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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Balancing Flexibility and Coherence: Information Exchange in a Paper Machinery Project

subject

description

The problem of balancing coherence and flexibility in collaborative information system design is approached here with two pairs of concepts. Boundary objects can support communication for perspective taking between communities of practice. Conscripting devices can support communication for perspective making within a community of practice. These theoretical lenses are used to study the uses of the technical specification in paper machine projects. Our study showed that as a boundary object it provided enough flexibility to allow negotiations, and sufficient local structure, for carrying out work in both communities of practice, the customer and the manufacturer. As a conscription device in the relatively virtual manufacturer project team, however, it proved to be problematic, due to the unidirectional nature of its construction, its diminishing importance in the web of conscripting objects, and its inconvenience as a means for learning. In search for balancing coherence and flexibility, the issues identified seemed to relate to acknowledging the dialectics of perspective making and perspective taking with boundary objects and conscription devices, to the openness and modifiability of these objects, and to the bounded transparency of these processes.