Socio-Technical Affordances for Large-Scale Collaborations: Introduction to a Virtual Special Issue

Arvind Malhotra (), Ann Majchrzak () and Kalle Lyytinen ()
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Arvind Malhotra: Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599
Ann Majchrzak: Department of Data Sciences and Operations, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089
Kalle Lyytinen: Department of Design & Innovation, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Organization Science, 2021, vol. 32, issue 5, 1371-1390

Abstract: In this special issue, we review 14 articles published in Organization Science over the past 25 years examining large-scale collaborations (LSCs) tasked with knowledge dissemination and innovation. LSCs involve sizeable pools of participants carrying out a common mission such as developing open-source software, detector technologies, complex architecture, encyclopedias, medical cures, or responses to climate change. LSCs depend on technologies because they are often geographically distributed, incorporate multiple and diverse epistemic perspectives. How such technologies need to be structured and appropriated for effective LSC collaborations has been researched in piecemeal fashion by examining a single technology used in a single collaboration context with little opportunity for generalization. Studies have tended to black box technology use even though they acknowledge such uses to be critical to the LSC operation. We unveil the black box surrounding LSC collaboration technologies by identifying three challenges that LSCs face when they pursue an LSC effort: (1) knowledge exchange challenges, (2) knowledge deliberation challenges, and (3) knowledge combination challenges. We examine how technology was used in responding to these challenges, synthesizing their use into three socio-technical affordances to improve knowledge dissemination efficiency and innovation effectiveness: knowledge collaging, purposeful deliberating, and knowledge interlacing . We demonstrate the intellectual benefit of incorporating socio-technical affordances in studies of LSCs including what small group collaboration research can learn from LSCs.

Keywords: large-scale collaboration; collaboration technologies; socio-technical systems; variance; affordance; semi-heterarchical systems; knowledge creation; knowledge synthesis; organizational effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:32:y:2021:i:5:p:1371-1390

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