Practitioner Implications of NSF-VOSS - Comparative Study of Virtual R&D Organizations

1. STS DESIGN for COORDINATION
of VIRTUAL (Distributed) Work
STS RT TED Talk on ‘Innovations in Practice’
Boston, MA
October 2013
PRACTITIONER
IMPLICATIONS
of
NSF-VOSS
‘Comparative Study of Virtual
R&D Organizations’
by
Doug Austrom, Betty Barrett, Betsy Merck,
Bert Painter, Pam Posey, Ram Tenkasi
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRANT
VOSS: VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS AS
SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
October 2013

2. Background:
3
Observations
about the
emerging
work world
 “From Virtual Teams to VIRTUALITY in
TEAMS…where a mix of face-to-face and
technology-mediated interactions are used…and
prevalent in modern forms of teamwork.”
– Dixon & Panteli, Human Relations, 2010
 “In the new order of business…with more and
more decentralized decision-making…we need
to move from command-and control to
Coordinate-and-Cultivate.”
– Tom Malone, The Future of Work, 2004
 “Coordination is the major challenge of global
projects…the fundamental problem is that
many of the mechanisms to coordinate work
in a co-located setting are absent or disrupted
in distributed work”
– James Hersleb, Global Software Engineering, 2007
STSR VOSS TEAM
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
2
October 2013

3. 1.
Foreground:
Meaning &
Significance
of
Coordination
in
Organization
Design
“Coordination focuses on the activities that
need to be done and the relationships and
dependencies among them…[so as] to enable a
group of people to produce good results.”
- Tom Malone, The Future of Work
2.
“Choice of best coordination architecture can
lead to at least 20% improvement in time/cost
performance.”
- Moser & Halpin, 2009: Decade-long study of Global Projects
3.
“As the amount of task uncertainty
increases, (and therefore, information
processing increases), the organization must
adopt coordination mechanisms which
increase its information processing
capabilities.”
- Jay
Galbraith, Organization Design: An Information Processing View
STSR VOSS TEAM
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
3
October 2013

4. Model of Six Stage Continuum of R&D Work
R
1
R
2
D
1
D
2
D
3
Exploratory
Development
Work
Advanced
Development
Work
Start-Up
(pilot
plants, beta
testing)
Development
Work
KNOW
KNOW
WHAT
WHAT
Pure
Research
Work
Applied
Research
Work
DON’T
KNOW
DON’T
KNOW
WHAT
WHAT
we are
looking for
(i.e. end state
or objective)
DON’T KNOW
KNOW
DON’T KNOW
DON’T KNOW
HOW
HOW
HOW
HOW
to carry out
the research
to carry out
the research
to achieve it
IN DETAIL
to achieve it
KNOW
WHAT
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
Scale-Up
(volume & costs)
Development
Work
KNOW
WHAT
KNOW
KNOW
HOW
HOW
OPERATIONALLY
CONCEPTUALLY
to achieve it
to achieve it
HIGH Uncertainty
STSR VOSS TEAM
D
4
LOWER Uncertainty
4
October 2013

5. TASK UNCERTAINTY
Continuum for Knowledge Work
‘R1’
‘D4’
DON’T KNOW
DON’T KNOW
KNOW
KNOW
KNOW
KNOW
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
we are looking
for
(i.e. end state
or objective)
DON’T KNOW
KNOW
DON’T KNOW
DON’T KNOW
KNOW
KNOW
HOW
HOW
HOW
HOW
HOW
HOW
to carry out
the research
to carry out
the research
to achieve it
IN DETAIL
CONCEPTUALLY
OPERATIONALLY
to achieve it
to achieve it
to achieve it
HIGH
UNCERTAINTY
STSR VOSS TEAM
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
LOWER
UNCERTAINTY
5
October 2013

6. COORDINATION
Across the Continuum of Task Uncertainty
R1
D4
Shape and
Reinforce
Drive
Problem Solving
Converge
Convey
Mutual
Adjustment
Standardization
Rules Based
Peer-to-Peer
Hierarchical
Exploration
Prescriptive
Uncertainty
Certainty
Mystery
STSR VOSS TEAM
Heuristic
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
Algorithm
6
October 2013

7. Key Deliberations:
‘Choice Points’ in Knowledge Work processes
 Key Deliberations are patterns
of exchange and communication in
which people engage to reduce the
equivocality (or uncertainty) of a
problematic issue
 The salient elements of a
deliberation include the Topic,
Forums, and Participants
STSR VOSS TEAM
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
 Examples of Key Deliberations
in NSF-VOSS Comparative Study
of Virtual R&D projects…
• What Experiment(s) to run
• How to Design the experiment
• What Diagnostic instruments to
use
• Who will have Access to the data
• What software Feature(s) will we
develop
• What is the Scope and time/cost
Estimate of this work
October 2013

8. Knowledge Work Barriers:
Examples in our study of Virtual R&D Projects
 Lack of available knowledge

Technical procedures in two different laboratories were discovered to be
incompatible and initially prevented development of inter-dependent
experiments
 Lack of common frame of reference
 Scientists from different disciplines interpreted the same data very
differently or were accustomed to very different research procedures
 Failure to share knowledge
 Use of standardized data collection was seen by some researchers in
different research institutions as an imposition over other data more
suited to their own unique research interests
 Failure to utilize knowledge
 Corporate intelligence about particular vendor competencies was not
utilized by an individual division in their vendor selection procedures
STSR VOSS TEAM
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
8
October 2013

9. Most Significant COORDINATION MECHANISMS to Mitigate Barriers
In Different Types of Virtual (R&D) Work
October 2013

10. Sociotechnical Systems Framework
For Designing Coordination of Virtual Work
STRATEGIES
(Mission, Collaboration
Agreements)
STRUCTURES
(Roles, Organization Design)
TECHNOLOGY
(Collaboration
Tools, Media)
PEOPLE
(Skills, Relationships,
Values, Communications)
PROCESSES
(Standards,
Schedules, Plans)
STSR VOSS TEAM
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
10
October 2013

11. STS Design for Coordination of Virtual Work
OPEN DISCUSSION
STSR VOSS TEAM
Supported by NSF-VOSS Award #0943237
11
October 2013