Construction of Meaning in Socio-Technical Networks: Artefacts as Mediators between Routine and Crisis Conditions

Autor: Jacqueline Holzer
Rok vydání: 2012
Předmět:
Zdroj: Creativity and Innovation Management. 21:49-60
ISSN: 0963-1690
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8691.2012.00629.x
Popis: This article focuses on the construction of meanings taking place in organizational routinized innovation processes. The results of the single case study investigating the company Carmlod, which institutionalized a routine process for their innovations, show how boundary objects like standardized methods and designed objects facilitate the communication process within interdisciplinary teams. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that team members continue using the distinct meanings of the mutually shared object. They follow their strategies and goals according to their professional disciplinary knowledge. Only when a fundamental crisis takes place, in which nobody knows the right strategy to achieve a possible solution any more, do artefacts within the contingent space of manoeuvre become important. In the process, team members are forced to enter into a coercion-free discourse within a socio-technical network that allows them to come up with true innovation and genuine collectively shared meanings.
Databáze: OpenAIRE