Distributed Cooperation In Boundary-Spanning IS Design
My current research project, "Distributed Cooperation In Boundary-Spanning IS Design" is funded by the NSF for five years, from 2004-2009. This research explores the co-design of business and IT systems that span organizational boundaries. It based on a series of studies that investigate the processes and factors that lead to effective collaboration in workgroups that span multiple domains of knowledge. This project consists of two sets of interrelated studies:
Boundary-Spanning Co-Design Of Business and IT Systems in Organizations
The focus of these studies is on knowledge-sharing across functional domains and support for learning as part of boundary-spanning collaboration. There are three major challenges in collaboration processes that involve stakeholders from multiple disciplines and backgrounds, that are not resolved by current research:
1. The need for a common language, that allows participants from a variety of organizational areas and backgrounds to understand and interpret the processes and concepts of design in the same way;
2. The need for effective “boundary objects”, to mediate and integrate knowledge that is distributed among multiple stakeholders;
3. The need to understand the process drivers that permit a design group to rapidly agree and constantly validate a common vision of their design.
This research explores these challenges. The intention is to develop of new methods and management approaches for boundary-spanning design initiatives and collaborative group innovation.
