Collaboration
From Collaboratory
Contents |
[edit] Definition
Collaboration occurs when groups of two or more people interact and exchange knowledge in pursuit of a shared, collective, bounded goal.
[edit] A Model
If we expand this definition into a larger model, we can see that collaboration encompasses many things. If we want to understand how to collaborate more effectively, we have to understand each of these components as well as how they relate to each other.
One of the main components is groups of people and everything associated with that: social dynamics, roles and responsibilities, individual capabilities, and so forth.
The collaborative process consists of two types of work:
- The work specific to the goal
- Knowledge Work
Knowledge Work encompasses the type of human processes that are naturally required when humans interact: communication, knowledge sharing (and its cousin, Knowledge Management), learning, and so forth. These two types can be equivalent if the specific goal is knowledge work.
The tools required for these types of work may be dramatically different. For example, if your goal is to win a basketball game, then the goal-specific tools include things like a basketball, shoes, and so forth. Tools for knowledge work can generally apply to all types of goals.
Finally, the overall context is critical.
[edit] Coordination, Cooperation, Collaboration
Arthur Himmelman has developed the Himmelman Model, which shows the relationship between networking, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration.
[edit] Discussion
Interaction can be indirect. For example, people can communicate by talking, gesturing, writing, or other means of exchanging symbols. You can collaborate with people you never meet. One important form of interaction often found in collaboration is argumentation.
Simply contributing to a shared goal does not constitute collaboration. A janitor working at a company certainly contributes to a company's well-being which indirectly helps that company achieve its goals. But that janitor is not collaborating with the rest of the company unless he or she truly shares the collective, bounded goal. This generally requires interaction with the rest of the company about the overall goal.
- What if the janitor reads about the company's goals from its literature, and buys into them? Is that enough interaction for collaboration?
Bounded goals imply a beginning and an end. Two people interacting in order to get smarter is not collaboration. However, two people interacting in order to prepare for a calculus exam is.
Having a shared, collective, bounded goal does not imply that all of the individual goals are the same. Individuals may indeed have their own separate, unique goals. Those goals must be minimally complementary with the shared collective goal in order for collaboration to happen. Individuals must intend to collaborate and be committed to collaboration in order for collaboration to exist.
Collaboration is maximally effective when it results in the creation of a communal mind, when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Many people confuse collaboration with good or High-Performance Collaboration. Just because the collaboration is poor doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. This is an important distinction. What we want is to identify patterns of high-performance collaboration.
[edit] Defining Collaboration
The basis of this definition was derived from a number of discussions and workshops focused on defining collaboration. To get the basic definition, we posed a number of different scenarios and asked people whether or not they constituted collaboration. We then looked for common patterns and started formulating the definition.
[edit] Related Topics
- Collaborative Tool
- Collaboration Research
- Behavioral Psychology is a good primer on individual behavior, which gives us clues as to how to encourage people to collaborate.
