A Coordination-Theoretic Approach to Understanding Process Differences
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4637-07.pdf
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963.91 KB
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Author(s)
Klein, Mark
Poltrock, Steven
Handel, Mark
Date Issued
April 13, 2007
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper
4637-07
Abstract
Supporting human collaboration is challenging partly because of variability in how people work. Even within a
single organization, there can be many variants of processes which have the same purpose. When distinct organizations must
work together, the differences can be especially large, baffling and disruptive. Coordination theory provides a method and
vocabulary for modeling complex collaborative activities in a way that makes both the similarities and differences between
them more visible. We illustrate this, in this paper, by analyzing three engineering change management processes and
demonstrating how our method compactly highlights the substantial commonalities and precise differences between what are
on first glance are extremely divergent approaches.
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