Using a Boundary Object Framework to Analyze Interorganizational Collaboration

Abstract

The U.S. military is facing a plethora of challenges as a result of tightening procurement budgets and the need to acquire new capabilities to operate in modern war environments. This requires integrating legacy systems with developing technologies in what is loosely defined to be a System of Systems. Most Systems of Systems require some integrator to manage and operate the system interfaces. In addition to technical integration challenges, these system integrators have the difficult undertaking of integrating various organizations. The boundary object framework proposed by this paper provides a tool for systems integrators working in System of Systems or any type of complex system to identify and categorize communication, coordination, and collaboration interfaces and address possible failures.

Structuring concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning: a state-of-practice review

“…(7) Fong's (2007) and Fong et al's (2007a, b) project boundary object characterisation modelling; and…”

The Pitfalls of Visual Representations

“…These studies typically highlight visualization advantages through case evidence. A subset of management studies analyzes specifically the positive and negative effects of visualization for collaboration Fong et al, 2007;Mengis, 2007;Nicolini, 2007;Oliver, 2007;Tversky, 2005;Whyte, Ewenstein, Hales, & Tidd, 2007), also in computer-mediated settings (DeSanctis & Gallupe, 1987). For instance, the political use of images in collaborative setting may provide unequal possibilities to contribute to the discussion (Henderson, 1995;Nicolini, 2007;Whyte et al, 2007), or it may affect the typical behavior of the discussants (Nicolini, 2007) who might pay more attention to the visual rather than to the facial expressions of the group participants.…”

“…Such a synopsis could provide a comprehensive theoretical overview based on prior research findings, to assist researchers in investigating systematically the effects and the boundaries of visual representations of information (Eppler, 2006;Fong, Valerdi, & Srinivasam, 2007). This article aims to provide an instructive schema that contains prior research findings from a variety of fields related to visualization.…”

System engineering artifacts for SoS

“…This addresses the SoS SE process and examines the key work products or artifacts which provide the basis for these decisions. These artifacts can be viewed as "boundary objects" [11,12,13] which bridge, in some cases, between elements of the SoS SE process and, in others, among the multiple organizations that work together in an SoS. Based on the US DoD work with SoS SE practitioners in acknowledged SoS, an initial set of SoS SE artifacts has been identified.…”