Scripting, Situating, and Supervising: The Role of Artefacts in Collaborative Practices

Giulia Molinengo and Dorota Stasiak
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Giulia Molinengo: Co-Creation and Contemporary Policy Advice Research Project, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Berliner Strasse 130, D-14467 Potsdam, Germany
Dorota Stasiak: Co-Creation and Contemporary Policy Advice Research Project, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Berliner Strasse 130, D-14467 Potsdam, Germany

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 16, 1-23

Abstract: While calls for cross-sectoral collaboration have become a recurrent motif in sustainability-oriented policymaking and research, the practical realization of such processes presents significant challenges. The hope for “collaborative advantage” often gets traded for the experience of “collaborative impasse”, namely those moments in which collaboration gets stuck. To better understand the reasons underlying such impasses, the study focuses on the impact of facilitation artefacts—objects designed and used in collaborative practices. The study proposes an analytical heuristic of collaborative practices to investigate the data collected in an explorative study, tracing artefacts across three different communicative modes of deliberation. Detailed analysis of the case, grounded in audio–visual material, semi-structured interviews, photo documentation, and participatory observation, shows that such artefacts substantially influence the structure of the emerging interaction order in a given setting, and that unscripted and unsituated artefacts might contribute to reinforcing those communicative patterns that collaboration aims to contrast. The study identifies three relevant practices in facilitation work, in order to steer emerging interaction orders away from exclusionary dynamics: scripting, situating, and supervising. Although emerging from the micro-analysis of artefacts, these practices might apply to other spheres of collaboration and serve as orientation for successful collaborative processes.

Keywords: artefacts; collaborative practice; facilitation work; collaborative advantage; collaborative impasse; frontstage and backstage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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