Collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration is a type of interaction that is frequently used in for‐profit, nonprofit, and governmental organizations to reach a common shared goal, activity, or production. Generally, collaborations are temporary and negotiated sites of interaction. Identity, power, and strategy are common themes that arise through the evaluation of interaction among collaboration members. Two models for organizational and interorganizational collaboration exist; however, many other theories and models from specific contexts influence the study of collaboration in organizations. Collaboration can be represented as a structure, a process, or both. Future research in this area should address the scalability of findings from across research that addresses collaboration as a method of resolving conflict, or as a problem solving process, to collaborations that exist in organizational and interorganizational settings.

What Collaboration Entails: From the Traitorous to Team Care

“…Communication scholars are most likely to think of collaboration as an interactive process (see Lewis, 2006). Organizational communication scholar Keyton (2017) offers this disciplinary definition of collaboration: "A collaboration is a type of interaction in which individuals, a team or organizational members work together to reach a common shared goal, activity, or production" (p. 1). This definition focuses on the act of collaboration, or collaboration as a process.…”

“…This definition focuses on the act of collaboration, or collaboration as a process. Keyton (2017) further specifies there are 4 requirements for an interaction to be labelled a collaboration: (a) There must be two or more parties interacting around (b) a shared goal or activity (even the mutual achievement of individual goals) and (c) with some degree of interdependence, and (d) the interaction process occurs over some time interval. Thus, collaboration is a situated process; it can evolve over time but will always be influenced by contextual factors.…”

“…Power is a common theme in constructionist communication research on collaboration (Keyton, 2017;Lewis, 2006). I define power broadly as the ability to influence a collaboration, whether through access to resources, the ability to shape meaning, (Mumby, 2013), formal or informal authority or status that is negotiated in interaction, for instance through markers of epistemic authority (Benoit Barné & Fox, 2017).…”

Experiences of a virtual think tank. New ways of working, knowledge development and Virtual Reality events

“…Collaboration in management studies is often understood as a process towards a common goal and emerging from the interactions of people with emphasis placed on communication process and interactions [19]. With increasing remote work practices and people not being able to meet face to face, those interactions changed as well.…”

Enacting everyday feminist collaborations: Reflexive becoming, proactive improvisation and co‐learning partnerships

“…Collaboration, defined as complex communicative processes by which people work together for a particular amount of time to achieve shared goals or activities (Keyton, ), has become more and more important for scholars to understand and address complex problems (Keyton, ; Koschmann, Lewis, & Isbell, ), conduct transdisciplinary research (Treise, Baralt, Birnbrauer, Krieger, & Neil, ) and develop engaged scholarship with various stakeholders (Barbour & James, ; Barge et al, ). Despite its importance, few have critically reflected and theorized collaborative work in academia to tease out the tensions and transformative processes in the collaboration ‘black box’ (Mountz, Miyares, Wright, & Bailey, ).…”