The interdisciplinary study of coordination

The interdisciplinary study of coordination (1994)

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by Thomas W. Malone , Kevin Crowston

Venue:	ACM Computing Surveys
Citations:	772 - 21 self

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@ARTICLE{Malone94theinterdisciplinary,
    author = {Thomas W. Malone and Kevin Crowston},
    title = {The interdisciplinary study of coordination},
    journal = {ACM Computing Surveys},
    year = {1994},
    volume = {26},
    pages = {87--119}
}

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Abstract

This survey characterizes an emerging research area, sometimes called coordination theory, that focuses on the interdisciplinary study of coordination. Research in this area uses and extends ideas about coordination from disciplines such as computer science, organization theory, operations research, economics, linguistics, and psychology. A key insight of the framework presented here is that coordination can be seen as the process of managing dependencies among activities. Further progress, therefore, should be possible by characterizing different kinds of dependencies and identifying the coordination processes that can be used to manage them. A variety of processes are analyzed from this perspective, and commonalities across disciplines are identified. Processes analyzed include those for managing shared resources, producer/consumer relationships, simultaneity constraints, and tank/subtask dependencies. Section 3 summarizes ways of applying a coordination perspective in three different domains: (1) understanding the effects of information technology on human organizations and markets, (2) designing cooperative work tools, and (3) designing distributed and parallel computer systems. In the final section, elements of a research

Keyphrases

interdisciplinary study organization theory summarizes way research area simultaneity constraint coordination perspective different domain producer consumer relationship coordination theory parallel computer system tank subtask dependency operation research computer science human organization final section key insight cooperative work tool different kind information technology shared resource