Suchergebnisse

Representations, such as graphs and images, have been shown to help facilitate communication and coordination across knowledge boundaries. Many studies examine representations' effects during and after interaction, characterizing them as tools that help communicate local understandings with individuals who have differing knowledge. This study explores whether the anticipation of building representations to communicate across knowledge boundaries significantly shapes a community's work. To explore this question, the study develops a theoretical framework that extends the concept of performativity and then presents ethnographic data from four weather research teams collaborating with different organizations to develop tailored forecasting technologies. Analysis reveals that researchers' need to represent weather model outputs to their partners shaped the practices they used to produce those models. By uncovering the presence and influence of "anticipatory work," the findings paint representations not as passive communicators of established knowledge but as catalysts that shape the form of routine work.

Research shows that teams comprised of individuals with differing knowledge are increasingly important to enabling innovation in organizations. Beyond diverse connections, research also shows individuals must be familiar with their collaborators' areas of expertise to effectively integrate knowledge. Despite growing recognition of the importance of familiarity for interdisciplinary collaboration, we argue that there is reason to suspect this form of relationship is likely to be particularly rare in organizations. We present an egocentric analysis of collaboration networks in a scientific organization, exploring factors associated with the copresence of interdisciplinary ties alongside familiarity with a collaborator's area of expertise. Our results demonstrate pressures toward similarity of expertise that minimized connections to differing alters. Furthermore, those respondents who had diverse connections tended to be unfamiliar with their distant collaborators' domains. Interaction counteracted this effect but participants reported pressures inhibiting interaction across knowledge boundaries. The findings demonstrate how network forces compound to inhibit what we call "different yet familiar" ties and, by doing so, offer conceptual and practical implications for contemporary organizations.