Elsevier

Applied Ergonomics

Volume 43, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 1-26
Applied Ergonomics

Factors of collaborative working: A framework for a collaboration model

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2011.04.009Get rights and content

Abstract

The ability of organisations to support collaborative working environments is of increasing importance as they move towards more distributed ways of working. Despite the attention collaboration has received from a number of disparate fields, there is a lack of a unified understanding of the component factors of collaboration. As part of our work on a European Integrated Project, CoSpaces, collaboration and collaborative working and the factors which define it were examined through the literature and new empirical work with a number of partner user companies in the aerospace, automotive and construction sectors. This was to support development of a descriptive human factors model of collaboration – the CoSpaces Collaborative Working Model (CCWM). We identified seven main categories of factors involved in collaboration: Context, Support, Tasks, Interaction Processes, Teams, Individuals, and Overarching Factors, and summarised these in a framework which forms a basis for the model. We discuss supporting evidence for the factors which emerged from our fieldwork with user partners, and use of the model in activities such as collaboration readiness profiling.

Introduction

A critical success factor for any community – at work and outside work – is the extent to which it can coordinate itself to communicate and achieve common goals: in other words, to collaborate. A study by Frost & Sullivan (2006) sponsored by Verizon Business and Microsoft Corp. found that collaboration, an organisation’s strategic orientation and market turbulence were the three main business performance drivers, and that of these collaboration had the most impact. It is becoming increasingly difficult for multinational corporations to maintain a competitive edge over global competitors; companies which can create and support collaboration between departments or with supply chain partner companies can best harness their distributed resources and expertise (Hansen and Nohria, 2004). Collaboration is a ubiquitous presence in our lives and is a constant feature of modern society; ‘work is always immediately social in that the object and the subject, the end and the means, the motives and the needs, the implements and the competencies, are socially mediated’ (Schmidt, 1991, p. 2).

The advantages to be gained from good collaboration will vary according to the type of business or company, but the benefits can include: increased profit through sharing expertise across business units or companies; reduction in costs through sharing best practices; improved decision making through sharing insights and knowledge; innovation through sharing ideas; and an improved ability to pursue goals that involve distributed units or companies (Hansen and Nohria, 2004). To achieve these advantages, however, an organisation should also be fully aware that there are potential disadvantages and barriers to collaboration, in order to manage them. These potential barriers are discussed later in the paper in the discussion section.

For a concept so widely used in everyday language there is a surprising lack of a clear understanding of what it is to collaborate, and of how best to support and improve collaborative working. Definitions are often tailored to a particular environment. However, common themes do emerge from the multitude of definitions and integrating some of these (e.g. Henneman et al., 1995, Mattessich and Monsey, 1992, Meads et al., 2005, Montiel-Overall, 2005, Schrage, 1990, Wilson, 2006) gives us a simple first working definition: Collaboration involves two or more people engaged in interaction with each other, within a single episode or series of episodes, working towards common goals.

This paper presents a first framework for a model of collaborative working. The context was a major European research project concerned with tools, systems and organisational structures for co-located, mobile and distributed collaborative engineering and design (see next section). Therefore the framework applies more to IT, engineering/design and collaborative work systems design, with less emphasis on (although not to the exclusion of) work on collaboration within military and aerospace settings, or local and political communities.

In the next section we summarise the project CoSpaces, and consequently the rationale behind the framework and model. After this we identify the main factors and sub-factors which structure the model, summarising the literature in terms of evidence for each factor. In order to reduce what was an enormous quantity of documentation to a form that can be summarised in a single paper, we do this within a structured tabular format. Whilst it is clearly beyond the scope of the original research work never mind this paper to explore all the factors empirically, in the section afterwards we provide some evidence from our own fieldwork with industrial user partners and systems developers. Finally the paper contains a discussion of the framework and model development and how they have been used in a variety of ways to date; we identify potential barriers to collaboration, discuss the limitations in our work and summarise work to date on verification.

Section snippets

CoSpaces Integrated Project

CoSpaces was a large European Commission funded Integrated Project developing innovative collaborative working solutions that are responsive to industrial needs. The project had many industrial, research and business partners from 12 European countries (see http://www.cospaces.org/downloads.htm). The focus was how advanced technologies (virtual, augmented, tele-immersive, mobile, and context aware) can be deployed to create collaborative engineering workspaces for planning, design, assembly,

Framework of factors of collaborative work

CoSpaces technology will support collaboration at different levels, from small teams of individuals through larger project or enterprise groups and up to international arrangements between organisations. Therefore, our understanding of what it means to collaborate had to have the flexibility to embrace interpersonal relationships and the factors that drive people to work together successfully, and also higher level organisational and more formal aspects of collaborative engineering and supply

Evidence for the collaboration factors from CoSpaces user scenarios

We had an opportunity to test out the framework of factors for collaborative working, through the user company partners within the CoSpaces project. We had good access and close relationships with relevant groups in these companies, which either currently work collaboratively or have a requirement for improved collaborative structures and processes, and which therefore had a vested interest in helping to develop a model of collaboration. The human factors researchers were thus in a position to

Framework and model development

It is clear that collaborative work is an inherently complex phenomenon. The factors and issues which constitute collaboration are multiple, their relative importance and interactions are variable and may change during different phases of the team, project or organisational lifecycle. As demonstrated in our scenario analysis within the user companies, a collaborative working situation is likely to display a mixture of positive influences (e.g. good team spirit, high levels of skill) and

Conclusions

In this paper we have presented the structured outcomes of a review of collaboration, in the form of a framework of factors and sub-factors of collaboration as a basis for the CoSpaces Collaborative Working Model. This work has been carried out in the context of new collaborative engineering tools and a platform for use with the aerospace, automotive and construction sectors, but we believe the framework has much more general relevance. As discussed earlier, collaboration is a complex

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support of the CoSpaces Integrated Project (FP6-IST-5-034245) and the European Commission in funding this work, and the role of all CoSpaces partners in contributing to the research. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments on the earlier version enabled us to make substantial improvements to the paper.

References (166)

  • M. Barratt

    Understanding the meaning of collaboration in the supply chain

    Supply Chain Management: An International Journal

    (2004)
  • F. Beddoes-Jones et al.

    The Psychology of Teams [online]

    (April 2004)
  • F. Beddoes-Jones et al.

    Short-term cognitive coaching interventions: worth the effort or a waste of time?

    The Coaching Psychologist

    (2007)
  • R.M. Belbin

    Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail

    (1981)
  • S.J. Bohen et al.

    Experimenting with models of faculty collaboration: factors that promote their success

    New Directions for Institutional Research

    (1998)
  • C.A. Bolstad et al.

    Shared mental models and shared displays: an empirical evaluation of team performance

  • C.A. Bolstad et al.

    Choosing team collaboration tools: lessons from disaster recovery efforts

    Ergonomics in Design

    (2005)
  • M. Bornemann et al.

    An Illustrated Guide to Knowledge Management [online]

    (2003)
  • J. Bradley et al.

    Teams and tasks

    Small Group Research

    (2003)
  • M.E. Bratman

    Shared cooperative activity

    The Philosophical Review

    (1992)
  • C. Breazeal et al.

    Teaching and working with robots as a collaboration

  • D. Buchanan et al.

    Politics and organizational change: the lived experience

    Human Relations

    (1999)
  • D.A. Buchanan et al.

    Power, Politics, and Organizational Change. Winning the Turf Game

    (2008)
  • B. Burton et al.

    The High Performance Workplace Defined [online]

    (2005)
  • M.A. Campion et al.

    Relations between work group characteristics and effectiveness: implications for designing effective work groups

    Personnel Psychology

    (1993)
  • A. Carneiro

    How does knowledge management influence innovation and competitiveness?

    Journal of Knowledge Management

    (2000)
  • H.M. Caruso et al.

    Boundaries need not be barriers: leading collaboration among groups in decentralized organizations

  • A.L. Cohen et al.

    Designing to support adversarial collaboration

  • J.A. Conger et al.

    The empowerment process: integrating theory and practice

    Academy of Management Review

    (1988)
  • N.J. Cooke et al.

    A knowledge elicitation approach to the measurement of team situation awareness

  • J.L. Cordery et al.

    Overcoming impediments to virtual team effectiveness

    Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing

    (2008)
  • C.D. Cramton et al.

    Overcoming barriers to information sharing in virtual teams

  • H.M. Cuevas et al.

    Facilitating distributed team collaboration

  • J.N. Cummings et al.

    Collaborative research across disciplinary and institutional boundaries

    Social Studies of Science

    (2005)
  • R.L. Daft et al.

    Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design

    Management Science

    (1986)
  • J. De Jonge et al.

    The demand-control model: specific demands, specific control, and well-defined groups

    International Journal of Stress Management

    (2000)
  • M.I. Delgado Piña et al.

    Teams in organizations: a review on team effectiveness

    Team Performance Management

    (2008)
  • L. Denise

    Collaboration vs. C-three (cooperation, coordination, and communication)

    Innovating [online]

    (1999)
  • M. Devine et al.

    The virtual project: managing teams in distributed environments

  • A. Dix et al.

    Human–Computer Interaction

    (2004)
  • B. Dooley

    At work away from work

    The Psychologist

    (1996)
  • J. Drury et al.

    A framework for role-based specification and evaluation of awareness support in synchronous collaborative applications

  • K. Eason et al.

    Early evaluation of the organisational implications of CSCW systems

  • A. Edwards et al.

    Implementing Virtual Teams: A Guide to Organizational and Human Factors

    (2004)
  • K.M. Eisenhardt et al.

    Conflict and strategic choice: how top management teams disagree

    California Management Review

    (1997)
  • J.A. Espinosa et al.

    Modeling coordination costs due to time separation in global software teams

  • D.K. Fasel

    Partnering in Action: a Guide for Building Successful Collaboration across Organisational Boundaries

    (2001)
  • A.J. Flanagin et al.

    Group performance and collaborative technology: a longitudinal and multilevel analysis of information quality, contribution equity, and members’ satisfaction in computer-mediated groups

    Computer Monographs

    (2004)
  • S. Folkard

    Body rhythms and shiftwork

  • Meetings around the world: The impact of collaboration on business performance [online]

    (2006)
  • Cited by (206)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    1

    Permanent address: Everything Everywhere, 800 Park Avenue, Aztec West, Bristol, BS32 4TR, UK.

    View full text