Bridging Boundaries for Collaborative Ends Laura J. Black, Ph.D., Montana State University Siobhan O’Mahony, UC Davis GSM May 4, 2009 MSU ADVANCEnetwork

Bridging Boundaries for Collaborative Ends

Laura J. Black, Ph.D., Montana State University

Siobhan O’Mahony, UC Davis GSM

May 4, 2009

MSU ADVANCEnetworkScience in the Public Interest

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Overview: The Beauty of Sharing REALLY Bad Drafts Why collaborating is hard

Research: Reducing “disconnects” in large space system development programs

Summary of findings

*******

Guidelines for practice

Why Collaborating Is Hard

(at least one important reason)

4 4

Working Across Boundaries

What happens when expertise differs?

How do we THINK together?

5 5

Knowledge: Not JUST in Our Heads

Knowledge is DISTRIBUTED across…

…our THINKING…

…and the LOCATIONS where we use the TOOLS and PROCESSES we need to think and work.

…our ACTIVITIES

6 6

Remove any one of these…

…our THINKING…the LOCATIONS with

situated TOOLS and PROCESSES

…our ACTIVITIES

…and we know LESS

Knowledge—Not JUST in Our Heads

Research: “Disconnects” in Large Aerospace Programs

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Empirical Background Aerospace acquisition—very large product

development using technologies in new ways

Congressional authority, changing stakeholders

No chance to to learn from mistakes

Requirement to integrate expertise across Geographic settings

Disciplinary boundaries

Organizational lines

Society sectors

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Presenting Research Problem

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How can we reduce "disconnects" between the System Program Office and the prime contractor?

“Disconnects”: Latent differences in understanding that can negatively affect the

program if they remain undetected or unresolved.

How can we “stay on the same page” as we do this long-horizon innovative work?

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Research Approach Conduct semi-structured and open-ended

interviews in System Program Office Causes of disconnects

Ways to reduce disconnects, stay "on the same page"

Qualitatively analyze data to identify themes and distill constructs

Construct simulation model of causal relationships to test competing explanations

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What the SPO said… “We need people who can WRITE requirements.”

“Poor Lt.Col. S—he didn’t know what the contractor gave him was crap.”

“It takes the integrated product teams a long time to understand the consequence of a proposed change.”

“The Engineering Change Board is too slow—by the time a change is approved, the contractor’s understanding of the change has changed.”

“The problem is that requirements keep changing—even entire stakeholder groups change.”

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Competing Explanations

…people can't communicate…the SPO lacks expertise…people are TOO SLOW in making

sense of proposed changes…people (esp. in the SPO) are TOO

SLOW to act…shifting requirements cause

disconnects

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Modeling SPO-Contractor Interactions

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KTR = ContractorSPO = System Program Office

System Program Office (SPO)

Observe

Orient

Decide

Act

Observe

Orient

Decide

Act

Contractor (KTR)

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Modeling Chain of Interactions 4-player "intellectual supply chain"

SPO, Contractor, Subcontractor, Vendor

Baseline: organization's collective understanding of work-to-be-done Technical, financial, schedule baselines

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Baseline

Clarity of BaselineCommunication Sent

OrientationExpertise Level

Observation andOrientation Delay

PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline

Decision andAction Delay

RequirementChanges to

Baseline

Initial Baseline

RequirementChanges Switch

Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline


<RequirementChanges to Baseline>

Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



Baseline

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• SPO• Contractor• Sub-Contractor• Vendor

EXPERTISE—AFFECTING

ORIENTATION

COMMUNICATION CLARITY

DELAYS IN OBSERVING AND

ORIENTING

DELAYS IN DECIDING AND ACTING

CHANGING REQUIREMENTS

What causes disconnects?

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What causes disconnects?

16

Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline


RequirementChanges to

Baseline

Initial Baseline

RequirementChanges Switch

Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



Baseline

• SPO• Contractor• Sub-Contractor• Vendor

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Simulation Base CaseGovernment and Contractor Baselines

200

150

100

50

0

44

44

4 4 44

4 4

33

33

33 3

33 3

22

2 2 22

22

22

2

11 1

11

1 1 11 1

1

0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60Months

SPO Baseline Widgets1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

KTR Baseline Widgets2 2 2 2 2 2 2

SUB Baseline Widgets3 3 3 3 3 3 3

VEN Baseline Widgets4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

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Disconnect index 2529

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Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



Simulated Scenario: Turning Off the “Requirements Grenade”

Scenario: Turn the Requirement Changes Switch “off” (no party receives external requirements changes)

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Explanation: Disconnects arise from “out there”—because external stakeholders change requirements

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Simulated Scenario:Turning Off the “Requirements Grenade”

Government and Contractor Baselines

200

150

100

50

0

4

44

4

44

44

443

3

33

3 33

33 32 2

22

2 22

22

2

211 1

1 1

1 11

1 11

0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60Months





Disconnect index 2288—only a 9.5% improvement

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Simulated Scenario: Speeding Up the SPO

Scenario Speeding-1: Reduces the SPO’s decision and action delay from 5 months to 1

Scenario Speeding-2: Reduces the SPO’s observation and orientation delay from 5 months to 1

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Explanation: If the SPO oriented and acted more quickly, fewer disconnects would result

Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



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Simulated Scenario Speeding-1: Speeding Up the SPO–Accelerating Decision and Action


200

150

100

50

0

4

4

4

4

44 4

4

4 4

3

3

3

3

3 3 33

3 3

2 22 2 2 2

22

22

2

1

1

1

1 1

1

1

1 1 1

1

0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60Months





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Disconnect index 2635—a 4.2% deterioration

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Simulated Scenario Speeding-2: Speeding Up the SPO–Accelerating Observation and Orientation


200

150

100

50

0

44

44

4 4 44 4 4

33

33

3 3 33 3

3

22

2 22 2

22

2 2

2

1 11

1 1 1 1

1

1 11

0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60Months





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Disconnect index 1918—a 24.1% improvement

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What We Learned About Disconnects Disconnects

…do not result from big changes from “out there”

…are good, if you have confidence you can rapidly assimilate their implications

…cause changes that, when “open” too long, spawn exponentially more follow-on changes!

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How to Stay on the Same Page Increase expertise

Put the best people on the project at the start

Design socially constructed resolutions as well as technically designed solutions

Iterating more times, more quickly, on less-perfect information produces better outcomes

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How to Stay on the Same Page Orient 5 to 8 times for every big act!

Cycle through the OODA loop more times but with less drastic action each time

Each time you communicate, use some kind of representation! "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" Remember, knowledge isn't JUST all in our heads—we need to

see and touch things to "know"

Use your representations as “boundary objects”

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How to Stay on the Same Page Boundary objects: Artifacts enabling people to

collaborate effectively across some boundary Open to multiple interpretations by each party

Representing key dependencies among players

Hiding a lot of details—"Impoverished replicas” of the salient shared dependencies

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To be a boundary object (not a bludgeoning tool) the artifact must be transformable by all parties

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Why “Boundary Objects” Help Leverage points in the simulated world

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Baseline




PerceivedBaseline

AdjustingBaseline



Helps compensate for low expertise levels and leverages

high expertise levels

Helps compensate for differences in organizations, relative expertise, knowledge domains, timing and location

of collaborators

Helps shorten the time to understand

changes

Enabling Cumulative Innovation Through Collaboration with Unexpected Allies

Siobhan O’MahonyUC Davis GSM

ADVANCEnetwork “Science in the Public Interest”

Montana State University May 4, 2009

Overview

• The conditions that enable or hinder cumulative innovation

• 2 in depth examples of unexpected allies learning to collaborate:– The case of open source vs industry– The case of Dupont vs academia

• Principles for fostering collaboration with unexpected allies – to achieve cumulative innovation

Cumulative Innovation

• Cumulative innovation: repurposing or recombining pre-existing ideas to foster new innovations (adapted from Scotchmer, 1991, 2005).

• Assumption: Recombinatory processes are not inherent to an innovation itself. They are inherently behavioral and shaped by the institutions in which they are embedded (Mokyr, 2004; Murray and O’Mahony, 2007)

Institutions Supporting Cumulative Innovation are

Under-theorized

• Organizational scholars have studied what affects the structure and flow of knowledge

• However, for innovation to occur, knowledge must not just flow; it must be understood and recombined in new ways

• However, we know little about the social or institutional factors that affect an innovator’s ability or willingness to recombine knowledge.

What Enables Cumulative Innovation?

1. Disclosure – to build on pre-existing knowledge one must know of it

2. Accessibility – to use knowledge developed by others, one must have access to make use of it

3. Validation – one must be able to replicate and validate prior knowledge to make use of it (Murray and O’Mahony, 2007)

The over-riding research question: What role do organizations and institutions play in enabling or inhibiting these conditions?

Cumulative Innovation: Informal and Formal Mechanisms

Antecedents Informal Formal

Disclosure Publications, research communities, conferences

Patent filings, NDAs, Trade secrets

Accessibility References, source code, material libraries

Licenses, patent commons, open licenses, standards, cell banks

Validation Peer review systems, academic norms encourage replication and falsification

Patent examiners, cell banks,

The cumulative perspective shifts attention from ‘who knows who?’ to ‘who can

share, build upon and reuse knowledge?’

and, most importantly,

‘under what conditions?’

Case #1: Open Source vs Industry

from: O’Mahony & Bechky, 2008

The “Linux Uprising” did not happen by the community alone.

Some firms played an important role.

Yet, open source communities were

challenging the proprietary model of

software development.

How did these unexpected allies ever

collaborate?

Divergent InterestsOS Projects Firms

Maintain communal form: informal collegial project

practices and working norms

Influence project direction to align with firm strategy and

time table

Maintain individual technical autonomy

Acquire more predictability in the software development

process to foster firm planning

Preserve transparency and open access to code

development, in order to foster full participation in

community decision-making

Pursue partnership and collaboration opportunities

with discretion

Sustain project’s vendor independence

Establish governance mechanisms to shape a

project’s future

But areas of mutual interest also existed….

“Commercial interests brought in a lot of problems that did not use to be there, like new interesting technical problems, like what do you do with terabyte disks and large scale clustering? Things that many technical people are kind of interested in but they never get to actually play with…

For example, there’s a lot of people who are interested in doing performance work on extreme loads and the only place where that actually happens is the commercial setting” (Founder, Linux kernel project)

Convergent Interests

OS Projects Firms

Enhance technical capability, performance and portability of

software for use in the enterprise

Acquire access to technical expertise and improve recruitment of skilled

programmers

Improve individual skill through exposure to new commercial

performance challenges

Collaborate with skilled experts to solve difficult technical

problems; learn how source code can be customized to solve customer problems

Achieve commercial legitimacy and recognition – establish

traditional marketing channels

Alleviate power of industry monopoly and enhance their

own market share

Enhance project’s market share and diffusion

Increased margins through reduced licensing fees

Domains of Adaptation

Communities and Firms adapted their organizing practices in these four areas and reinforced them with the creation of boundary organization:

1. Governance2. Membership3. Ownership4. Control Over Production

Boundary Organizations• Boundary objects can help translation across

different knowledge sharing communities

• Boundary organizations facilitate collaboration between scientists and non-scientists by remaining accountable to both – Are often created through legislation to bridge

science and politics

• “Boundary organizations..involve people from both communities but play a distinctive role that would be difficult or impossible for organizations in either community to play” (Scott, 2000: 15).

1) Governance• Creating a Project Representation – “If [this] had

been all over the newspaper…then Sun may never had adopted [GUI desktop project] because they would say, “Well we can’t do this. We can’t talk to these guys without being in the public eye, therefore we cannot have exploratory conversations. Therefore we cannot do business with them, right?”

• Preserving Pluralistic Control – “This is about openness and democracy and no corporate influence poisoning the whole thing….Some of them are pretty heavy handed, some of these folks are saying things like, ‘if we don’t have a board member, we will not join this movement. We must be on the board of directors.”...I’m not sure that our hacker community is ready for that.”

1) Governance

Organizing Practices Adapted

Interests Satisfied

Open Source Software Projects

Firms

Creating project representation

Provides open access and

participatory processes

Reduces ambiguity and provides

some degree of discretion

Preserving pluralistic control

Ensures independent &

collective control without undue firm influence

Provides some voice on project

direction without direct control

2) Membership

Defining Rights of Members - “What we were trying to do as a Foundation is have our own entity that could be on an equal footing with these companies, that could represent the community interests, right?”

Sponsoring Contributors – “They understood this effectively that you know [Webserver Project] was not an industry consortium, right? It was a collection of individuals, so when an individual [Fortune 500 Firm] engineer got core commit access, if that individual left and went somewhere else to work on [the project], they would still have the same status within [the project].”

2) Membership


Interests Satisfied


Firms

Defining Rights of Members

Preserves individual basis of

membership and independence of the community

Firms cannot gain formal rights, only sponsor contributors

Sponsoring Contributors

Provides additional resources to help project improve

Offers firms a means of direct

access to development

process

3) Ownership

• Obtaining Work Assignment Rights – “I looked at it and said no I am not going to sign. And we changed like five words. And basically it was adding an ‘except for Linux’.”

• Developing Contribution Agreements –At one Webserver Project meeting, members debated whether sponsored contributors should submit a disclaimer from their employers in addition to contribution agreements.

• Managing Code Donation - “When Sun and IBM donated code to us, they signed contracts that said we sign over copyright… we can consider that our code. And thus the [project] Foundation is liable for it.”

3) Ownership


Interests Satisfied


Firms

Obtaining Work Assignment Rights

Reinforces individual autonomy and independence

Ensures clear provenance of

code

Developing Contribution Agreements

Ensures clear provenance of code,

preserves access

Ensures clear provenance of

code, preserves access

Managing Code Donation

Enhances technical quality and reach of

the project

Improves efficiency from having to

manage separate code base

4) Control of Production

Community Control of Code Contribution - “The challenge we have is.. to figure out a way to keep the power with the hackers and provide an environment where players like Sun Microsystems or IBM or Compaq or smaller companies can be part of this [open source]”

Managing Technical Direction – “This is a public project. The goals for that are discussed in public, they're made by, the community…And so that's not controlled by any company”

4) Control of Production


Interests Satisfied


Firms

Community Control of Code

Contribution

Allows community to preserve

autonomy and independence

Allows firms visibility into code

development & access through

sponsored contributors

Managing Technical Direction

Allows community to preserve

autonomy and independence

Firms have informal influence on code

development through sponsored

contributors

The Emergent Triadic Role Structure

Open Source Communities

• Retain their technical autonomy

• Continue to make technical decisions through peer review

• Retain a controlling interest on governance issues

Firms

• Support projects• May try to

influence technical priorities

• Do not obtain direct decision making or ownership rights

• May use community work for profit with proper acknolwedgement

Boundary Organizations

(Non-Profit Foundations)

• Hold the community’s assets & intellectual property rights

• Mediate corporate interests where relevant

Case #2: Dupont vs academia

From: Murray, 2009

The Creation of the Oncomouse

• 1984 Phil Leder & Tim Stewart, Harvard University, develop the “Oncomouse

• First mouse with specific genes inserted that predispose the mouse to cancer – an important advance to understand the role of genes in cancer

• Files patent application July 1984

• Publishes findings in Cell October 1984

• Patent granted to Harvard 1988- -US Patent # 4,736,866 - licensed exclusively to DuPont

• Mouse is distributed thru suppliers but DuPont places licensing restrictions– “Reach-through”

rights, extend to all derived works

– “Article review” of all related publications

Academic Reaction & Response

• DuPont’s ‘reach-through’ rights ignite an uproar among scientists (Science, 1993) – imposes “normative transaction costs” on scientists (Murray 2005)

• NIH recruits a non-profit facility (Jackson Laboratory) to be a repository for genetically altered mice and act as “boundary organization” between community and commercial interests

• NIH, under Varmus, negotiates new terms with duPont to triage:– limit ‘reach-through’ rights

for research– retain them for commercial

purposes• Firms must buy a

commercial license• Scientific norms and

practices “trump” imposition of private interests in order to further cumulative research

The Role of Boundary Organizations

• Boundary organizations can organize parties around common innovation needs without compromising divergent interests

• They enable collaboration not by blurring boundaries, but by reinforcing shared interests and delineating where interests diverge

• Only by preserving the boundaries that separated parties with diverging interests could boundary organizations sustain their ability to represent either party.

• Thus, their job is not to collapse divergent social worlds but to preserve and bridge them.

Collaborating with Unexpected Allies

• Collaborators do not need to maintain a full set of shared interests

• Collaborators do not need to change their divergent interests – but must parse among these –– think triage between the

interests of academia and industry

1. Indentify the zone of shared interests for cumulative innovation

2. Recognize shared interests alone are not enough –

3. Adaptation of practices is required which may change collaborator role structures

4. A new organization may be required to preserve actors ability to pursue divergent interests

Breakout Discussion

1. What kinds of things do you collaborate on?

2. Where do these collaborations work well or break down?

3. Are these factors more likely to be internally or externally driven?

4. Have you collaborated with people that do not share your interests? Under what circumstances does this work?

5. Have you worked with a boundary organization before?

Consider This….

Of 4,227 life scientists over 30 years, women faculty patented their work at 40% the rate of men – holding productivity, social network, scientific field and employer characteristics constant (Ding et al, 2006)

– Patents are often an avenue to many types of rewards and recognition, consulting, advisory boards

– Male patent holders typically have higher paper counts, more NIH money, and more co-authorships with industry scientists

Why these Gender Differences?

• The “Larry Summers” explanation - women do research that is less commercially relevant– No – citation impact across gender not

significant• The “too busy” explanation – women are too

busy publishing and balancing family• The network explanation – women lack contacts

with industry – industry contacts were often precursor for patenting for men

• The “ambivalence” explanation- concern that engaging with the commercial sector might create negative signal value

Food for Thought

Who are you not collaborating with that could be beneficial?

Guidelines for Practice

The Beauty of Sharing REALLY Bad Drafts

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Guidelines for Practice The enacted strategy is in people's heads.

We can socially construct understanding to Build individual and collective chains of agreements

Anchor intangible agreements with tangible artifacts

We can manage OODA-loop pacing deliberately 5 to 8 iterations to stabilize a draft!

The drafts have to be BAD because it's too costly to make them good.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCI-0838317.

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Guidelines for Practice Deliberately socially construct shared

understanding Facilitate—(open, narrow, close)

Communicate Plan to iterate

Establish and manage pacing

Use ugly, public representations

Persist


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The Shape of a Good Facilitation

Summary: Make a mess…and clean it up!

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Example of Social Construction Around 1945, Duncan Hines and other

companies introduced instant cake mixes…just add water! THEY DID NOT SELL!

Why? Housewives indicated that just adding water degraded role as family baker—that wasn't real baking

Duncan Hines adjusted formulation…now must add an egg!

Result: Sales took off

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Planning to Iterate Are we talking to relevant stakeholders in the

timeframe they/we want? Consider "sponsors" as well as "collaborators"

Is iteration included in the work design?

Are there many small agreements rather than one agreement "big bang"?

How do the interim deliverables (artifacts) support the socially construction of our work?

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Pacing the Iteration Is the pacing fast enough to prevent being

“overcome by events”? The faster the environment is changing, the faster your

OODA cycles must be.

Does the plan include opening-out, narrowing, and closing activities? For EACH deliverable?

For the effort?


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Represent Work-In-Process Visually Visual artifacts always trail the non-observable

development of understanding

Visual representations help people recall Where they have been and

What they have agreed upon to this point


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Example of a REALLY Bad Draft

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Example of REALLY Bad Draft

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Share the Ugly Drafts Ugly documents invite “fixing”

Beautiful documents look finished and "correct"

Keeping it ugly until the end invites modification

Iterating faster with ugly drafts Produces better results than slow "perfection"

Is more effective at socially constructing agreements

Time-boxes work and makes it easier to manage along the way

Keeps costs low enough to iterate some more


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Why Ugly Is Really Beautiful Iterating with ugly drafts builds “buy-in”

Surfaces assumptions embedded in expertise

Provides more cues for our distributed cognition

Ugly drafts leave room for others to "add their egg"—creates true ownership in outcomes

Shared ownership and understanding is key to “uncontrolled” joint action


Additional Resources• F. Murray (forthcoming). "The Oncomouse that Roared: Hybrid

Exchange Strategies as a Source of Productive Tension at The Boundary Of Overlapping Institutions". American Journal of Sociology.

• O’Mahony, Siobhán and Beth Bechky. 2008. “Boundary Organizations: Enabling Collaboration Among Unexpected Allies,” Administrative Science Quarterly (53): 422-459.

• F. Murray and S. O'Mahony (2007). "Exploring the Foundations of Cumulative Innovation: Implications for Organization Science." Organization Science, Vol. 18, pp. 1006-1021.

• F. Murray and L. Graham (2007). "Buying Science & Selling Science: Gender Stratification in Commercial Science". Industrial and Corporate Change Special Issue on Technology Transfer, Vol. 16:4, pp. 657-689.

• W. Ding, F. Murray and T. Stuart (2006). "Gender Differences in Patenting in the Academic Life Scientists." Science , Vol. 313, pp. 665-667.

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Additional resources Black, L.J. and D.R. Greer, 2009, "You Meant What?! Socially

Constructing Shared Meaning," working paper Boyd, J. 1992. "A Discourse on Winning and Losing"

Note: Boyd did not appear to publish his research; documentation of some briefings may be found in Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, published in 2002 by Back Bay Books

Carlile, P.R. “A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries: Boundary Objects in New Product Development,” Organization Science,13, 2002.

Henderson, K., “Flexible Sketches and Inflexible Data Bases: Visual Communication, Conscription Devices, and Boundary Objects in Design Engineering,” Science, Technology & Human Values,16, 1991

Lave, Jean, Cognition in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988

Star, S.L. and J.R. Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39,” Social Studies of Science, 19, 1989.

Thank you!

Documents

Bridging Boundaries for Collaborative Ends Laura J. Black, Ph.D., Montana State University Siobhan O’Mahony, UC Davis GSM May 4, 2009 MSU ADVANCEnetwork