult to change Attempts to modify these through a range of mechanisms designed to promote collaboration Collaboration and shared project cultures, but what, if anything, needs to be shared: Cognition? Language? Activity?

4 Thinking, saying, and doing Cognitive approaches Shared mental models (schema, belief systems, scripts, heuristics, assumptions) Theories of language and discourse Language communities Discursive formations Theories of practice Interlocking norms and routines performed within specific shared contexts of action

5 a theory of social practice emphasizes the relational interdependency of agent and world, activity, meaning, cognition, learning, and knowing. It emphasizes the inherently socially negotiated character of meaning, and the interested, concerned character of the thought and action of persons-in-activity Lave and Wenger (1991, pp )

6 when the locus of knowledge and learning is situated in practice, the focus moves to a social theory of action that addresses activity and passivity, the cognitive and the emotional, mental and sensory perception as bits and pieces of the social construction of knowledge and of the social worlds in which practices assume meanings and facticity. Gherardi (2001, p.134)

7 "Human beings can ride in formation, not because they are independent individuals who posses the same habits, but because they are social agents, linked by a profound mutual susceptibility, who constantly modify their habituated individual responses as they interact with others, in order to sustain a shared practice. (Barnes, 2001)

8 Integrating knowledge across boundaries Carlile (2002, 2004) Transferring Common lexicon for sharing information across syntactic boundaries Translating Developing shared meanings and interpretations across semantic boundaries Transforming Developing common interests, establishing common ground, and negotiating changes to domain-specific knowledge at stake Trading zones Kellogg, Orlikowski and Yates (2006) Display Making work visible to others through shared information Representation Making work legible to others through project genres; shared forms of communication that permit multiple meanings to coexist Assembly Juxtaposing existing work through modification and recomposition, aligned through provisional settlements

9 Negotiated orders and power Project organising as a temporary stabilisation of practices involving intersecting institutional work Theories of practice emphasise political character of negotiation, but lack an extensive theory of power Different modalities of power Power over: personalised, transactional, episodic, involves power resources Power to: anonymous, normalisation, taken-for-granted, decentred Interplay between these emerges from unfolding situations of practice

10 Issues of method Qualitatively different practices Thinking Problems of observability Saying Problems of representation Doing Problems of intelligibility

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12 Company policy to introduce Waste Management Plan Manager from head office visits the programme team to explain the policy Emphasises financial and business benefits for the company of reducing waste Assumes that members of the team support this view Members of the team respond by criticising this rationale. I d like to hear the company say this is what you should do because it s the right thing to do Widely shared view despite differences in role and organisation

13 Change of owners and senior management team leading to a major reorganisation Emphasis on improving efficiency and focusing on business critical activities Environmental considerations become a matter of compliance with an even stronger focus on economic rationality Programme team management becomes more defensive and conformist Programme team must demonstrate a minimum target of efficiency savings Team members told to do the right thing depending on their personal beliefs, but that this must not interfere with questions of efficiency

14 It s the money thing isn t it? How far would you go to pay to have good environmental consequences So money always comes into it and that s why the word sustainability is always thrown in there because sustainability doesn t mean saving up things now so that you can use them later on in the day. That s what it should mean. Doing things now that mean we exist and we can function in the future is what sustainable means in my view. But what it means to us is not doing this if it doesn t pay back. Sustainable means can the company afford it. Because if it can t afford to do these things even though it wants to do them, it won t exist. Programme team leader

15 Episode 1 Pre-reorganisation Thinking Saying Doing Manager from head office assumes the team shares his beliefs about new environmental procedures Team members object to financial framing of environmental issues, although not to actual procedure Manager from head office sells business benefits of WMPs Criticise manager from head office Shared activity of monthly full team meeting Adopt new procedure

16 Episode 2 Post-reorganisation Thinking Saying Doing Personal beliefs about importance of environmental responsibility Conflict between private and public beliefs Views about environmental concerns confined to team PTL justifies position by using same rationale as head office manager Shared activity of monthly team meeting PTL instructs teams to do what their conscience tells them, but put efficiency first

17 Conclusion Coordination of social action does not necessarily require complete consistency between thinking, saying and doing indeed, mismatches between these drive practices of inquiry Projects as intersecting social worlds; but people are accomplished at navigating between different situations Danger of removing tensions and equating collaboration with consensus power both constitutes and constrains Importance of a situational perspective interplay between thinking/saying/doing shifts according to specific configurations of people, things, ideas, and activities

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