Organization Management – Dynamic Creative Team Coordination

Front matter

“| Edition Digital Science — Research

Stavros Georgiades Organization Management — Dynamic Creative Team Coordination

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Contents

I Mh are here 1

1:2. Statie View of Coordination ae 2

2.1 Coordination and Creative Groups: nun na 11

Introduction

“I suppose a good director is like a teacher. I think that someone like David Cronenberg was very much like a teacher, because there’s an openness, but a certain set of rules of behavior, and a certain conduct expected. But there’s an atmosphere that’s relaxed and conducive to exploration, and that is created by someone like Cronenberg”. Viggo Mortensen (Danish-American producer, actor, author, musician, photographer, poet and painter

Coordination is the process of interaction that integrates a collective set of interdependent tasks through coordination mechanisms like plans and rules, objects and representations, roles, routines and proximity (Okhuysen & Bechky 2009). However, in my grounded theory inductive qualitative study of two film crews what I have found was different: my observations revealed that, contrary to what one would expect, during a cyclical team developmental process that starts with formal coordination methods in the form of formal structures that include formal roles and specific role assignments, a creative team subsequently turns into uncoordinated methods in the form of informal practices to achieve team coordination, before its members finally revert back to their original formal roles at the end of a repetitive cycle. It is thus the use of uncoordinated methods that helps the creative team coordinate.

This “mystery” (Alvesson & Karreman 2007) led to the following question: How can creative team coordination, in a temporary organization, be achieved through methods that go against current coordination beliefs?

© The Author(s) 2022 1 S. Georgiades, Organization Management — Dynamic Creative Team Coordination, Edition Digital Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37509-6_1

2 1 Introduction

1.1 Coordination

The formal study of coordination began with formal mechanisms of coordination during the rationalization of manufacturing work through its design and the subsequent design of management systems, where planning formal elements of organizations featured prominently (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) with a focus on uncertainties such as production technology (Woodward, 1970), task complexity (Perroe, 1967), workflow integration (Hickson, Pugh & Pheysey, 1969) and task interdependence (Thompson, 1967). Coordination thus resulted from the specification of exchanges between areas of work through roles, rules and structures, where systems could be articulated with specificity and precision (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). In such formalisation, the rules governing behaviour are precisely and explicitly formulated and roles and role relations are prescribed independently of the personal attributes and relations of individuals (Scott & Davis, 2007).

1.2 Static View of Coordination

Consequently, studies on organizational design (Galbraith, 1973; Tushman & Nadler, 1978) and structural contingency theory (Burton & Obel, 2004; Donaldson, 2001; Thompson, 1967), propose formally designed team structures, prioritizing information-processing interactions (March & Simon, 1958; Puranam, Raveendran, & Knudsen, 2012), and promoting team members’ ability to coordinate their activities (Bresman & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2013; Bunderson & Boumgarden, 2010).

However, despite these efforts, it has been recognized that there is no one best way to organize (Adler 1995; Malone & Crowston 1994; Thompson 1967) as coordination mechanisms need to have sufficient flexibility to cope with uncertainty (Argote, 1982; Thompson, 1967), novelty (Adler, 1995), and problem complexity (Adler 1995; Ching, Holsapple & Whinston, 1992; Crowston, 1997). This led to the observation that these coordination mechanisms need to adapt to the interdependent working of actors and as a result the importance of the way these standardised procedures are enacted. This suggests tension between the standardised nature of tasks with rules to govern each activity and the mutual adjustment, informal communication and improvisation that occurs between actors to achieve tasks (Adler, 1995; Malone & Crowston 1994; Orlikowski 1996; Thompson 1967).

1.3 From Static to Dynamic Coordination 3

This static view of coordinating mechanisms thus has a number of limitations (Adler, 1995; Bate, Khan & Pye, 2000, Okhuysen & Bechky 2009) as hierarchies and rule-based systems have been found less useful in uncertain conditions (Argote 1982; Ching et al 1992; Crowston 1997), the way a service or technology is delivered through task coordinating is uncertain and hard to define and formalize (Faraj & Xiao 2006) and the processual way that people perform activities on an on-going basis in order to cope with the challenges of coordinating tasks that may change over time (Adler, 1995; Bate et al, 2000; Thompson 1967) has been overlooked by the literature.

1.3 From Static to Dynamic Coordination

The dynamic nature of coordinating mechanisms was considered by a new perspective that became evident because the boundaries of the organizations have blurred (Scott, 2004, Hargadon, 2003), interdependencies between different pieces of work may be uncertain or challenging to identify (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009), and the fact that the static view of coordinating mechanisms failed to account for unplanned contingencies. These issues were accounted for by literature looking into the dynamic nature of coordination and more specifically informal and emergent coordination practices. Examples of such practices include dialogic coordination (Faraj & Xiao, 2006) where coordination is accomplished on the ground as the work progresses (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009), emergent group responses to coordinate disaster relief (Majchrzak, Javernpaa & Hollingshead, 2007), and different types of mechanisms encapsulating how emergent practices assist in coordination including plans and rules, objects and representations, role, routines and proximity (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009).

This dynamic nature of coordination mechanisms has also appeared in the literature of multidisciplinary team coordination used for the management of interdependencies among specialists within a group (Bruns, 2013; Kotha, George, & Srikanth, 2013; Majchrzak, More, & Faraj, 2012; von Krogh, Nonaka, & Rechsteiner, 2012) due to the fact that these teams face unpredictable interdependencies due to high task uncertainty (Argote, Turner, & Fichman, 1989; Cardinal, Turner, Fern, & Burton, 2011; Gardner, Gino, & Staats, 2012). The literature considers the role of both formal and informal team coordination mechanisms.

4 1 Introduction

1.4 Creative Team Coordination

The dynamic nature of coordination becomes even more evident in creative group coordination because creativity seems to require a sense of independence from rules, restrictions, and even close relationships (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003) as creative work seems to happen outside the “ordinary grooves of thought and action” (Jevons, 1877; cited by Becker, 1995). On the one hand coordination of creative groups requires that group members enable the “fitting together” of activities (Argote, 1982) and the “organizing of individuals so that their actions are aligned” (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000) within an agreed upon “problem domain” (Bailetti, Caooahan, & DiPietro, 1994), the sum of these activities being labelled by Okhuysen and Bechky (2009) as “integration”. On the other hand coordination also requires allowing for independent work, which potentially enables “mis-fitting” interactions that can “mis-align actions” or push the group into unfamiliar “problem domains”, Harrison & Rouse (2014) labelling these countervailing interactions “de-integration”. To date, most theories of group creativity do not address the tensions from simultaneously needing to balance integration and de-integration, thus the need for a richer conceptual understanding of coordinating mechanisms that have sufficient flexibility (Jarzabkowski, Lé, & Feldman, 2012) to adapt to situations that require novelty.

1.5 _ Practice-based Perspective of Coordination

As this study takes a practice-based perspective, it is interesting to note that similar studies (Orlikowski, 2000) focusing on the coordination of knowledge work in teams as informally emerging patterns of interactions enacted through specialists’ everyday practices (Faraj & Xiao, 2006; Hargadon & Bechky, 2006; Kellogg, Orlikowski, & Yates, 2006) suggest that formally designed coordination structures may stifle knowledge creation (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009).

This disconnect between formal structures and informal practices of coordination is fundamental (Gulati & Puranam, 2009; Soda & Zaheer, 2012) and limits our understanding of how organizations function (McEvily, Soda, & Tortoriello, 2014; Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009), as there is a lack of in-depth analysis of the process through which formal coordination structures and informal coordination practices interact in multidisciplinary teams, thus how teams coordinate remains incomplete. We thus need to explain how formal structures evolve when facing unpredictable and changing interdependencies, and how informal coordination practices are shaped by such evolving formal structures (McEvily et al., 2014).

1.6 Static and Dynamic Coordination Perspectives Combined 5

1.6 Static and Dynamic Coordination Perspectives Combined

However, even considering how the two interconnect does not provide sufficient explanation of this study. Although the two are interconnected, and the evolvement of formal structures does lead to informal practices of coordination, this interconnection produced what is called “uncoordinated methods” which strangely enough generated group coordination.

In this research the author aims to explain what Alvesson & Karreman (2007) call a “mystery” aiming to advance our understanding on how, in a temporary organization, the interconnection of formal structures and informal practices during a team developmental process leads to team coordination via the emergence of “uncoordinated methods”. More specifically, the author aims to show the conditions under which these methods are not harmful but in fact beneficial to coordination. Also, I aim to contemplate how this dynamic coordination process is not linear but repeats itself in perpetual cycles, where an initial formal team structure gives rise to formal coordination methods which then lead to uncoordinated methods, in the form of informal practices, that help achieve team coordination before the process unwinds and the team reverts to its initial formal structure.

More specifically, through an in-depth process study of two film production crew the author explores how a team developmental process in a temporary organization unfolds, starting with formal role structures acting as a formal coordinating mechanism which then transforms into informal practices, that although one would expect to be “uncoordinating” in actual fact help the team coordinate via “de-integration” and more specifically an extension of the formal role borders up to the point where team members temporarily change duties and responsibilities before reverting to their original formal roles, in a process that repeats itself in perpetual cycles. The author is explicitly interested in the importance of the cyclical team developmental process, the conditions under which it unfolds, how this group dynamic coordination develops, and why creative group members engage in specific coordinating behaviours.

Unlike (Grandori & Soda, 2006; Hulsheger, Anderson, & Salgado, 2009; Puranam & Raveendran, 2013; McEvily et al., 2014) who explored the processes through which formal structures evolve and how informal coordination practices are then shaped, establishing the grounds for informal practice-based coordination (Bruns, 2013), the author also contemplates the evolvement of “uncoordinated methods” that explain how they help the team coordinate. My focus on the team developmental process highlighting the emergence of what one would expected

6 1 Introduction to be “uncoordinated methods” is in line with calls for a need for a dynamic understanding of emergent, adaptive coordination in teams (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) and for a richer conceptual understanding of coordinating mechanisms that have sufficient flexibility to adapt to situations that require novelty (Jarzabkowski, Lê, & Feldman, 2012) in a way where the group needs to accommodate developing new ideas that threaten coordination and yet integrate these ideas and remain cohesive (George, 2007).

My analysis of the fieldwork reveals a team developmental process during which coordination is achieved through the emergence of practices that would appear to deviate from and challenge coordinating methods. Also, the findings reveal team coordination as an on-going cycle of activities.

In relation to the former, the fieldwork reveals that creative group coordination in a temporary organization can be achieved through methods that one would expect to challenge traditional methods of team coordination. More specifically, my model suggests that within formal role structures and the subsequent informal creation of a sub-team, team members enact practices where the sub-team de-integrates, allowing its members to initially pull role constraints further, then stretch and finally relax them, thus allowing for the emergence of ideas and alternatives not previously considered and enabling creative work via unpredictability and new understandings. For this to occur, team roles and structure flexibly adjust before the sub-team finally dismantles and its members revert back to their original formal roles. The unfolding of this process highlights how informal “uncoordinated methods” in actual fact support the team to coordinate. More specifically, I was struck by the fact that although these methods contributed to a state of “de-integration” in reality they gave the group the opportunity to temporarily search for and discover new puzzles, options, and directions on the way to the final creative solution, before integrating back to their initial formal roles.

What was also unexpected was that the existence of constraints, including role constraints as well as constraints imposed by both the script and the need for coherence, did not only contribute towards team member interaction that favoured team coordination, but at the same time assisted team members to continuously advance their thoughts and reach a satisfactory level of creativity.

In relation to the latter, the emergent theoretical model considers creative team coordination in a temporary organization as a perpetual cyclical team developmental process.

More specifically, this study highlights the key role of the emergence of a changing sub-team created to face job interdependencies and the discovery of new issues by paying particular attention to its initial formation, dynamic

1.6 Static and Dynamic Coordination Perspectives Combined 7 re-structuring, revision, and final dismantling. This process is a necessary condition for creative group coordination because it allows for team members to integrate and de-integrate informally in such a way to be able to handle the interdependencies and new issues arising, while at the same time being creative.

As this process repeats itself with the shooting of a new scene, the model points to a cyclical team developmental process by explaining how, based on the scene’s specific needs, an initial sub-team is formed to handle the preliminary phase of work, then depending on the initial output it is informally revised in terms of both its members and their respective duties and responsibilities in order to handle surfacing job interdependencies and emerging new issues, before finally dismantling and its members reverting to their formal roles.

The author’s model also points to the dynamic interplay between formal coordination structures and informal coordination practices, suggesting that the latter are embedded within the former and that the two interact dynamically where informal practices arise as a function of expertise diversity, constituting second order practices. What is worth noting is that this dynamic interplay leads to a high level of flexibility as the sub-team adapts within changing formations, ensuring its members can interact in a way to achieve coordination while continuously advancing their thoughts toward reaching a satisfactory level of creativity. Formal structures are also present during the unfolding of the informal practices as the team leader relies on the formal role structures whenever it is considered necessary during the integration and de-integration process, in order to avoid the temporary de-integration getting out of control and leading toward a group structural breakdown. This supports the idea that the two elements are embedded within each other (Okhuysen and Bechky, 2009) and continuously, mutually, and dynamically interact.

The author offers three contributions based on the analysis.

First, this research contributes to the literature on creative group coordination by showing that it involves more than role structure, role enactment, and individual independent work within the group, that have been the primary theoretical focus. This study extends this theory to include a creative team developmental process and explain how it unfolds by contemplating the specific group coordination stages, therefore suggesting that team coordination in an on-going cycle of activities. The author proposes that theoretical accounts on how creative groups coordinate cannot be reduced in explaining how team members individually act or collectively interact, but also needs to consider the coordination process taking place, underlying the way the group flexibly adjusts during the dynamic interplay taking place between formal coordination structures and informal coordination practices.

8 1 Introduction

Second, the analysis suggests several reasons why group members engage in specific coordination actions and behaviours. Therefore, in this study the author begins to theorise on the reasons why, highlighting three stages during this process that lead to this type of activity: the initial issues group members need to deal with, the identification and management of their jobs” interdependencies, and the evaluation of new options and alternatives based on the emergence of new issues.

Finally, this study shows the conditions under which methods expected to be “uncoordinated” and which seem to deviate and challenge traditional coordination methods can in fact contribute toward team coordination. This suggests that rather than being against creative team coordination, these emerging “uncoordinated methods” when operating in tandem with traditional coordinating methods can contribute positively. The study shows how these informal practices help the team de-integrate and also bolster creative work through sub-team members developing ideas, suggesting new directions, and synthesizing them into a final solution in a cyclical sub-team structural adaptation that is critical for creative team coordination. This flexible team restructuring develops informally, without the existence of a predetermined strategic process within the organization.

The author develops these contributions drawing from the literature on coordination, creative group coordination, formal and informal coordination mechanisms and their dynamic interaction including temporary organizations. The emergence of the importance of formal coordination structures and informal coordination practices led the author to incorporate literature on creative team coordination in order to develop an understanding on the dynamics of such a potential relationship. This review, served as a set of “orienting points” that anchored the research question, informed the methods, and provided direction for the analysis (Dutton, Worline, Frost & Lilius, 2006; Nag, Corley, & Gioia, 2007). The author’s ideas and concepts emerged from the study itself through iterative cycles of thematic empirical analysis and consultations of the relevant literature (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

1.6 Static and Dynamic Coordination Perspectives Combined 9

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2.1 Coordination and Creative Groups

Coordinating creative group work remains a major organizational challenge, especially in teams with specialists representing distinct knowledge domains. The author defines coordination as the process through which people arrange actions in ways that they believe will enable them to accomplish their goals (Quinn & Dutton, 2005). An increase of complex tasks (Spitz-Oener, 2006), specialization (Alvesson, 1993; Becker & Murphy, 1992) and interdependencies among specialists (Burton & Obel, 2004; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967; Thompson, 1967) make the question of how coordination occurs in teams of diverse experts particularly relevant to the study of organizations. Coordination at its core is thus about the integration of organizational work under conditions of task interdependencies and uncertainty (Faraj & Xiao, 2006), where managing interdependencies among activities (Malone & Crowston, 1994) consists of making relevant domain-specific details transparent and arranging empirical manifestations of contributions according to a shared objective (Bruns, 2013). Creativity is defined as the generation or production of ideas that are both novel and useful, and is typically viewed as a key precursor to innovation, that is the successful implementation of creative ideas (Scott & Bruce, 1994; Amabile, 1996; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). In creative group work group members coordinate via integration (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) where they generate ideas, share their ideas with one another, listen and focus on one another’s ideas, and then generate new associations, building on one another’s ideas to integrate them into a truly novel solution (Baer, Leenders, Oldham & Vadera, 2010; Brophy, 2006; van Knippenberg, de Dreu, & Homan, 2004; Taggar, 2002; Brown, Tumeo, Larey, & Paulus, 1998). Literature on creativity however, argues that creativity

© The Author(s) 2022 11 S. Georgiades, Organization Management — Dynamic Creative Team Coordination, Edition Digital Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37509-6_2 may also require deviance (Warren, 2003), divergence (George, 2007), and dissensus (Nemeth, Personnaz, Personnaz, & Goncalo, 2004). These dynamics have the potential to pull a group apart or cause the group to regress to earlier, more chaotic stages of group development (Tuckman, 1965). Thus, coordinating a creative group needs to enable integration while also allow for de-integration, or individually disrupting a sense of predictability and common understanding in the pursuit of a new idea (Harrison & Rouse, 2014) which helps explain why coordinations that generate group creativity are considered to be fragile (Ford, 1996).

Recent literature on multi-disciplinary team coordination suggests that the coordination of efforts from interdependent specialists relies on formal structures that shape the actions of organizational members and activities and thus constrain their actions (Davis, Eisenhardt, and Bingham, 2009), as well as on informal emergent aspects of coordination (McEvily et al., 2014; Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) that can deal with unplanned contingencies and emergent interdependencies (Kellog et al., 2006). Practice theory treats informal aspects as a function of formal structures (Bruns, 2013) and suggests that the two elements, formal structure and informal practices, are embedded within each other (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) and continuously and mutually interact.

2.2 Temporary Organizations

While these theories are suggestive, there is little empirical evidence showing how coordination happens in temporary organizations, mostly because few organizational scholars have systematically examined the internal functioning of temporary organizational forms (Meyerson, Weick & Kramer, 1996; Powell 1990). Those who have studied these organizations focus on the flexibility for example to contend with environments that are complex and variable, where temporary organizations have been found to reduce costs and control risk through the fluid movement of specialized personnel (Christopherson and Storper 1989, Faulkner and Anderson 1987). Instead of training, supervision, and formal rules and hierarchy, they rely on short-term workers with the requisite ability and experience to perform the tasks assigned to them (DeFillippi and Arthur 1998, Faulkner and Anderson 1987). These analyses thus depict temporary organizations as having little structure. People change positions frequently across these fluid projects (Baker and Faulkner 1991), these organizations engender mobile and boundaryless careers (Jones and DeFillippi 1996) and are therefore ephemeral

2.2 Temporary Organizations 13 and unstable (Kanter 1995), lacking formal or normative structure (Meyerson, Weick, & Kramer, 1996).

However, recent studies of team-based organizational structures indicate that organizational flexibility does not necessarily occasion unstructured work organization. Self-managed teams although lack the controls of bureaucracy and hierarchy, tend to develop alternative control mechanisms (Bechky, 2006), including normative control, that constrains and structures the behavior of team members (Smith 1997, Prechel 1994, Barker 1993), creating groups whose valuebased work ethic turned gradually into a strong source of normative rules (Barker, 1993). Thus, temporary organizations have both industry structures and emerging practices that coordinate and control activity (Bechky, 2006)

Consequently, the author believes that in order to explain creative group coordination in a temporary organization, it is important to ask how formal structures and informal practices dynamically interact, that is the evolution of organizational interactions, and consider their formal and informal bases jointly, that is the extent to which informal interactions “follow” from the formally designed and imposed organizational elements. In other words there is a need to contemplate the mechanisms describing the interplay between formal and informal elements (McEvily et al., 2014), and aim to do so by building on the stream of practice-based coordination which recognizes practice as an observable phenomenon, an approach that enables closing a gap in research between theory and real world occurrence (Orlikowski, 2010).

To date, theory has not provided a clear answer to the question above that is considered important because it is in the interplay between formal and informal that several key issues in organizational theory are most effectively addressed (Barley, 1996, 1990, 1986; Salancik, 1995) and as organizations constitute patterns of interaction, formal and informal are inextricably intertwined elements that explain how actors coordinate efforts, exchange information, and access resources that affect a variety of outcomes and behaviors across different levels of analysis (Kilduff & Brass, 2010; Ibarra, Kilduff, & Tsai, 2005). Thus, to understand how patterns of interactions in temporary organizations emerge, evolve, and dissolve over time (Ahuja, Soda, & Zaheer, 2012) necessitates integrating theories of formal and informal elements to also articulate the logic by which formal and informal elements are co-organized and co-determinant of outcomes (Soda & Zaheer, 2012).

In this research the author develops three basic ideas as a theoretical entry point into the question of how creative groups in a temporary organization coordinate through a dynamic integration of formal structures and informal practices. First, what formal coordination structures exist and how they operate. Second, what informal coordination practices can emerge from formal structures. Third, how the two dynamically interact leading toward team coordination, highlighting a team developmental process. In the remainder of this section I elaborate the theoretical foundations of these three key ideas, and do so through a parallelization of creative and normal groups.

2.3 Formal Structures of Coordination

Relevant theory on coordination starts with a deliberate attempt to plan systems to produce coordinated activity through the design of either work or relationships between positions in the organization (Taylor, 1916; Fayol, 1949). Such formalization continues to be seen as an essential feature of organizations, in which the “rules governing behavior are precisely and explicitly formulated”, and “roles and role relations are prescribed independently of the personal attributes and relations of individuals” (Scott & Davis, 2007).

Scholars of organizational design thus argue that the coordination of efforts from interdependent specialists relies on formal structures that shape the actions of organizational members by shaping activities of their constituent elements and thus constrain more action (Davis, Eisenhardt & Bingham, 2009). These structures enable coordination by grouping and prioritizing interactions among organizational members with epistemic interdependence (Purana et al., 2012), thus allowing specialised team members to better integrate their individual efforts and prevent coordination failures.

A clear role structure falls within the category of formal coordination structures according to the structural role theory where a role is a bundle of tasks and norms, the behaviours that are expected of those who occupy a position in a social structure (Hughes 1958, Linton 1936, Biddle and Thomas 1966). This theory focuses on the ways in which role expectations, arising from norms and demands from other role occupants and audiences, constrain and circumscribe individuals” behaviour (Bechky, 2006) as it is illustrated in studies of high-reliability organizations that require careful coordination of complex, interdependent activity (Weick and Roberts 1993; Bigley and Roberts 2001) where members use the role structure to organize their behaviour in relation to one another.

Role theory can thus help explain how temporary groups coordinate as roles delineate expertise and responsibility so that anyone in a particular role will know her individual responsibilities and interdependencies with those in other roles, even in the absence of interpersonal familiarity (Bechky, 2006; Griffin, Neal & Parker, 2007). Roles allow coordination to be de-individualized: people do not

2.4 Informal Practices of Coordination—Emerging Patterns 15 rely on knowing others” unique skills, weaknesses, or preferences to figure out how to work together; instead they rely on knowing one another’s position in the role structure (Klein, Ziegert, Knight & Xiao, 2006).

In order for role structures to support effective coordination the literature suggests that certain conditions need to exist. First, effective coordination in temporary role-based groups depends on whether and how the group is bounded, which by definition makes it clear whom to work with, on what, and possibly where (Hackman, 2002; Wageman, Hackman & Lehman, 2005). A second condition is stability of membership which means that the same group of individuals compose the team over time. Finally, interdependence, meaning that the people on the team have to “work together for some common purpose for which they bear collective responsibility rather than having their own jobs to do with little need to work together” (Wageman, et al., 2005). These conditions allow group members to coordinate effectively because they get to know each other well and are able to anticipate each other’s moves and adjust to each other’s strengths and weaknesses (Valentine & Edmondson, 2015). Under these conditions group members engage in constructive coordination team processes like active communication, knowledge sharing and problem solving (Hoeg] & Gemuenden, 2001; Wageman, et al., 2005; Wageman & Fisher, 2014).

Formal structures in the form of constraints can also provide the formalization relating to rules governing behaviour (Scott & Davies, 2007) that enables the coordination of creative group work. Constraints, defined by Stokes (1999) as boundaries that “promote or preclude a certain kind of response”, can reinforce temporary group coordination by either supporting integration (Harrison & Rouse, 2014) or providing boundaries that preclude the sort of group chaos or dissensus that emerges when individuals disrupt group coordination patterns (Barker, 1993; Van Dyne & Saavedra, 1996). In relation to the former, constraints help group members come together, focus on a common problem domain, and exchange information, whereas in relation to the latter, although constraints can serve a destabilizing function they can simultaneously prevent disruption of group coordination (Harrison & Rouse, 2014).

2.4 Informal Practices of Coordination—Emerging Patterns

A different perspective in practice-based coordination emphasizes the importance of the informal emergent aspects of coordination (McEvily et al., 2014; Valentine & Edmondson, 2015; Bruns, 2014; Okhuysen & Bechky 2009; Bechky,

2006). This perspective is less concerned with optimizing structures for a given environment, and instead considers coordination as it happens, thus under conditions of task interdependence and uncertainties (Faraj & Xiao, 2006), assuming that people in organizations must coordinate to work regardless of the organizational design (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). It highlights a dynamic nature of coordination thus focusing on dynamic issues like communication (Ballard & Seibold, 2003), dialogic coordination (Faraj & Xiao, 2006), cooperation (Pinto, Pinto, & Prescott, 1993), knowledge sharing (Bechky, 2003; Charlile, 2002) and interaction (Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 1999), noting that formal structures and planned responses are inadequate for the task and that emergent group responses are necessary to achieve group coordination (Majchrzak et al., 2007).