Power and Participation in the Production of Boundary Objects
Robyn Thomas1
Cardiff Business School
Cardiff, UK
CF10 3EU
Email: thomasr4@cardiff.ac.uk
Tel: +44-29-2087-5724
Leisa D. Sargent
Department of Management & Marketing
University of Melbourne
Parkville
Victoria, 3010
Australia
Email: lsargent unimelb.edu.au
Tel: +61-3-8344-5576
Cynthia Hardy
Department of Management & Marketing
University of Melbourne
Parkville
Victoria, 3010
Australia
Email: chardy@unimelb.edu.au
Tel: +61-3-8344-3719
1
Robyn Thomas would like to acknowledge the support of the UK Economic and Social Research
Council’s Advanced Institute of Management in funding this research, award number: RES-331-253009 for fellowship funding received during the period of this research.
1
Power and Participation in the Production of Boundary Objects
Abstract
The research on boundary objects emphasizes how they allow actors from different “social
worlds” to reconcile different meanings and produce shared understandings, in turn, enabling
cooperation and the transformation of knowledge. Research has also indicated that this process should
involve the participation of all the relevant groups in the co-construction of meaning; otherwise the
designated artifact may fail to become a boundary object-in-use. Our study examines how meaning
was negotiated in the case of a particular artifact – a culture toolkit – which was intended to secure
cooperation among members from different parts of a telecommunications company in the
development and implementation of a new customer-oriented culture. By conducting a detailed, real
time analysis of how the meaning of this designated boundary object was negotiated in a workshop,
we show how different patterns of participation in negotiating meaning influence whether an artifact
becomes a boundary object-in-use. Further, we show how these patterns of participation arise from the
different strategies used by senior managers and their subordinates to exercise power associated with
their respective vertical positions.
Key Words: Boundary objects, negotiation of meaning, power
2
Introduction
Over the last 25 years, the concept of boundary object – as delineated by Star and Griesemer
(1989) and associated with scientific research – has transcended its own boundaries, becoming
employed in the study of areas such as project management, organizational learning and knowledge
management. The concept is attractive to management theorists because it represents an important
means of achieving collaboration. Boundary objects can be used to solve “heterogeneous problems”
through the way in which they “sit in the middle” of a “group of actors with divergent viewpoints”
(Star, 1988: 46). Star & Griesemer (1989) examined how boundary objects such as specimens, maps
and fields notes helped to bring about cooperation among professional scientists, amateur collectors,
trappers, and university administrators in setting up a museum of vertebrate zoology. Since then, a
wide range of different artifacts have been studied – Gantt charts, engineering drawings, physical
prototypes, maps, databases, accounting systems, and computer software – for their ability to bring
about cooperation in business settings, especially among members of different horizontal functions.
This research emphasizes the importance of meaning i.e., the boundary object allows actors
from different “social worlds” to reconcile their different meanings and produce shared understandings
which, in turn, enables them to cooperate (Bechky, 2003a). This process occurs as diverse groups “fill
in content and interpretations [of the boundary object] and negotiate as they see fit” (Yakura, 2002:
968). In other words, a designated artifact becomes a boundary object-in-use (Levina & Vaast, 2005)
only if its meaning is negotiated through a process in which all the relevant groups participate (Star,
1988; Star & Greisemer, 1989; Carlile, 2004; Sapsed & Salter, 2004). In order to learn more about
how the negotiation of meaning affects whether an artifact becomes a boundary object-in-use, we
conducted a detailed, real-time analysis of the negotiations around a designated boundary object. The
artifact in question was a culture toolkit, comprising a brochure, video and workshop template, and
intended to secure cooperation among members from different parts of a telecommunications company
in the development and implementation of a new customer-oriented culture.
Our findings suggest that different patterns of participation among a range of actors in these
negotiations help to explain whether an artifact becomes a boundary object-in-use. In our case, when
3
participation was distributed and a range of participants contributed to the co-construction of meaning
– which we refer to as “processual plasticity’ – the artifact became a boundary object-in-use. Our
study suggests that this processual plasticity depends upon the use of strategies by both superiors and
subordinates in exercising power to influence the negotiation of meaning. Depending upon the
strategies employed by superiors and subordinates, this processual plasticity can be lost.
Our study makes a number of contributions. First, it indicates that an artifact cannot simply be
designated as a boundary object; if it is to be a boundary object-in-use, it must be continually “worked
on” by all participants all the time in order to maintain processual plasticity. By identifying different
strategies used by senior managers and their subordinates, we also show how processual plasticity
requires senior managers to redress the power advantages embedded in their superior vertical position;
while middle managers must also exercise or exploit the power associated with their position in the
hierarchy. In this way, we extend the work of Levina and Vaast (2005) to show how a boundary
object-in-use results from the interplay between senior and subordinate members, and not just the
“top-down” work of designated or informal boundary spanners. Second, we identify strategies that
disrupt processual plasticity and result in meaning becoming reified, and show how such strategies can
escalate during the course of the negotiations. At this point, the artifact no longer acts as a boundary
object, but instead serves as a means of control as senior managers, consciously or unconsciously, use
their position in the hierarchy to undermine the very artifact intended to function as a boundary object.
In this way, our study builds on previous work which has found that the failure of boundary objects is
often explained by horizontal, functional and occupational power relations i.e., as a result of
competition among functions or departments (e.g., Bechky, 2002b; Carlile, 2004: Henderson, 1998) to
show the effects of vertical power relations and direct line authority. Finally, we build on Carlile’s
(2002: 452) work that shows that a boundary object that is effective at one stage “can falter when
taken to another setting.” We show how the same artifact can slip in and out of functioning as a
boundary object i.e., an artifact can function as a boundary object-in-use and serve as a means of
control, depending on the way in which actors participate in the negotiation of meaning.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. We first examine the organizational and
management literature on boundary objects. We then introduce our case study and explain our
4
methods of data collection and analysis. Third, we present our findings. Finally, we discuss their
implications for research and practice.
The Emergence and Development of Boundary Objects
Research on boundary objects initially examined the way in which scientific work is
conducted by diverse groups of actors, such as researchers from different disciplines, amateur and
professional scientists, as well as administrators and technicians. Objects, methods, findings and
theories mean different things in these different worlds, and as a result, different meanings – and
tensions – must be reconciled if cooperation is to ensue. “Simply put scientific work is heterogeneous.
At the same time science requires cooperation” (Star & Griesemer, 1989: 387). The same is true of
management, which requires collaboration among actors from different groups, departments and
organizations (Gerson & Star, 1986). Like science, management inhabits “multiple social worlds” and
requires “intersectional work” because “new objects and methods mean different things in different
worlds [and] actors are faced with the task of reconciling these meanings if they wish to cooperate”
(Star & Griesemer, 1989: 388). For example, individuals from different parts of a company may have
very different ideas regarding, for example, who the customer is (Sturdy & Fleming, 2003), what
constitutes innovation (Dougherty, 1992), or what project deadlines involve (Yakura, 2002).
Accordingly, they create their own representations, investing them with meanings that suit their needs
and reflect their backgrounds. However, these representations must be reconciled if individuals are to
cooperate (Gerson & Star, 1986) and collective action is to ensue (Hardy, Lawrence & Grant, 2005).
Boundary objects provide an important means of translating such multiple, overlapping but
divergent representations in ways that accommodate both diversity and synergy because they “inhabit
several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them” (Star &
Griesemer, 1989: 393). In this way, they provide a locus for communication, conflict, and
coordination” (Yakura, 2002: 968), and create “the common ground that leads to shared
understandings” (Bechky, 2003a: 326). They allow “actors with diverse goals” to work together
(Briers & Chua, 2001: 241-2) and promote “the sharing of knowledge in practice between diverse
groups” (Sapsed & Salter, 2004: 1515). Given their potential, it is not surprising that boundary objects
5
have sparked considerable interest in areas such as project management and new product development,
where cooperation among diverse groups is deemed vital. The interest in boundary objects is also
linked to the growing use of practice-based approaches in knowledge management and organizational
learning, according to which information is not universal, individual and explicit; rather, it is situated,
social and tacit (Gherardi, 2000; Yanow, 2000). Instead of conceptualizing learning as something that
goes on inside peoples’ heads, knowledge is produced as actors participate as members of
“communities of practice” (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991), collectively making
sense of information in ways that enable action (Weick, 1995). Boundary objects help in this process
by tying together individuals who come from different departments, functions or locations.
Participation and Boundary Objects
The artifacts that constitute boundary objects have no intrinsic meaning – artifacts are
“experienced differently by different individuals and differently by the same individuals depending on
the time or circumstance” (Orlikowski, 2000: 408).They require interpretation (Yakura, 2002) and are
“brought to life … through social interaction” among a range of different actors (Briers & Chua, 2001:
240). It is this looseness or ambiguity of meaning that enables them to function as boundary objects –
by allowing different groups to read into them meanings that make sense to them (Bechky, 2003a).
Boundary objects may provide informational support but denote no intrinsic meaning.
They are, in this sense, empty vessels to be filled with whatever is the preferred local
beverage. Boundary objects facilitate the reading of alternative meanings by different
groups (Sapsed & Salter, 2004: 1519).
In this way, boundary objects are “plastic enough to adapt to local needs” and “robust enough to
maintain a common identity across sites” (Star & Griesemer, 1989: 393); they are “weakly structured
in common use” and “strongly structured in individual use”; they are “concrete and abstract”, “specific
and general” and “conventionalized and customized” (p. 408).
These tensions enable boundary objects to supply “concrete means of representing different
functional interests and facilitating their negotiation and transformation” (Carlile, 2004: 559). In other
words, there must be sufficient convergence of meaning to make the boundary object recognizable to
the different groups – and able to serve as an effective means of communication across boundaries;
6
but, at the same time, ambiguity and diversity of meaning are also crucial. Ambiguity allows different
groups to read preferred or familiar meanings into the boundary object, making cooperation with other
actors appealing; while the multiple, diverse meanings that come from the involvement of different
groups help to generate new knowledge and learning. Some form of convergence in relation to these
diverse meanings is also necessary to produce the shared understanding and common ground (Bechky,
2003a). In this way, effective boundary objects establish a “shared language for individuals to
represent their knowledge; provide the means for individuals “to learn about their differences and
dependencies across a given boundary”; and facilitate “a process of transforming current knowledge
(knowledge that is localized, embedded, and invested in practice) so that new knowledge can be
created” (Carlile. 2002: 452-3).
Star and Griesemer (1989: 412) emphasize that, in the case of boundary objects, meaning
should be collectively negotiated because each social world “has partial jurisdiction over the resources
represented by that object.” In other words, for a boundary object to be effective in sharing learning,
generating knowledge and securing cooperation, actors from all the worlds that it is intended to link
must be involved (Carlile, 2004). If the boundary object is neglected by one of the communities it is
intended to bridge, it is likely to fail (Sapsed & Salter, 2004). The production of boundary objects
therefore depends on distributed participation – where meaning is developed through all participants
actively taking part in the negotiations around meaning – and a connection to or mutual recognition of
other participants (cf. Handley et al., 2006).
Widely distributed participation can, however, be difficult to achieve. For example, work on
communities of practice has noted that some actors may limit the participation of others (Handley et
al., 2006) and that individuals may even voluntarily constrain their own participation (Roberts, 2006).
Given that participation in the negotiation of meaning is equally central to the conceptualization of
boundary objects, our first research question is: what different patterns of participation occur in the
negotiation of meaning of boundary objects; and how do they arise?
Power and Boundary Objects
In advocating the collective negotiation of meaning, Star and Griesemer (1989: 389) argue
that each participant “must maintain the integrity of the interests of the other audiences”. However, the
7
negotiation of meaning is widely recognized to be a process in which actors exercise power (Deetz &
Mumby, 1990; Hardy & Phillips, 2004). Recent work on boundary objects has also drawn our
attention to the need to consider power (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995; Carlile, 2002; Levina & Vaast 2005;
Sapsed & Salter, 2004). Henderson (1998: 146) notes that, because boundary objects can be read in
different ways, they have “political possibilities … multiple readings can both facilitate collaborative
work and contribute to conflict among collaborators.” Even the apparent resolution of different
meanings “does not mean consensus. Rather, representations, or inscriptions, contain at every stage
the traces of multiple viewpoints, translations and incomplete battles” (Star & Griesemer, 1989: 413).
The development and implementation of new knowledge often has negative consequences for other
organizational members, and therefore the success of a boundary object is linked to political as well as
practical skills (Carlile, 2004); and boundary objects may be used, not purely for technical purposes,
but also “as a means of representing and instigating difference and conflict” (Bechky, 2003b: 724).
Most of the empirical work to date has focused on the effects of power related to the
horizontal or functional relations among different specialist groups (e.g., occupations, professions, and
departments) as they compete for control over tasks and knowledge. As Henderson (1998: 146) has
noted in relation to differences between research and development and manufacturing functions:
“Diverse orientations can also potentially lead to out-and-out conflict when readings are based not
only on different specialty orientations and background experience, but also on departmental politics
and distrust”. Carlile (2004: 566), in noting the dominance of one particular form of boundary object,
attributed it to power and status differentials between marketing and safety functions: since the two
groups did not occupy “politically equal positions in representing their knowledge to each other”
(Carlile, 2004: 565), they did not exert the same influence over the boundary object. Bechky (2003b)
has examined power relations between occupational groups and found that the greater status,
authority, and expertise of engineers in relation to technicians and assemblers led to situations where,
rather than acting as a boundary object, artifacts were used to exercise control over work, solidify
occupational status, and maintain jurisdiction over tasks.
In being used in organizations, boundary objects do not only bridge horizontal or functional
boundaries, they also bridge vertical ones, involving direct line authority. For example, the particular
8
artifact that is designated to be a boundary object is typically selected by actors who “hold positions of
power” (Levina & Vaast, 2005: 341). Henderson (1998), in describing the top-down application of
TQM in a call centre, noted that “politics in the form of management prerogatives can be built into”
boundary objects, with adverse effects on “creativity and innovation.” Revisiting Yakura’s (2002)
work, Sapsed and Salter (2004) argue that while timelines may offer potential as boundary objects
because of the different meanings that can be read into them, they are also used as a form of
managerial control. Despite their potential importance, vertical power relations between senior
managers and their direct subordinates have not so far been studied systematically in the case of
boundary objects, even though these “relational dynamics” (Bechky, 2003b: 749) are likely to
influence the nature of participation in the negotiation of meaning and may differ from those
associated with horizontal, functional relations. In addition, these relational dynamics are reciprocal
and not simply “top down.” Therefore the use of power by both superiors and subordinates must be
examined for its effects on the designated boundary object. Hence, our second research question is: do
groups draw on vertical power relations to influence the negotiation of meaning of boundary objects
and, if so, how?
Methods
The Case Study
Our study concerns the use of boundary object during a company-wide culture change
program at UTel2 – a pioneer in licensing open-standard GSM/GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA3
technology to manufacturers of mobile phones and other mobile communication devices. At the time
of the study, UTel employed approximately 1,500 employees, most of whom were located at the
European Head Office, with the remainder working in sites in UK, Europe, Asia and North America.
The company had been formed in 2001, when it was “spun off” from being an internal division of
GlobalTel, a global telecommunications company that was undergoing major restructuring and
redundancies at the time as a result of low cost competitors and lower growth in the mobile phone
2
The name of the company and other details have been disguised.
GSM - Global system for mobile communication, GPRS – General packet radio system, EDGE – Enhanced
data rates for global enhancement, WCDMA – Wideband and code-division multiple access.
3
9
market worldwide. As an independent organization, UTel changed from being part of a much larger
company that made mobile phones for the end-user to one that sold “knowledge” to mobile phone
manufacturers. Its success now hinged on the replacement of the existing engineering focus, which
stemmed from its previous position as a unit that interacted primarily with other divisions within
GlobalTel, with a customer oriented culture that focused on the new customer – no longer the end-user
of the phone but other companies who manufactured and sold phones.
Senior management, together with external consultants, had devised a cultural change
program designed to secure cooperation from employees in building a new or “target” culture.
To ensure success … [the company] has to make a concerted effort to build a strong
company culture … [which] also has to take our customers’ values and expectations
into account … Everyone has to contribute to create a strong company culture by
participating in our “new target culture program” … characterized by global
teamwork where all the pieces fit snugly together (company document).
The culture program revolved around a series of around 80 workshops that were to be systematically
rolled out throughout the company.
An artifact – a culture toolkit which consisted of a brochure, a video, and a workshop template
– was integral to each workshop. It provided a broad framework for discussing the nature of the new
culture and how it was to be implemented. The brochure was titled: UTel’s Target Culture: involving
every employee. The target culture was specified in broad terms – in relation to four drivers of
business success (unity in team work; technological innovation; excellent customer service; and
leadership); four shared values (trust, empowerment, commitment, and quality); and the company’s
mission: “to make our customers first, best and profitable through innovation, quality and
commitment”. It emphasized that managers and employees should “build a [not “the’] culture
together” … “as part of a team” as all employees attended the workshops. In this way they could
“complete the picture of our target culture … and “how it affects us individually.” The brochure also
stated that “another purpose is … to agree on action” on how the new culture was to be implemented.
The ten-minute video was of a conversation between the CEO and another senior manager in a
question and answer session about the culture change program. It explained that the need for a new
10
culture was important and briefly explained the drivers and the values. The workshop template
provided instructions on how each workshop was to be run. They lasted for half a day and involved
the following set of activities: (a) a presentation of the target culture, using the brochure and
accompanying video; (b) a discussion of the relevance of the target culture to the particular group
attending the workshop; and (c) exercises to build agreement on actions to be taken to implement the
target culture. The aims were: agreeing the content of the target culture; understanding how the target
culture affected individual employee and teams; agreeing the implementation of the change program.
An initial round of workshops was held with middle managers from different parts of the
company. These workshops were led by head office and senior site managers and involved middle
managers from different engineering and support staff functions. Each of these middle managers was
then required to replicate the workshop with their own subordinates – using the same culture toolkit –
to structure activities and discussion of another 80 workshops involving several hundred employees.
Site Selection
We selected this case study for a number of reasons. First, boundary objects are used to bring
about cooperation – to create “the common ground that leads to shared understandings” (Bechky,
2003a: 326); to ensure “coherence and cooperation” (Star & Greisemer, 1989: 391); and to help
“actors with diverse goals” to work together (Briers & Chua, 2001: 241-2). The aim was for the
culture toolkit to bring together employees from different levels, sites, departments, and teams to
cooperate in the development and implementation of the new culture. The CEO was quoted in the
brochure: “I cannot reach this goal on my own and our managers cannot take all the responsibility by
themselves. Everyone has to contribute to create a strong company culture by participating in our
“new target culture program.” If cooperation did not ensue, the new culture would be hard to
implement.
Second, the culture toolkit was expected to “maintain a common identity across sites” (Star &
Griesemer 1989: 393) in that it was to be used in all the workshops with middle managers who would,
in turn, use it in the subsequent workshops with their subordinates. The brochure stated:
“Approximately 80 workshops will be run by local managers. In order to run these workshops a
‘culture toolkit’ will be used”. In this way, it was expected that the culture toolkit would be
11
recognizable to different groups and symbolize a common structure (Levina & Vaast, 2005) through,
for example, the way the template specified how the workshops were to be run. The culture toolkit
thus provided a broad framework for the workshop to facilitate discussion over the nature of the new
culture and how it was to be implemented.
Third, at the same time as having a common identity, boundary objects are “weakly structured
in common use” (Star & Griesemer, 1989: 408). They provide “informational support but denote no
intrinsic meaning” so they can generate and accommodate “alternative meanings by different groups”
(Sapsed & Salter, 2004: 519). So, although the brochure stated that: “the ‘culture toolkit’ can be used
as a tool to facilitate UTel’s target culture workshops” and to agree on “implementation activities”, the
exact nature of the culture and implementation activities was not specified.
These characteristics add up to an artifact – the culture toolkit – clearly being designated as a
boundary object. It was expected to become a boundary object-in-use that would be symbolically
incorporated into “ongoing dialogue” and the “practices of diverse fields” (Levina & Vaast, 2005:
340-1). In this way, the culture toolkit would form the basis of the practices of an ongoing series of
workshops and, in so doing, generate discussion and, eventually, agreement about the nature of the
new culture and the activities by which it could be successfully be implemented. In Carlile’s (2002:
353), terms, it represented an object whereby individuals could “represent, learn, negotiate, and alter
the current knowledge [in relation to the new culture] and create new knowledge [of the new culture
and its implementation] to resolve the consequences identified.”
Data Collection
Background information on the culture change program was gathered through the collection of
company documents such as reports, press releases, etc; preliminary interviews were conducted, and a
copy of the culture toolkit was obtained. Following this, a workshop, conducted according to the
template in the toolkit, was observed by one of the authors, recorded and fully transcribed. The
workshop lasted three hours and was attended by three head office managers, two senior managers
from the UK plant, and 31 middle managers – support staff managers and senior software and
hardware engineers (who ran project teams). The participants represented a mix of ethnic groups;
ranged in age from early 30s to mid 40s; and were predominantly male (three females were present). A
12
senior site manager from the UK plant started the session by welcoming participants and introducing
his superiors from Head Office, one of whom provided an overview of the outline and goals of the
workshop. Another senior manager made a power-point presentation that described his interpretation
of the local culture and its strengths and weaknesses, followed by a discussion involving participants
regarding whether this interpretation was accurate. Following a coffee break there was a discussion
about the mission statement specified in the brochure, and the video was shown. Then participants
then completed a “stop/start/continue” exercise to identify one behavior that was hindering cultural
change and needed to be stopped; one new behavior that needed to be started; and one existing
behavior that should be continued, the results of which were collected by the head office managers.
The workshop concluded with a discussion of how to implement the culture change program.
Semi-structured interviews, between 75-105 minutes in length, were also conducted with
eighteen of the participants within six months of the workshop. They were recorded and transcribed
verbatim. The interviews were principally designed to follow up on the key debates and issues that
surfaced during the workshop. Interviewees were asked for their views on current culture at the
company; the need for a customer orientation; who they thought the customer was; the culture change
program, workshop and toolkit; and the development and future of the company in general.
Data Analysis
Boundary objects are a means of symbolic communication (Star, 1988) and, as a result, the
negotiation of meaning is not confined to the form of the specific artifact,4 but also extends to the
broader knowledge represented by the artifact. For example, while Yakura’s (2002) study provides
evidence of some negotiations over the form of a certain gantt charts, these artifacts provided a locus
for much broader negotiations among different employees around what they meant for scheduling,
allocating, synchronizing, billing and budgeting decisions. It was the negotiation of the different
meanings of these themes by participants that enabled the gantt chart to act as a boundary object.
In this study, we therefore focused our analysis on two sets of negotiations in the workshop:
4
The form of the artifact may not therefore be particularly important. For example, early atlases of the brain
served as a means of communicating across clinical and research worlds, even though they “in fact described no
brain” (Star, 1988: 49). Similarly, (Star & Greisemer, 1989: 410) give the example of the use of a species as a
boundary object “which in fact described no specimen.”
13
(a) a customer focus as part of the new culture; and (b) the implementation of the new culture. We
selected them for the following reasons.5 First, they represented the two key “knowledge boundaries”
(Carlile, 2002) that the culture toolkit was expected to bridge insofar as it was intended to establish
agreement on the nature and implementation of a new culture. Second, they were clear priorities. They
were mentioned in the brochure and the video as important issues requiring cooperation from different
parts of the company; in the template as specific components to be covered during the workshop; and
in the opening address of the workshop. Third, our preliminary analysis indicated that two sets of
negotiations differed markedly – there appeared to be a greater degree of participation with customer
focus than with implementation. Thus there was the additional advantage that, by comparing these two
particular sets of negotiations in more detail, we could pursue “transparently observable” processes
(Eisenhardt, 1989: 537) related to our interests in participation and power.
We made a detailed examination of these two sets of negotiations i.e., the interactions in
which the meaning of customer focus and implementation was debated, contested and/or agreed. We
first extracted all the instances of talk about customer focus (Appendix 1) and implementation
(Appendix 2) from the workshop transcript. We placed all the relevant discussion in chronological
order and identified who made each individual intervention i.e., a specific statement or interjection
(recorded in the first column of the Appendices).6 We then tracked how the negotiations over
meanings unfolded during the workshop (recorded in the second column of each of the Appendices)
by examining: (a) the development of different meanings or arguments within the negotiations over
time; (b) the order or flow of interventions; and (c) when and how the negotiations of meaning ended.
We also noted instances where: (d) interventions built on earlier interventions; (e) instances of
disagreement with earlier interventions; (f) instances where different groups engaged with each others’
meanings in an iterative manner; and (g) polarized discussions. This analysis is represented in Figures
1 and 2, and these two sets of negotiations are discussed in detail in the findings section.
5
We found no evidence of negotiations over the form of the culture toolkit. We therefore went on to consider the
negotiation of “what the object means in the given context” (Levina & Vaast, 2005: 340).
6
Individuals are coded according to their group membership, which included: head office managers who worked
out of the European headquarters; senior managers at the local site; and three groups of middle managers –
software engineers, hardware engineers and support staff (e.g., HR, finance, sales & marketing).
14
Our comparison indicates significant differences in the two sets of negotiations – in the one,
participation is distributed relatively widely and in the other, it is not. We then returned to the data to
try to find out why such a difference existed. We found little evidence that the differences were
explained by horizontal or functional power relations i.e., major divisions among different
occupational groups. In fact, the three groups of hardware engineers, software engineers and support
staff managers seemed to agree with each other much of the time. For example, in the negotiations
around customer focus, while a support staff manager initially mentions that a commercial – rather
than a customer – focus is needed [#9 in Appendix 1], this is subsequently supported by engineers
[#20 in Appendix 1]. Similarly, the three groups were united in their support for implementation to
mean specific measurable outcomes. We examined the interview transcripts to investigate whether or
not participants’ experiences were consistent with this analysis. They also indicated that participants
felt that the workshop discussions had enabled the sharing of insights across horizontal boundaries.
Having accounted for horizontal relations, we turned to the analysis of vertical power relations
in order to answer our second research question. We reexamined the data to conduct a more finely
grained analysis of how senior managers (head office managers and senior site managers) and middle
managers (software engineers, hardware engineers and support staff) intervened in relation to each
other and whether this varied between the two sets of negotiations regarding participation patterns in
the workshop and how meanings were negotiated. As a starting point we used the strategies identified
by Bechky (2003a), who describes “discounting”, “blocking” and “rebuffing” strategies by engineers
to restrict the participation of assemblers, as well as the use of “challenging” by assemblers; and by
Carlile (2002), who mentions “challenging”, “negotiating”, and “proposing” new ways of product
development. We then added, deleted and refined the categories in an iterative process as we
scrutinized our data and conducted both a “top-down” analysis (i.e., how senior managers interacted in
relation to middle managers; see column 3 in the Appendices), as well as a “bottom-up” analysis (i.e.,
how middle managers interacted in relation to middle managers; see column 4 in the Appendices). We
identified a discrete number of strategies (discussed in more detail later) employed by the two
different groups. We then compared how these strategies were used in the two sets of negotiations.
15
Findings
Participation in Negotiations
In the first set of findings, we examine the different patterns of participation found in the two
sets of negotiations.
Negotiations around customer focus
The meaning of customer focus was negotiated – and contested and challenged – by the
participants during the course of the workshop. Four main strands to these negotiations can be
observed, each relating to a different meaning of “customer focus”. They are: (a) who is the customer,
a discussion that ended prior to the conclusion of the workshop with some agreement over the
customer being an external business; (b) the nature of the relationship with the customer, which ended
around a need for honesty although this meaning was taken up and superseded by other discussions
around the need for a commercial focus; (c) are we customer focused, which concluded in general
agreement that the UK site was customer focused although, again, this meaning was superseded by the
need for a commercial focus; (d) the need for a commercial focus which, despite being introduced
quite late in the workshop, out-lived the other negotiations to reach relative agreement about what a
commercial focus entailed. In this section, we describe these negotiations, as summarized in Figure 1.
—Figure 1 near here—
At the start of the workshop, in the opening address, the need to achieve a “common
understanding” of customer focus is introduced by a senior manager: “It’s important that we have a
strong UTel culture in this organization to be customer focused, we need to actually get a common
understanding… and hopefully feed back any concerns and issues that may crop up.” Another head
office manager then puts forward a number of suggestions on how customer focus might be defined
and understood in terms of a relationship with the customer [#1].7 At this point, a senior manager
seeks clarification on who is the customer and whether they are talking about the end-user (the person
who buys and uses the phone) or another business (i.e., the customer is another company that sells the
phone) [#2]. This comment triggers a lively debate among the engineers concerning who is the
7
The numbers in square brackets provide a cross reference to Figure 1 and Appendix 1.
16
customer, following which one of the head office managers attempts to return to the nature of
relationship with the customer – one in which the customer is dominant and UTel merely provides
advice [#3]. This triggers another question about who is the customer and, if it is a business-tobusiness relationship, how it should be conducted [#4].
One of the software engineers then challenges the assumption that the UK site is not already
customer focused. A software engineer asserts:
I believe that we’re [local site] customer-oriented. I think we are customer focused as
an organization and we have been all the way through even in our history. I think
we’re a customer-focused organization. [#5]
A debate ensues over whether or not the UK site is more or less customer focused compared to head
office, resulting in the discussion shifting away from the nature of the relationship with the customer
to claims that UK site already is customer focused. This claim is disputed by some participants [#6],
but supported by a senior manager as well as software engineers, in particular, who emphasize their
existing close relationship with their customers. During this debate, the discussion returns to who the
customer is, which becomes further complicated as the end-user is equated with business [#7]. The
claim that the UK site is already customer focused reemerges [#8].
At this point, the importance of a customer focus is challenged at a more fundamental level as
one of the support staff argues that there is a need for a commercial focus [#9]:
We are very driven by engineers and the technology…people do get caught up with
developing incredible products that are fantastic with loads of features but from a
commercial focus aren’t really needed ... as an organization we’re not necessarily as
commercially and business focused as we need to be [manager, support staff].
This comment is followed by a long silence and eventually, an engineer attempts to shift the emphasis
away from the accusation that they lack a commercial focus by arguing that it is sales and marketing
staff who are responsible for the customer [#10], but the discussion quickly returns to the need for a
commercial focus [#11]; and that while engineers may be close to the customer, this is not helpful
unless they have a commercial focus. Laughter breaks out at a comment made by a support staff
manager that “we can’t agree!” on what customer focus is; followed by a software engineer asking for
17
a show of hands on who believes that they are already customer focused [#12], which sparks off
another debate on who is the customer [#13]; the nature of the relationship; and whether the company
already is customer focused.
This discussion around who is the customer initially returns to the earlier dichotomy i.e., the
end-user of the phone or the business that sells the phone. It then arrives at a denouement that, while
they may already be customer focused, they could be more so [#14], interspersed with a discussion
around the nature of the relationship between the company and the customer, which should be
interactive [#15]. The debate about who the customer is continues but instead of end-user vs. business,
it switches to internal vs. external customers [#16]. Throughout this discussion, the debate that the
company is already customer focused reappears, with some tempering of the claim that the company is
already customer focused [#17].
All I used to hear from the guys in [another part of the former organization] was
“those bastards in [the UK site] never tell us anything. They’re secretive, they keep it
all to themselves, they won’t talk to us, they tell us lies, they won’t tell us where they
are on the project”. So how does that all fit together? [hardware engineer].
Another hardware engineer returns to the relationship with the customer, questioning whether the
customer should be dominant, given that they are “just as confused in terms of what the market’s
going to do as we are.” The debate then centers on whether the customer or company should be
dominant [#18].
Following this debate, the video presentation returns to the issue of customer focus, defined in
terms of an honest relationship [#19]. After the video, the stop/start/continue exercise is conducted
and the need for a commercial focus re-emerges [#20], initiated by support staff managers but also
supported by engineers. A gradual consensus develops regarding the definition of a commercial focus
i.e., as being financially aware and helping the company to be profitable.
Commercial … to me means … UTel profitability. And it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot
about customer profitability, customer on time, customer this, customer that and
customer the other, I have never yet heard an UTel manager say “we’ve got to make a
lot of money” [support staff manager].
18
By the end of the discussion, the group has come to an agreement that a customer focus is less
important than the need for a commercial focus.
Negotiations around Implementation
In contrast with the negotiations around customer focus where different groups built on and
developed the meanings proposed by others, the negotiations around the meaning of implementation
were much more polarized, with middle managers proposing one set of meanings and senior and head
office managers attempting to impose their definition of implementation on the workshop participants.
Despite a head office manager initially presenting the workshop as an opportunity to identify the
actions required for implementation collectively, subsequent contributions to the debate by head office
managers were all attempts to fix the meanings of implementation around their predetermined
program. Here implementation was defined in terms of the next step, being a continuation of the
workshops to create awareness of the existing culture, the outcomes of which were to be decided by
Head Office on how to proceed. Contrasting with this, the engineers tried to fix the meaning of
implementation in terms of local actions which require among other things, clear direction, road
maps, and time lines.
—Figure 2 near here—
Figure 2 shows the flows of debate around the meanings of implementation. At the start of the
workshop, a head office manager sets out one of the workshop’s aim being to arrive at a collective
identification of the actions to be taken to implement the culture change program at the local site
[#1].8 Fifty minutes later, a software engineer picks up the issue of implementation, suggesting that it
requires a clear direction, something which is currently lacking: “we need to know where we’re going
… how we fit in, making sure the whole things hangs together” [#2]. A software engineer then
suggests that, rather than a lack of direction, the issue is a lack of information [#3] although this is
countered by another software engineer as the discussion returns to a lack of direction [#4]. At this
point, a head office manager tries to divert the debate by arguing that it is difficult to establish a clear
direction [#5]. Another engineer attempts to press the head office manager for implementation to be
8
The numbers in square brackets provide a cross reference to Figure 2 and Appendix 2.
19
defined in terms of the need for direction [#6]. Some frustration is expressed during this discussion by
the engineers. As one asks, “We’re having this discussion about [direction] but what’s the purchasable
point?” A senior manager attempts to clarify the debate at this point by questioning whether issue they
are debating is in relation to implementation being about setting time frames [#7]. A software engineer
returns to the issue of implementation requiring locally agreed direction [#8]. A senior manager
switches the issue to argue that implementation involves an awareness of the culture at the different
sites [#9]. At this point, a support staff manager draws attention to the power of Head Office: “You
know it’s them and us and we always have to do what [Head Office] says.” The head office manager
responds by closing down the debate and attempts to block further challenges by invoking the CEO:
The mission we have now is to send to [the CEO] and to the management team the
actions or the current culture that we identify within each site. [The CEO] is very
interested … in this work. We have been running culture workshops now in [the
various sites] and he has gone through the material with myself and sometimes with
[another head office manager]. Now he really wants to see what kind of culture you
have here and that’s the first step [head office manager].
This head office manager then defines implementation in terms of the first step being an increased
awareness of the existing culture, which is immediately reinforced by another head office manager.
At this stage, the video is shown: it defines implementation in terms of the next step, which
was to involve everyone [#10]. Following the video, a software engineer asks for feedback on whether
actions identified in previous workshops were implemented. In response, a head office manager
returns to implementation as collectively identified actions to be taken at the local site [#11]. Later, a
software engineer again raises the issue of implementation requiring direction [#12]. A discussion
ensues among the engineers that link direction to: long-term costs, timescales, information and
empowerment, and the need for road maps. However, this definition is ignored by a head office
manager, who returns to implementation as requiring further workshops [#13]. The discussion, among
senior managers, turns to the culture kit, as directives are issued for the specific timing and conduct of
subsequent workshops [#14]. In this way, talk is diverted from the need for a clear direction into
instructions about the process for conducting future workshops:
20
You should have … the video … I will email you the slides that we presented today
[and] the agenda for the three hour meeting that you’ll have with your staff; going
through the stop start in the workshops, that’ll be in your slides; instructions on how
to run the discussions; and also the template for the stop start workshops. The
templates that we want you to work on are template two and template four, those two
templates once you’ve conducted the workshops with your staff. I need them in by the
end of August. So you need to conduct your workshops with your staff by the end of
August. At the end of August I send all my information to [Head Office] who will
make a presentation to [the CEO]. Have you got brochures for everyone? [senior
manager]
Later, the engineers return yet again to the need for a road map; milestones and action plans
as a necessary part of implementation [#15]. At this stage, an engineer takes up the definition of
implementation as next step – not in terms of future workshops or greater cultural awareness, as
suggested previously by a senior manager, but in terms of setting action plans;
It’s just [we need] some plan going forward rather than being an isolated activity…
the bit that’s missing to my mind is what the next steps are? We do this but then
what’s the next step? [software engineer]
In response to this, there is a strong assertion of control (“Well what we [Head Office] have decided is
that we will…) as a head office manager defines next steps as reports and actions to be decided by
Head Office, thus contradicting an earlier point that actions are to be collectively identified [#16]. A
hardware engineer returns to the need for a time line [#17], while a head office manager returns to the
first step being the need to conduct further workshops by August [#18]. The same manager refers to
possible job losses: “We don’t know if you’re going to be here in 2003-2004”. Yet again, a software
engineer raises the issue of the need for road maps [#19] and, again, a head office manager defines
implementation in terms of a set of activities decided by Head Office [#20]. This is reinforced by
another head office manager who returns to the first step requiring greater cultural awareness,
emphasizing process, rather than activities, and setting out instructions for timing, reports, and noting
that decisions will taken by Head Office [#21]. There is another attempt to define implementation in
21
terms of time lines and success criteria by a support staff manager [#22]:“what’s the success
criteria?” Measurement is dismissed as unfeasible by a head office manager (contradicting the earlier
video) [#23]. A hardware engineer returns to the original definition of implementation, reminding the
participants that it was defined as collective actions to be taken by the local site [#24]. This is directly
refuted by a head office manager, thereby contradicting the opening statement at the start of the
workshop and the message from the CEO in the video, by saying: “that’s not the actions that you
should be doing [in the local site]” [#25].
In comparing the two sets of negotiations, we see quite contrasting patterns. Customer focus is
associated with a high degree of participation – both middle and senior managers contribute to the
construction of meaning. Thus the culture toolkit was used to frame a discussion in which a range of
managers participated in different arguments, relating to the need for, and definition of, customer
focus. There is little evidence of domination by senior managers: middle managers made three
quarters of the total number of interventions and the final meaning – i.e. the need for a commercial
focus – was the result of a collective negotiation by middle managers, rather than being imposed by
senior managers. Participants regularly built on earlier interventions to develop an understanding of
what was a customer focus, who the customer was, and whether or not they were already customer
focused. Further, these separate meanings built on each other to construct the need for a commercial
focus. Thus middle managers appear to have contributed to the negotiations of meaning in a
participative and distributed set of negotiations. Through this distributed pattern of participation, the
culture toolkit acted as a boundary object-in use, helping to transform the knowledge concerning the
need for a customer focus – and whether there already was one – into the need for a commercial focus.
This can be sharply contrasted with implementation, where the evidence suggests that senior
managers tried to impose meaning. Instead of participants building on earlier interventions, there was
a far higher incidence of interventions that refuted or challenged opposing meanings. Senior managers
returned time and time again to the process of implementation (the continuation of the workshops),
while middle managers continued to emphasize the need for actions and measurable outcomes. There
is little evidence of the co-construction of a collective meaning and, instead, two increasingly
polarized meanings were supported by the different groups. In this regard, the culture toolkit failed to
22
act as a boundary object-in-use. It may have established a shared language for individuals to represent
their knowledge about implementation to each other; and it may have provided a way for participants
to learn about their differences and dependencies regarding implementation but, since neither group
was willing to change their meaning of implementation, knowledge was not transformed (cf. Carlile,
2002).
Vertical Power Relations and Boundary Objects
In the second set of findings, we investigate the role played by vertical relations in influencing
the two outcomes discussed above. We start by identifying the strategies adopted by each group
(senior managers and middle managers)9 to shape meaning. We noted 11 strategies used by senior
managers; and seven strategies used by middle managers (see Table 1). We then examined how these
strategies helped or hindered the ability of the culture toolkit to act as a boundary object-in-use.
—Table 1 near here—
The senior managers used different strategies in the two sets of negotiations. With respect to
customer focus, the dominant strategy was building, where senior managers engaged with, elaborated
and developed meanings proposed by middle managers. There was also evidence of frequent
affirmation of the middle managers’ contributions and senior managers regularly sought clarification
of middle managers’ meanings. There was only one incident where a senior manager attempted to
dismiss the meaning proposed by a middle manager. With respect to implementation, dominant
strategies were stalling – statements that suspended or deferred the negotiation of meaning; dismissing
– rebuffing or ignoring alternative meanings proposed by middle managers; and the reiteration of
meanings proposed by their senior colleagues. Senior managers regularly deployed authority by
drawing on their position in the hierarchy to silence middle managers; invoked hierarchy by referring
to the top echelons of the organization to back up their meaning; and, in one case, used the threat of
job losses. Finally, senior managers reified the artifact, by presenting the culture toolkit as having a
non-negotiable and fixed meaning in relation to implementation i.e., it meant the continuation of the
workshops and in the form dictated by the culture toolkit and according to the specified deadlines.
To simplify the analysis, head office managers and senior site managers were categorized as “senior managers”
and engineers, hardware engineers and support staff were combined into one group of “middle managers”.
9
23
Middle managers used different strategies. With respect to customer focus, the most
frequently used strategy was advancing – engaging with, elaborating and developing meanings
proposed by senior managers. Middle managers did challenge meanings offered by senior managers
and, importantly, it was a middle manager who proposed the new meaning of commercial focus,
which was taken up by other middle (and senior) managers, and which survived through to the end of
the workshop. Middle managers regularly reinforced their meanings and tried to uphold the meanings
proposed by other middle managers. In contrast, implementation was very different. There was no
evidence of advancing, and the most common strategies were reinforcement; undermining, where
middle managers made critical statements of senior managers to discredit their meanings; challenging
senior managers’ meanings; and upholding the meanings offered by fellow middle managers. Finally,
there were several incidents where senior managers were held to account i.e., middle managers
demanded actions from senior managers that would contradict their proposed meaning of
implementation and/or questioned a lack of action on the part of senior managers in ways that
discredited their meaning.
The comparison of these strategies provides a number of insights. First, different strategies
have implications for the pattern of participation in the negotiations around the meaning of the
boundary object. Some strategies appear more likely to be associated with wider participation in
negotiations, as a result of which meaning is more likely to be collectively constructed, common
ground established and knowledge transformed e.g., building, advancing, affirming, clarifying, and
proposing. Other strategies seem to be more likely to be used to constrain participation in negotiations
and to impose or entrench a preferred meaning e.g., stalling, dismissing, reiterating, deploying
authority, invoking hierarchy, threatening, undermining and holding to account. Some strategies, such
as challenging, reinforcing and upholding, may be used both to open up and constrain participation.
For example, if middle managers are to participate meaningfully in the negotiations, some challenges
may be necessary if new meanings are to emerge; in addition, upholding and reinforcing may be a way
to ensure that a meaning establishes a foothold so that it can subsequently be advanced and built upon.
Conversely, repeated challenges may be used by middle managers to defend or entrench existing
meanings, while upholding and reinforcing could be a way for middle managers to mount a collective
24
resistance to senior managers’ meanings. Finally, some strategies may appear to be associated with
opening up participation but are, in fact, meaningless except within the context of the other strategies
e.g., both sets of negotiation started with an explicit invitation for middle managers to participate but
very different participation patterns emerged in the subsequent negotiations.
Second, strategies engage with vertical power relations in different ways. Those strategies
associated with the collective construction of meaning tended to break down or blur – if only
temporarily – vertical boundaries. For example, when used by senior managers, building, affirming
and clarifying are important ways to redress the hierarchical differences and to give subordinates a
clear voice in the discussions, as indicated in the follow up interviews. The negotiations about
customer focus, the workshop had been “an opportunity for them to give their two-pence worth”
(middle manager); and “for the management … to actually take notice of what’s going on in the other
sites” (senior manager). In contrast, many of the strategies associated with constrained participation
reinforce and reproduce the power embedded in vertical relations. For example, when senior managers
stalled, deployed authority, invoked hierarchy, and made threats, they were both exercising and
reinforcing their superior position in relation to their subordinates. Again, this was commented on in
the follow-up interviews as middle managers said how “disappointed” they felt about their inability to
challenge the process of implementation: “I don’t think there’s anything I can say or do that would get
anything changed in the process”; and: there was “no statement in there that said we are going to use
the information that you give us and you are going to change things”. Implementation decisions had
been “passed down” and Head Office “wanted to keep control” of these activities.
Middle managers also drew on power related to their position in relation to their superiors. For
example, upholding and reinforcing draws on the group support of other middle managers which cuts
across horizontal differences. Similarly, when middle managers hold account senior managers to
account, they are turning the greater responsibility of their superiors against them by demanding
particular actions or criticizing inaction.
Discussion and Conclusions
We sought to answer two research questions regarding patterns of participation and the
25
influence of vertical power relations: The first was: what different patterns of participation occur in
the negotiation of meaning of boundary objects; and how do they arise? Our study shows two
different patterns of participation. One pattern involved a high degree of participation as both middle
and senior managers contributed to the negotiation of meaning, and participants regularly built on
earlier interventions to develop shared understandings. This pattern of distributed participation
occurred through an interplay between strategies of building, affirming and clarifying by senior
managers and, on the part of middle managers, advancing, backed up with the use of challenging,
reinforcing and upholding. Through these strategies, the artifact helped to interweave and integrate
meanings proposed by different actors into a shared understanding, whereby the need for a customer
focus was transformed into a need for a commercial focus. The second pattern involved constrained
participation and was associated with attempts to impose preferred meanings, as a result of which the
same artifact failed to break down the boundary between two different meanings of implementation.
Instead polarization occurred as senior managers used a series of strategies to constrain the
participation of their subordinates; middle managers challenged and undermined senior managers’
meanings and, while they upheld and reinforced their own meanings they failed to advance them.
The second research question was: do groups draw on vertical power relations to influence
the negotiation of meaning of boundary objects and, if so, how? Our study shows that vertical power
relations are significant in the negotiation of meaning of boundary objects, and in complex ways. The
strategies used by senior managers in relation to customer focus tended to soften or redress their
privileged position. In addition, our findings indicate that subordinates must also exercise power if
they are to participate in the co-construction of meaning. Strategies such as upholding, reinforcing and
challenging, as long as they are combined with advancing, appear necessary if middle managers are to
establish new meanings long enough for them to be become meaningful to – and be taken up by – the
larger group, including the more senior managers. In relation to implementation – and in the absence
of advancing – these same strategies became weapons with which to resist senior managers’ use of
strategies that clearly capitalized on and exploited their superior position in the hierarchy.
Our study makes four contributions. First, in using our novel analysis of the real time
negotiation of meaning we are able to illustrate how a designated boundary object becomes a
26
boundary object-in-use i.e., through processual plasticity (involving distributed participation and the
co-construction of meaning). In this way, we show that it is the practice of negotiating that determines
the success of the artifact in becoming a boundary object-in-use. We also show how the strategies
identified earlier – and employed by both senior and subordinate participants – help to sustain
processual plasticity. In this regard, we extend Levina and Vaast’s (2005) work on the emergence of a
boundary object-in-use to emphasize the additional significance of “bottom-up” strategies by
subordinates. In other words, whether or not an artifact becomes a boundary object-in-use depends
upon the interplay between the strategies used by senior and subordinate members, and not just the
“top-down” work of designated or informal boundary spanners. Our study also shows how the
deployment of power by a wide range of participants can bring about the co-construction of meaning,
cooperation and the transformation of knowledge, which conforms to a view which sees power as
facilitative i.e., power is used “to” achieve collective outcomes (Clegg, Courpasson & Phillips, 2006).
A second contribution concerns our elaboration of Carlile’s (2004) point that actors do not
necessarily occupy equal positions in representing their knowledge to each other. We complement
Bechky’s (2003b) work which shows how professional and positional power can prevent artifacts
from becoming boundary objects-in-use, to illustrate the way in which vertical power relations and
line authority can impinge upon the ability of artifacts to become boundary objects-in-use.
Specifically, our findings show how power was exercised by senior managers over their subordinates
by deploying the authority directly related to their position; exercising coercive power through the use
of threats; using their political access to more senior managers to invoke hierarchy; and drawing on
their position to stall the negotiation of meaning and dismiss meanings not suited to their tastes.
Subordinates are not totally powerless in relation to their superiors and can draw on sources of power
to resist by, for example, using group support to reinforce and uphold; expertise to undermine; and
their subordinate position to hold their superiors to account. This pattern conforms to a more negative
view of power i.e., the use of power by an actor “over” another (Clegg, Courpasson & Phillips, 2006).
Third, we also show the complexity involved in assessing whether or not a designated artifact
successfully emerges as boundary object-in-use. In our case, there was both a “break though” in
identifying and securing commitment to the need for a commercial focus in the new culture; and a
27
“stalemate” concerning the actions that should be taken to implement this new culture. Thus, whether
an artifact becomes a boundary object-in-use may not be influenced so much by the characteristics of
the artifact e.g., objects, models and maps rather than standardized forms and methods or repositories
(Carlile, 2002), tangible rather than verbal artifacts (Bechky, 2003a), or the use of artifacts with
particular visual imagery (Yakura, 2002); or even by the particular setting in which the boundary
object is located, such as the stage in the process or the participants who are involved (Carlile, 2002).
Instead, the success or failure of a particular artifact may have more to do with the processes whereby
its meaning is negotiated. It therefore follows that – in some cases at least – the same artifact can slip
in and out of functioning as a boundary object, depending on the way in which actors participate in the
negotiation of meaning. In our case, the culture toolkit enabled participants to represent their different
knowledge about the existing culture to each other – so while senior managers started off by arguing a
customer focus was needed, middle managers countered that it already existed. The toolkit gave them
a language and a process with which to represent this different knowledge about the culture and
enabled participants to learn about these differences. Most importantly, it enabled the transformation
of knowledge – from a customer focus to a commercial focus. However, this was not the case with
implementation, where there is no evidence of transformation. Thus it appears possible to engage in
strategies to encourage processual plasticity in relation to some issues, while adopting different
strategies that reify the artifact and defend particular meanings in relation to others. This makes
answering the question of whether a designated artifact has become a boundary object-in-use a rather
complex task.
A fourth contribution is derived from our methodology, which could inform practice-oriented
approaches more generally. In following the practice-based approach advocated by Levina and Vaast
(2005: 340) by focusing on “the ongoing use of an artifact by agents within a specific social context
that generates the artifact’s social characteristics and gives it meaning”, we have conducted a detailed,
real time analysis of the negotiation of meaning in practice. In addition to the communities of practice
literature, there is considerable interest in practice among strategy researchers. In the same way as
Jarzabkowski (2004) notes that strategies are not something organizations “have” but something that
actors “do”; so too are boundary objects. Strategy includes “all the work involved with formulating,
28
implementing and communicating corporate strategies” (Whittington et al., 2003: 397) and “embraces
the interactions and interpretations from which strategic activity emerges over time (Jarzabkowski,
2003: 24). Many of these interactions and interpretations occur in meetings – board meetings,
committees, strategic retreats – not unlike our workshop. Accordingly, our methodological approach
provides the basis for a detailed interpretive analysis that could be used to unpack complex processes
of meaning construction that occurs in settings where knowing and practice are mutually constituted.
As Orlikowski (2002: 252-3) has pointed out “knowing cannot be understood as stable or enduring.
Because it is enacted in the moment, its existence is virtual, its status provision”. Our methodology
provides one way to show how knowing – or, in our terms, meaning – changes over time.
Our study has a number of practical implications. It shows how the processual plasticity
associated with a boundary object-in-use requires considerable work, and comes from the enactment
of strategies that both “soften” downward power relations and, simultaneously “toughen” upward
power relations: toughening without softening is likely to lead to confrontation and stalemate; while
softening without toughening may reflect disengagement and “going through the motions” (cf.
Handley et al., 2006). Senior managers therefore need to adopt strategies that reduce the impact of
downward vertical power relations in negotiating meanings if they genuinely wish to achieve
collaboration and transform knowledge. We do not suggest that the strategies identified here are the
only ones that can be used, but they do provide a basis from which managers can start to develop
strategies to increase the likelihood that the artifacts do serve their designated function and become
boundary objects-in-use.
Our study also indicates that it is important for senior managers to realize that as subordinates
exercise power in order to influence the negotiation of meaning, they may not necessarily propose or
support meanings that are consistent with the meanings that senior managers have in mind. In such
cases, there may be a tendency for senior managers to “push back” and reinforce their power position,
as happened with implementation. Our study indicates that this reaction intensified over time and in
response to the refusal of middle managers to give way on the meaning of implementation – towards
the end of the workshop, senior managers started to “bundle” strategies as they sought to dismiss a
middle manager’s contribution, make a threat and invoke hierarchy all at the same time. The use of
29
strategies to constrain participation and impose meaning may thus emerge as an automatic defense
mechanism in response to the use of power or the promotion of particular meanings by subordinates.10
To maintain a boundary object-in-use therefore requires senior managers to surrender some of their
control and to face the consequences of potentially unpalatable outcomes arising from the meaning
construction of subordinates. It also means that senior managers have to create a safe environment in
which subordinates feel that they can exercise power without retaliation.
Our study has a number of limitations. First, the main focus is a three-hour workshop and,
while we conducted follow-up interviews, we were not able to study what happened in other
workshops or the outcome of the culture change program. We felt that such a focus was necessary in
order to conduct the in-depth, finely grained analysis of the construction of meaning, but we realize
that it prevented other avenues being explored. Second, we were only able to interview half of the
workshop participants to follow up on the workshop. This was due primarily to logistical reasons, with
some participants being away from site or unavailable due to work pressures at the time when the
interviews were scheduled. However, we noted considerable convergence in the interviews that we did
conduct to support our findings. Third, to simplify the analysis, we combined senior managers from
head office with those from the local site. While our analysis indicates that there was a great deal of
agreement among them, one can clearly imagine situations where there are divisions among different
senior managers. It is important therefore to realize that senior managers are not a homogenous group.
We have successfully extended the understanding of power in relation to boundary objects,
through our focus on power relations at the micro level. There is, however, a need for future studies of
boundary objects to analyze how power relations at the macro level affect boundary objects. First,
future research might include the wider socio-economic climate of capitalist relations (cf. Contu &
Willmott, 2003) to consider how they influence patterns of participation and the use of power. In our
case study, the workshop took place against a backdrop of major organizational restructuring and job
losses for engineers, as well as a downturn in the telecommunications industry. As a result, job
insecurity was a continual concern for the middle managers and their participation might have
As such, the strategies that we have identified are necessarily deliberate – they may also be emergent (cf.
Mintzberg. 1985).
10
30
motivated by a desire to present a positive and legitimate identity to senior management and insure
against job loss. Second, future research might consider the influence of power relations in the larger
organization and how they are used to structure the negotiation of meaning. Participants have to work
within the constraints laid down in the way in which the boundary object is set up. As Kunda (1991:
219) points out, management “sets the stage, provides the rhetoric, and reserves the right to the final
word in these interpretive struggles.” Such “mobilization of bias” constitutes an important use of
power (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962). Third, it is also important to realize that our study focuses on
skilled middle managers in a knowledge intensive firm – unskilled, blue collar workers may have far
less recourse to the strategies employed by our middle managers. Therefore future research could
examine the different strategies used by lower level employees in relation to collaboration (“power
to”), as well as in the form of resistance (“power over”); in this case power exercised by subordinates
to resist the demands of senior managers.
To conclude, a significant amount of work has examined how boundary objects are used to
bridge boundaries in the every day work practices of the organization (Orlikowski, 2002), such as the
use of boundary objects on the production floor (Bechky, 2003a) and ongoing product development
(Carlile, 2002; 2004). Levina and Vaast (2005) have expanded this to the use of boundary objects in
projects to introduce new communication technologies. Our study opens up the contexts in which
boundary objects might be used even further – as part of organizational change programs, which so far
have not attracted much attention. Given the pervasiveness of organizational change initiatives and
their dependence on cooperation across organizational boundaries, it is important for researchers and
practitioners alike to understand what enables an artifact to become a boundary object-in-use.
31
References
Bachrach, P., M.S. Baratz. 1962. The two faces of power. Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 56 947-52.
Bechky, B.A. 2003a. Sharing meaning across occupational communities: the transformation of
understanding on a production floor. Org. Sci. 14(3) 312–330.
Bechky, B.A. 2003b. Object lessons: workplace artifacts as representations of occupational
jurisdiction, Amer. J. Soc. 109(3) 720-752.
Boland, R.J. Jr., R.V. Tenkasi. 1995. Perspective making and perspective taking in communities of
knowing, Organ. Sci. 6(4) 350-372.
Briers, M., W.F. Chua. 2001. The role of actor-networks and boundary objects in management
accounting change: A field study of an implementation of activity-based costing. Acc., Org. and Soc.
26(3) 237–269.
Brown, J. S., P. Duguid. 1991. Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified
view of working, learning and innovating. Organ. Sci. 2(1) 40-57.
Carlile, P.R. 2002. A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries: Boundary objects in new product
development. Organ. Sci, 13(4) 442-455.
Carlile, P.R. 2004. Transferring, translating, and transforming: an integrative framework for managing
knowledge across boundaries. Organ. Sci. 15(5) 555-568.
Clegg, S.R., D. Courpasson, N. Phillips (2006) Power and organizations, Sage, London.
Contu, A., H. Willmott. 2003. Re-Embedding situatedness: the importance of power relations in
learning theory. Organ. Sci. 14(3) 283–296.
Deetz, S., D.K. Mumby. 1990. Power, discourse and the workplace: reclaiming the critical tradition.
Communication Yearbook. 13 18-47.
Dougherty, D. 1992. Interpretive barriers to successful product innovation in large firms. Organ. Sci.
3(2) 179–202.
Eisenhardt, K.M. 1989. Building theories from case study research. Acad. Management Rev. 14 532550.
Garrety, K., R. Badham. 2000. The politics of socio-technical intervention: An interactionist view.
Tech. An. and Strg. Mgt. 12(1) 103-118.
Gerson, E.M., S.L. Star. 1986. Analyzing due process in the workplace. ACM Trans and Office Info
Systems. 4(3) 257-270.
Gherardi, S. 2000. Practice-based theorizing on learning and knowing organizations. Org. 7(2) 211223.
Handley, K., A. Sturdy, R. Fincham & T. Clark. 2006. Within and beyond communities of practice:
Making sense of learning through participation, identity and practice, J. Man. Studs. 43(3) 641-653
Hardy, C., N. Phillips. 2004. Discourse and Power. D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick, L. Putnam, eds.
Handbook of Organizational Discourse. Sage, London, 219-318.
Hardy, C., T. Lawrence, D. Grant. 2005. Discourse and collaboration: the role of conversations and
collective identity. Acad. Management Rev., 30(1) 1-20.
Henderson, K. 1998. The role of material objects in the design process: A comparison of two design
cultures and how they contend with automation. Sci. Tech. & Hum. Vals., 23(2) 139-174.
Henderson, K. 1991. Flexible sketches and inflexible data bases: visual communication, conscription
devices, and boundary objects in design engineering. Sci. Tech. & Hum. Vals. 16(4) 448-473.
32
Jarzabkowski, P. 2003. Strategic practices: an activity theory perspective on continuity and change. J.
Man. Studs. 40(1) 23-55.
Jarzabkowski, P. 2004. Strategy as practice: recursiveness, adaptation, and practices-in-use. Org Stud.
25(4) 529–560.
Kunda, G. 1991. Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation,
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Lave, J., E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge
University Press, New York.
Levina, N. & E. Vaast. 2005. The emergence of boundary spanning competence in practice:
implications for implementation and use of information systems. MIS Quart 29(2) 335-363.
Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. A. 1985. Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent. Strategic
Management.J. 6 257-272.
Orlikowski, W.J. 2000. Using technology and constituting structures: A practice lens for studying
technology in organizations. Organ. Sci. 11(4) 404-428.
Orlikowski W.J. 2002. Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributive
organizing.” Organ Sci., 13(3)249-273.
Roberts, J. 2006. Limits to communities of practice. J. Man. Studs. 43(3) 623-639
Sapsed, J., A. Salter. 2004. Postcards from the edge: local communities, global programs and
boundary objects, Org. Stud. 25(9) 1515-1534.
Star, S., J. Griesemer. 1989. Institutional economy, "translations" and boundary objects: amateurs and
professionals in Berkeley's museum of vertebrate zoology 1907-39. Soc. Stud. Sci. 19(9) 387-420.
Star, S.L. 1988. The structure of ill-structured solutions; boundary object and heterogeneous
distributed problem solving. L.G. Gasser, ed. Readings in Distributed Artificial Intelligence.
Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 37-54.
Sturdy, A., P. Fleming. 2003. Talk as technique – a critique of the words and deeds distinction in the
diffusion of customer service cultures in call centres. J. Man Studs. 40(4) 753-773.
Whittington, R., P. Jarzabkowski, M. Mayer, E. Mounoud, J. Nahapiet , J., & L. Rouleau, L. 2003.
Taking strategy seriously: Responsibility and reform for an important social practice. J. of Mgt. Inq.,
12(4) 396-409
Weick, K. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations, Sage, Englewood Cliffs.
Yakura, E.K. 2002. Charting time: Timelines as temporal boundary objects. Acad. Management J.
45(5) 956–970.
Yanow, D. 2000. Seeing organizational learning. Org. 7(2) 247-268.
Yanow, D. 2004. Translating local knowledge at organizational peripheries. Brit. J. of Mgt, 15, S9–25.
33
Table 1: Strategies of Senior and Middle Managers
STRATEGY11
Inviting
Affirming
Clarifying
Building
Stalling
Dismissing
Reiterating
Deploying Authority
Invoking Hierarchy
Threatening
Reifying the Artifact
STRATEGY
Proposing
Advancing
Challenging
Upholding
Reinforcing
Undermining
Holding to account
DESCRIPTION OF INTERVENTION BY SENIOR MANAGERS
Statements which encourage participation by middle managers in
negotiation of meanings.
Statements agreeing with meanings put forward by middle managers.
Questions asked of middle managers to open up negotiation of meanings.
Statements which engage with, elaborate and develop meanings put
forward by middle managers.
Statements which serve to suspend or defer the negotiation of meanings.
Statements which serve to rebuff or ignore alternative meanings.
Statements which return to and repeat meanings already proposed by
senior managers.
Statements which contain directives that eliminate meanings proposed by
middle managers.
Statements which refer to superiors in order to justify the elimination of
meanings proposed by middle managers
Statements which refer to potential sanctions in order to eliminate
meanings proposed by middle managers.
Statements which invoke the culture toolkit to represent a particular, nonnegotiable meaning
DESCRIPTION OF INTERVENTION BY MIDDLE MANAGERS
Statements which introduce a new meaning.
Statements which engage with, elaborate and develop meanings proposed
by senior managers or/and other middle managers.
Statement which reject or critique meanings proposed by senior managers.
Statements which express support for meanings proposed by other middle
manager.
Statements which return to and repeat meanings already proposed by
middle managers.
Statements which are critical of senior managers in order to discredit their
proposed meanings.
Statements which demand action from senior managers (or question a lack
of action) in way that discredit their proposed meanings
11
Different terminology is deliberately used to distinguish interventions by senior managers from interventions
by middle managers in order to facilitate the analysis.
34
Figure 1: Summary of Negotiations around Customer Focus12
MINS
1
10
Customer Focus =
relationship [SM]
2
Who is the
customer? [SM]
20
Another
business
End user
30
3
Customer is
dominant [SM]
4
5
Who is the customer?
Another business? [MM]
We [UK site]
are customer
focused [MM]
6
We are not
customer
focused [MM]
7
Who is the
customer? End
user = business
[MM]
50
8
We [UK site] are
already customer
focused [MM]
9
We need to be
commercially
focused [MM]
60
10
Who is responsible for
being customer
focused? [MM]
11
We all need to be
commercially
focused [MM]
12
We are
customer
focused [MM]
13
80
Who is the
customer? [MM]
End user?
Another
business?
14
We are customer
focused but could be
more so [MM]
15
110
16
Who is the
customer? [MM]
Customer relation
is interactive [MM]
17
130 Customer
is internal
Customer
is external
18
Company or
customer as
dominant? [MM]
Tempered claim of
customer focus [SM]
160
19
180
TIME
20
Honest relationship
with customer [SM]
Who is the
customer?
Customer focus =
relationship
Commercial focus =
financially and profits
aware [MM]
Are we customer
focused?
We need to be
commercially focused
* SM = Senior Manager, MM = Middle Manager
12
Left axis numbers refer to time i.e., minutes after the commencement of the workshop; the light, dashed
arrows indicate the order of interventions, which are numbered; the bold arrows indicate the development of the
different meanings. The phrases at bottom of the figure refer to the different meanings proposed and developed
during the workshop.
35
Figure 2: Summary of Negotiations around Implementation13
Time (Mins.)
10
1.
Actions for local
implementation collectively
identified [SM]
2.
50
Implementation
needs direction [MM]
3.
Need for better
information [MM]
4.
Implementation
needs direction [MM]
5.
Direction is
difficult [SM]
6.
Implementation
needs direction [MM]
7.
60
Need for time
frames [MM]
9.
First step is awareness
of the culture [SM]
8.
Implementation
needs direction [MM]
80
10.
Next step is to involve
everyone [SM]
11.
Actions for local
implementation collectively
identified [SM]
12.
120
Implementation needs direction:
long term costs, timescales,
information and road maps [MM]
13.
Need for further
workshops [SM]
14.
Directives given on
timing and conduct of
workshop [SM]
15.
150
Need for: road maps,
milestones and action plans
[MM]
16.
Next steps as reports actions decided by HO [SM]
17.
Need for time lines
[MM]
18.
First step is further
workshops [job losses flagged
up] [SM]
19.
Need for road map
[MM]
20.
Activities decided by
Head Office [SM]
160
22.
Need for time lines
and success criteria
[MM]
21.
First step is culture
awareness: instructions on
timing, reports and decisions
by Head Office [SM]
23.
170
TIME
Direction is
Unfeasible [SM]
Implementations as specific
measurable outcomes
24.
Actions to be
decided locally
[MM]
Implementation as collectively
defined actions
25.
Actions not
decided locally [SM]
Implementation as continuation
of workshops
SM = Senior Manager, MM = Middle manager
13
Left axis numbers refer to time i.e., minutes after the commencement of the workshop; the light, dashed
arrows indicate the order of interventions, which are numbered; the bold arrows indicate the development of the
different meanings. The phrases at bottom of the figure refer to the different meanings proposed and developed
during the workshop.
36
Appendix 1: Negotiations around Customer Focus
Text from Workshop14
Negotiation of Meaning
SSM1: it’s important that we have a strong UTel culture in this
organization to be customer focused, we need to actually get a
common understanding… and hopefully feed back any concerns
and issues that may crop up [...]
HO2: coming up with solutions for customers…sorting out
customers’ problems… So being able to help our customers?
The importance of a customer
focus is introduced by a senior
manager. [1]
SSM1: I have a couple of questions for you, we talk about the
consumer market but our market really is the business-tobusiness market. It’s our customers who are the people that are
dealing with consumer market.
HO2: Yes you could say that the consumer market is our
customer’s market, so it’s not our market.
SSM1: So yeah the focus from our point of view is much more
the business-to-business type sales.
[…]
HO1: … so it’s really up to the customer: if he wants to put in as
you say the game or horoscope or a lap-top synchronization. I
mean that’s for our customers to decide … you have to
understand the end customer.
[...]
SE1: I wonder if there’s an opportunity to re-visit the mission
statement? I think we should be making sure that our customers
are business-to-business customers and we should be fitting in
when they want to launch. Now when a customer walks through
the door he wants to hear that - he’s got a date in his mind, if we
Interventions by Senior
Managers
SM invites participation
from MM.
Interventions by
Middle Managers
A head office manager offers a
range of customer relationships
in seeking to define customer
focus
A senior manager asks whether
the customer is the end-user vs.
a business. The issue becomes
who is the customer? [2]
The head office manager
returns to the customer
relationship in which the
customer is dominant. [3]
A software engineer asks who
the customer is and whether it
is another business. [4]
14
MM advances SM’s
meaning.
HO= head office manager; SSM= senior site manager; SS = support staff manager; SE = software engineer; HE = hardware engineer; SM = senior manager (includes HOs
and SSMs); MM = middle managers (includes SEs, HEs, and SSs). The number beside each participant indicates the order in which the person first participates in the
discussion.
37
can hit that date - whether it’s first in the market or not, he makes
that decision but we should just ensure that we hit their project
dates.
HO2: Good point so it’s in your own time, rather than first.
SE1: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely we get customers at the door,
if you could say you could get six weeks better then they may
drop one function if you can offer it six weeks earlier than any
other competitor.
HO2: Right, very good point.
[…]
SE1: I believe that we’re [local site] customer-oriented. I think
we are customer focused as an organization and we have been all
the way through even in our history. I think we’re a customerfocused organization
SM affirms and builds on
contribution by MM.
SM continues to affirm.
A software engineer argues that
the UK site is customer
focused. There is a shift from
defining the nature of the
relationship with the customer
to claims that UK site already
is customer focused. [5]
HE1: I struggle with that one.
SE1: You struggle with that one?
HE1: Because I don’t think nowadays we’re close enough to the
customer, you know, I think when we were GlobalTel it was
easy because we actually had customers.
SSM1: What do you mean by the customers?
HE1: External customers I think it would have to be to be honest
… we’re miles away from the customer and have been for quite
a few years now, so I’d kind of struggle with that.
MM challenges meaning
proposed by SMs.
SM seeks clarification over
meaning.
A debate follows in which
software engineers emphasize
their existing close relationship
with customer; this is disputed
by some other participants. [6]
SSM1: I don’t agree with that.
SM attempts to dismiss.
SE2: Suppose it depends on your point of view
SE3: Probably does
SE4: I think certainly from the software environment we’re very
MM upholds meaning.
38
close to customers at the moment … I agree with [SE1] on that
one.
HO2: But maybe you mean different things with customers, my
interpretation is that when you say customer you mean the enduser.
SE1: Yeah, I think I do.
HE2: But who is our end-user, I mean the case of [X customer]
for example or any of the other customers – they are our enduser aren’t they?
HE3: Absolutely yeah, we are a business-to-business
organization.
SE3: So I think we are focused on our customer’s needs and how
we can address them.
SS2: But you also need to look at the different streams of being
customer focused and commercially focused, I’m not sure that as
an organization we’re necessarily commercially aware …
SSM1: That’s a valuable point. Some of us need to be more
business aware, don’t we?
SS2: … we are very driven by engineers and the technology and
some of the phones are geared towards engineers and not-endusers and non-technical people like myself. And people do get
caught up with developing incredible products that are fantastic
with loads of features but from a commercial focus aren’t really
needed. So I don’t think as an organization we’re not necessarily
as commercially and business focused as we need to be.
[Long silence]
SE5: But it’s the job of sales and marketing to go out and assess
what’s the end-users really want in terms of features and feed
that back?
SSM2: As an organization as we’re expecting a lot of our
engineers and project managers to be going out to our customers
and putting those deals and contracts in place. But the engineers
The discussion returns to who
the customer is. [7]
SM seeks clarification and
builds on MM’s
contribution.
Further confusion over who the
customer is, as end-user is
equated with business.
MMs advance each
others’ meanings.
Claim that UK site already is
customer focused reemerges.
[8]
The importance of customer
focus is challenged; instead
there is a need for a
commercial focus. [9]
MM proposes new
meaning.
SM affirms and builds on
this new meaning.
There is an attempt to shift to
emphasis to who is responsible
for the customer. [10]
The discussion returns to the
need for a commercial focus:
regardless of whether the
39
SM builds on new meaning.
who are going out and meeting customers need to be
commercially aware. They need to be aware of the contracts
they’re putting in place and the implications of the contracts
because if we don’t meet them we annoy our customers and they
disappear.
SSM1: I don’t think that’s happening though, I don’t think we’re
putting engineers in front of customers who aren’t adequately
trained…
SS1: I think we’re in a transitional period at the moment.
SSM1: So it’s an issue of customer focus?
SS2: We can’t agree! [laughs]
SE1: Can we have just a hands-up? Who thinks we are customer
focused just … [Many hands go up]. So we’re about sort of sixty
percent would you say that think we are customer focused.
SE2: I think we have a perception we’re customer focused.
[…]
SE1: So I believe that we are customer focused, this is my
perception, that we are customer focused but obviously we need
that to improve. But it is a value and it is something that we
already have in place.
HE4: I think it’s an important point that we are customer
focused. I think there is some confusion about who the customer
is.
engineers are close to the
customer, they still need to be
commercially aware. [11]
SM seeks clarification.
Managers admit there is no
agreement on what customer
focus means.
A software engineer returns to
his claim that they are already
customer focused. [12]
MM reinforces
meaning.
Other MM uphold this
meaning.
The discussion returns to who
is the customer – end-user vs.
business; the claim that the
company already is customer
focused continues. [13]
SSM1: I would go further than that, we are internally [focused]
and when we [deal with] our internal customers we try to deliver
that as well.
SE1: I’m going to put that [point] down on the board, is that all
right?
HE4: Yeah sure but … I think the whole organization needs to
know who the customers are. Is it the end-user? Is it the
operators? Is it you know the people we’re actually selling to?
SM builds on MM meaning.
MM reinforces his
earlier meaning.
40
SSM1: The people that are actually paying the invoices that we
send to them [are] the business-to-business interface. It’s not Joe
Public on the street, that’s their customer effectively although we
need to have an appreciation of what’s going on out in the
market.
SS3: I think there’s confusion in some people’s minds
SE1: I think it’s important to recognize that we are still learning
how to be a platform provider and you know we’re not there yet.
SE3: I agree I think [SE1] is right here as well. The thing is that
we are customer focused but just lack a certain number of
organizational, structural and sometimes procedural elements
that would make it work better.
HE4: I’m a little bit unsure what we’re talking about when we
talk about customer focus, are we talking about delivering
precisely what our customers are asking for or are we talking
about having an interactive discussion with them to understand
what the market really wants and setting our mission on that
basis … I think that’s missing, having this discussion with a
customer and saying well this is what we’re going to deliver … I
don’t think as an organization we’ve got that interactive
discussion, we make lots of promises to all our customers but we
don’t seem to prioritize things … we just promise.
SE5: As I see it, we’ve got a customer focus for internal and
external. A lot of people go out and actually talk to the
customers and they actually focus on satisfying their customers’
needs. So depending where you are, what level you are, you have
a focus on customer needs.
HE4: I think internally we do have customer focus but I think it’s
this interaction with our external customers that seems to be
lacking
HE5: Can I chuck another brick into the customer cultural pond
… and see what happens ... if I go back two years to when we
SM builds on MM meaning.
MM advance SM’s
meaning.
Some tempering of the claim
that they are already customer
focused with the recognition
that they could be more so. [14]
Discussion returns to the nature
of the relationship as
interactive. [15]
The discussion returns to who
is the customer but instead of
end-user vs. business, it
switches to internal vs.
external. [16]
41
were bigger …All I used to hear from the guys in [another part
of the former organization] was “those bastards in [the UK site]
never tell us anything. They’re secretive, they keep it all to
themselves, they won’t talk to us, they tell us lies, they won’t tell
us where they are on the project”. So how does that all fit
together? [some laughter]
[…]
SSM1: What you seem to be saying is there’s the internal view
which seems to be wonderful and the external view has a slightly
different tinge to it.
HE5: … [I remember] some of the things that used to be said and
it was rude. I just wondered you know all of a sudden
everything’s different now isn’t it you know and we’re great
with our customers and we tell them everything.
SE1: No we haven’t said that, you’re actually adding to the story
aren’t you.
SSM1: … we may believe we’re a customer focused
organization … [but] there’s always two sides to a story and we
ought to try and get what our customers think of us rather than
what we just think ourselves.
[…]
HE4: Well I’m struggling to find the … point of talking to the
customers. I don’t believe the customers have any more idea than
we do of where they want to go … They have a kernel of an idea
but I think they’re just as confused in terms of what the market’s
going to do as we are…
[…]
SS3: What you’re saying is that we should make up our minds
and then believe in ourselves.
[…]
HO2: That’s exactly what we do, because our customers … have
their own ideas about what will be the developments ... I think
it’s easier when you’re ahead of your customers and you can
More tempering of the view
that they believe that are
already customer focused but
not all (external) customers
might agree. [17]
SM clarifies MM meaning.
MM’s continue to
advance meaning.
SM builds on meanings.
Discussion shifts back to the
relationship but views vary
over whether the customer or
the company should be
dominant. [18]
SM affirms and builds on
meaning.
42
have a decision because then you can act as if you know what
you’re doing and your customers will be confident.
[…]
HE5: … the customer decides “Oh I’m not really quite sure if I
want that, or this or that” and we’re suddenly knocked right off
course and that has major implications in terms of our
development cycles
[…]
HO3 [in video presentation]: We talk to the customers; the key
thing is having good relationships with customers to give them
good support to make them feel that we are good suppliers to
them… we can also talk freely … to our customers therefore we
can talk about the problems and we can be honest.
[…]
SE3: Just one thing on that openness, I think it’s right in respect
of platform development [but] … we need to be careful about
this openness and giving out information - that can be misleading
in my view…
HO1: Good point.
[…]
SE1: So we need to continue our customer focus
SS4: I think we’ve all agreed we need to improve our
commercial awareness not our customer focus
SS2: we need to be more business focused
[General agreement: “yeahs” and nodding of heads]
SE6: What’s the interesting thing with all this culture stuff is that
there is nothing anywhere about things that matter from our point
of view, like profitability and, and our commercial focus.
SE4: Exactly
HE4: Yeah
SS3: And if we’re going to start anything, I would love to see
some commercial focus…
The video presentation returns
to the issue of customer focus,
defined in terms of an honest
relationship. [19]
A software engineer questions
the value of honesty within the
customer focus relationship.
MM challenges
meaning.
SM affirms contribution.
Stop/Start/Continue Exercise is
conducted.
The need for a commercial
focus rather than a customer
focus, re-emerges, initiated by
support staff managers
MM reinforces
meaning.
MM reinforces
meaning.
MMs start to advance
meaning.
and is also supported by
engineers. [20]
43
SE1: Is this a ‘start’ or a ‘continue’?
SS3: I’d say START having a commercial focus as I am pretty
convinced we don’t have one.
HE1: Thinking about the meeting last week, there were people
there from engineering and people from the commercial part and
so I think that the people who need to have commercial
awareness.
SSM3: Certainly from an HR point of view, I think we don’t
have the commercial awareness that we should have. There are
some managers who are OK but there are some who have no
idea about how the money is earned on a project – and I don’t
see that as being commercially focused.
SS4: Yeah – I think we need to decide what we mean by
commercial. Commercial… to me means being about UTel
profitability. And it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot about customer
profitability, customer on time, customer this, customer that and
customer the other, I have never yet heard an UTel manager say
“we’ve got to make a lot of money”
SE1: So START to become aware of the bottom line
SS5: Yes, START to become profit focused within UTel
[…]
SE5: I think that if we have an appreciation of what the end user
wants…
SE6: …It’s good that our business customers share our vision
SM builds on MM’s
meaning.
A commercial focus is defined
as being financially aware and
helping the company to be
profitable.
HE5: that could be very naïve – we could lose our customer
focus by concentrating on what the end user wants
SE5: No, I am not saying that – we need to find out what is of
importance to the end user
HE5: I have to say that I totally disagree because I think it was
wrong… we deliver a product to the people who actually need it,
we charge them and we move on. We do not get embroiled in
what we think they need
SE7: At the end of the day, if they have a choice of platforms
and they do, [then they can choose]
44
MM’s continue to
advance meanings.
SE1: so have we done that one?
[Discussion moves on to other matters]
The importance of customer
focus has now been replaced by
the need for a commercial
focus.
Flip chart from exercise states:
STOP – unrealistic time scales;
START – profit focus;
CONTINUE – improve commercial focus
SSM2: We should start being profit focused, then we also had a
slight debate about somebody mentioned that we should
probably start getting to grips with end user awareness and have
more end user forums and get together and find out what end
users want, but we didn’t all agree on that one. We should
continue to improve the commercial focus of the organization
because if you’re long term from a commitment point of view
we need to be committed to being more commercial focused.
HO1: OK
.
Senior manager affirms
meanings.
45
Appendix 2: Negotiations around Implementation
Negotiation of Meaning
Interventions by Senior
Managers
HO1: … So I’m here today of course to start the implementation A head office manager states
SM invites participation
of our target culture program … another purpose is of course to
implementation of the culture change from MM.
build global commitment and agree on actions to support the
program begins with the workshop;
target culture. And we’re here today to learn more about your
implementation is defined in terms of
current culture in [the local site] but also together to identify
actions to be collectively identified
actions that you can take here in [the local site] to support the
that can be taken at the local site. [1]
target culture…
[…]
SE1: I think one thing that’s missing [from the implementation
A software engineer defines
of the culture change program] is that we need to know where
implementation [2]
we’re going … how we fit in, making sure the whole things
hangs together … That’s a big concern really ...
SSM1: Do you agree?
SM seeks clarification.
SE2: I can’t see how it adds up.
Text from Workshop15
SSM1: That we have a lack of future direction or information?
SE2: I think it’s more to do with information.
SE1: I don’t think it is information actually, I don’t think anyone
knows [where we are going].
[…]
SE3: I think until we make up our own mind [about where we
are going], we are actually not very flexible … Well maybe we
can transfer some of those elements [from a project] down into a
more general: This is what we’re going to do. This is what we
can deliver.
Another software engineer suggests
that implementation is lacking
information [3]
The first software engineer returns to
direction.
SM seeks clarification.
Interventions by
Middle Managers
MM challenges
SM’s meaning.
Another MM
challenges meaning.
MM continues to
challenge meaning.
MM reinforces
meaning.
Discussion returns to lack of
direction – more direction will make
implementation easier. [4]
15
HO= head office manager; SSM= senior site manager; SS = support staff manager; SE = software engineer; HE = hardware engineer; SM = senior manager (includes HOs
and SSMs); MM = middle managers (includes SEs, HEs, and SSs). The number beside each participant indicates the order in which the person first participates in the
discussion and is not necessarily the same individual as in the negotiations around customer focus.
46
HO2: The problem is that it’s not easy, it’s much harder.
A head office manager presents
direction as being difficult. [5]
SM dismisses meaning.
SE3: I didn’t say it was easy.
HE1: Do you feel that we are [easily] knocked right off course
and that has major implications in terms of our development
cycles, programs etc., etc., etc. I mean if we can have a kernel, a
solid internal idea of what we need, and we’re going get this, and
we’re going to get that….
HE2: But what is the purchasable point there [HE1]? We’re
having this discussion about [direction] but what’s the
purchasable point?
SE1: It [the company’s direction] is a slightly hidden agenda.
[laughter]
SSM2: But isn’t [HE2] really saying … how do we [manage]
time frames?
HE2: That’s the essence yeah.
SSM2: And it’s quite clear?
SE1: I think we need to know where we’re going at [local site,
first]
[…]
HO1: …What we’re trying to do is to identify what kind of
culture do we have in [Head Office]; what culture do we have in
[different sites in different countries] because this system is an
ongoing process and we really must identify at each site what
kind of culture, current culture we have...
SSM2: But are you saying we should ask if the [Head Office]
guys have problems with us?
MM undermines
SM’s meaning.
MM reinforces
meaning.
A hardware engineer returns to
definition of implementation as
lacking direction. [6]
MM undermines
SM’s meaning.
A senior manager asks whether
hardware engineer means time
frames. [7]
SM seeks clarification.
A software engineer returns to need
for direction at the local site. [8]
A head office manager refers to need
for awareness of culture at different
sites. [9]
MM reinforces
meaning.
SM stalling of meaning.
A senior manager suggests finding
out what the Head Office thinks of
the local site.
SM1: Yeah that’s a good point and I think…
SS1: [But] you know it’s them and us and we always have to do
what [Head Office] says…
SM1: The mission we have now is to send to [the CEO] and to
The value of doing this is questioned
by a support staff manager.
A head office manager repeatedly
47
MM undermines
SM’s meaning.
SM dismisses MM;
the management team the actions or the current culture that we
identify within each site. [The CEO] is very interested … in this
work. We have been running culture workshops now in [the
various sites] and he has gone through the material with myself
and sometimes with [SM2]. Now he really wants to see what
kind of culture you have here and that’s the first step.
SM2: I think that there are a lot of things that can be done, the
first step we need to take this and create awareness, hold these
discussions, create a common language … to get the tools to
move forward.
[…]
The video is shown
CEO: I think it [the culture change program] starts with
communicating clearly to make really clear what you mean, what
you think is the new culture. The next step is to involve
everybody through the workshops…
Video ends […]
HO1: when you’re conducting the workshop with your
employees you should discuss what key drivers you have in your
team… It’s also interesting to hear what strengths you have [at
the local site] but we don’t have time to go through that today
but you will have instructions in the culture toolkit on how to
work with the different exercises. I don’t know, do you think we
should go through the shared vision now [SM2]?
invokes CEO to define
implementation in terms of the first
step, which is awareness of culture,
including at this site; this is
reinforced by another head office
manager.
invokes hierarchy; and
stalls.
The video defines implementation in
terms of the next step, which is to
involve everyone and to involve
measurement [10]
The head office manager defines
implementation in relation to process
SM reifies the artifact;
invokes hierarchy.
HO2: I think we’ve covered it fairly well.
HO1: It’s gone through fairly well in the video, we don’t need to
go through them. Do we have the brochure?
SSM1: It’s in the culture kit.
HO1: It’s in the culture kit. OK, we’re going to divide you into
three groups now and you’re going to work with two different
templates.
[…]
SE1: I wondered whether you had any feedback on the previous
A software engineer asks for
48
MM undermines
SM’s meaning.
stuff [about what actions came out the exercise at previous
workshops].
feedback on whether previous actions
were implemented.
HO1: Yes … of course, we saw and talked about all these
actions. But it is now more that … we want you to help us
identify actions that … the organisation should take … We have
another template [for an exercise which is] more into what kind
of actions could you take in [the local site] to support the target
culture
[… ]
SE1: Sorry… Do we need to start actually defining where we are
going – start telling people here what we’re aim to be doing,
where we’re going….what their contribution is […]
The head office manager returns to
implementation as defined in terms
of collectively identified actions to be
taken at local site [11]
A software engineer returns to
definition of implementation in terms
of lack of direction;
MM reinforces
meaning.
SS1: [We need to] start defining where we’re going; start
defining long-term costs
[…]
SS2: … We felt we were going very similar to what [SE1] said,
we should stop setting unrealistic time scales, people need to
know that they can achieve what’s been put in place. …
SE1: …to feel empowered people need to have the information
they need to know where to go to be able to move on and feel
empowered…
SS2…. I still think there’s a problem with people in UTel not
actually understanding … who’s responsible for what areas.
Empowerment? How do we empower our engineers, we need to
delegate more, we employ engineers to do a job so let them just
get on and do it, that’s really important … also better road
maps…
HO1: … you came up with very good actions. What do you
think? [turning to SSM2] If we let all employees in [local site] go
through these exercises [templates] here in the workshop do you
think you could work with the results to make improvements in
[local site]..?
A discussion ensues linking direction
to long term costs [12]
MMs uphold each
others’ meanings.
SM reiterates meaning
and reifies the artifact.
Implementation linked to timescales;
empowerment and information;
and road maps
Head office manager returns to
implementation as further
workshops [13]
49
SM reiterates meaning
and reifies the artifact.
SSM2: I think the idea of this was to try and take this further into
the organization with the line managers and they can have a
group to deal with [in subsequent workshops]; and maybe we can
provide some of the material that goes with it …
SSM1: You should have … the video … Also I will email you
the slides that we presented today [and] the agenda for the three
hour meeting that you’ll have with your staff; going through the
stop start in the workshops, that’ll be in your slides; instructions
on how to run the discussions; and also the template for the stop
start workshops. The templates that we want you to work on are
template two and template four, those two templates once you’ve
conducted the workshops with your staff. I need them in by the
end of August. So you need to conduct your workshops with
your staff by the end of August. At the end of August I send all
my information to [Head Office] who will make a presentation to
[the CEO]. Have you got brochures for everyone?
SE2: Does this include contractors?
SSM2: No it’s just permanent staff.
SS2: Why not contractors? We’ve got to work together, we
haven’t got that many.
HO1: If you want more brochures to give your contractors that’s
fine but the results I want are from permanent staff … some of
our contractors have been with us a long time so I have no
problems with you going through basics with the contractors but
not spending a three hour workshop with them […]
HE3: Is this a priority?
SSM1: I think it’s important to note that your responsibilities as
team leaders, group managers are not just engineering
responsibilities, this is part and parcel to your responsibilities.
[SSM2] says it has to be done. Any questions?
SSM2: Don’t leave it till the end of August before you do it, it
would be nice to have some done beforehand so.
[…]
HE4: What’s the context of this work, we do this work, we give
Directives for timing and conduct of
subsequent workshops are issued by
senior managers with reference to the
culture toolkit. [14]
SM stalls and reifies the
artifact.
SM dismisses.
MM challenges
SM’s meaning.
SM dismisses; reifies the
artifact; and uses
authority.
MM undermines
SM’s meaning.
SM uses authority;
invokes hierarchy.
SM uses authority.
Engineers return to need for road
50
MM reinforces
the results back by the end of August, and then there isn’t really
a road map of what actually happens … we’ve done two of these
workshops now and nothing has really happened has a result of
it. So what physical stuff is going to happen as a result of doing
these workshops? What’s going to happen? ….
SE1: For example, at the end August is there going to be a
presentation to hear what the issues were so everyone knows
what they are … that would be one milestone and the next one is
knowing what happened [at Head Office]. Another one could be
what action plans are going to be agreed by whatever. It’s just
[we need] some plan going forward rather than being an isolated
activity… the bit that’s missing to my mind is what the next
steps are? We do this but then what’s the next step?
HO1: Well what we [Head Office] have decided is that we will,
of course, receive the report with the actions from each site, and
the management team in [Head Office] will also decide what
kind of actions we will agree on and work on during the next
coming year. So you will have a report, you will have a
presentation during the next meeting [at Head Office].
HE5: Is there some sort of time line or something ... there must
be some time line we’re working to.
map; milestones and action plans.
[15]
HO1: I tried to show with the picture here [flip chart with
process on it]: we have the target up here and we are here today.
The first step is to try to [understand] the different current
cultures within the organization today and the goal is to create
one company, one culture but it’s also an ongoing process so we
are going to work with the culture. We’re going to, of course, put
the target culture into a lot of different activities. We don’t know
if you’re going to be here in 2003-2004. But we have a goal to
create, work as one company with one culture and we’re today
and this is the road that we’re going to take. So the end of
August is the first step …
SE4: we need to present that road map to the team before we get
into this…
The head office manager returns to
implementation defined in terms of
the first step, which is to conduct the
remaining workshop (by August);
also mentions possible job losses [18]
meaning and holds
SM to account.
MM holds SM to
account.
A head office manager defines next
SM dismisses; invokes
steps as reports; actions will be
hierarchy; and stalls.
decided by Head Office
(contradicting earlier point that
actions will be collectively identified)
[16]
A hardware engineer returns to the
need for a time line [17]
A software engineer returns to need
for road map [19]
51
MM reinforces
meaning and holds
SM to account.
SM reiterates meaning
dismisses request for
timeline; stalls; and
threatens.
MM reinforces
meaning.
HO1: …we [Head Office] have a project plan describing this in
more detail what kind of activities we will take in the future. But
it’s also important not to talk too much about the future – what
we are going to do as the next step. We have a big challenge to
work with this for the moment and we’re not going to start up a
lot of different activities because I don’t think we have the time
or the possibility to go through different activities.
HO2: I think the first step is really to create an awareness about
… [the] culture, and creating some common language and shared
values … … we’re sort of creating a tool to move forward. And
then as [SM1] says, what will happen in August is that the result,
the outcome of all the different workshops … will be compiled
into an analysis; a report that will be presented to the [head
office] management in which [SSM2] and I are part of. And then
there will be decisions taken about what the next step is.
SE5: I think actually the question is, baSE4 on [HE2] question
before, what’s the success criteria? …
HO2: … I’m not sure it’s possible to put down an objective
metric or measure where you determine whether you’ve
succeeded or not
[…]
HE2: Can I make a suggestion for something we could do
locally? ... when we brief our individual groups, could each
manager then take for example three or four of the actions and
say right I’m now going to implement these within my
team….Then at least we’re showing some results from this
exercise.
HO1: … that’s not actions that you should be doing [in the local
site] ...
The head office manager returns to
definition of activities as decided by
Head Office [20]
SM reiterates meaning;
dismisses; invokes
hierarchy; and stalls.
Another head office manager returns
to implementation as the first step,
which is culture awareness; repeats
instructions for timing;
implementation defined in terms of a
report; decisions to be taken by Head
Office. [21]
SM reiterates meaning;
stalls and invokes
hierarchy.
A software engineer defines time
lines in terms of success criteria [22]
This is challenged by a head office as
infeasible. [23]
MM upholds MM’s
meaning.
SM dismisses meaning.
A hardware engineer returns to
original definition of implementation
as actions to be decided by the local
site [24].
This is directly refuted by a head
office manager (contradicting the
opening statement) [25]
52
MM holds SM to
account.
SM uses authority.
53