Communicating in the field: The role of boundary objects in a collaborative stakeholder initiative

This dissertation starts from the observation that managers are pursuing collaborative initiatives in the belief that these can solve complex problems confronting their organizations and society as a whole. It has three major themes. First it provides an ethnographic study of a complex collaborative initiative initiated not by managers but by “stakeholders”. Second, it applies the concept of autonomous systems to provide a model of collaboration based in communications theory and third it explores the difficulties of “Mapping the social”.;Wenger's concept of boundary objects and Taylor's model of communication as coorientation to objects both derive from phenomenological tradition and the work of scholars such as Maturana, Varela and Weick. Varela's concept that all autonomous systems exhibit mindlike characteristics provides the theoretical focus for this study. Participants built a recursive system of interaction not as a result of a theoretical prescription but in order to meet their practical needs. Their experience provides a powerful case study both of how collaboration can build a mindlike system through communication and how structural coupling develops in human social systems.;A secondary goal of the research was to contribute to the methodology of Institutional Ethnography by using discursive maps as a tool for “mapping the social”. This type of mapping proved to be less useful than anticipated but did provide the seed from which to develop the concept of boundary objects. The closing chapter considers how this concept may assist in the challenge of representing patterns of interaction.;Although collaboration is obviously a communicative process, few studies of collaboration have applied concepts developed in the field of communication studies and relatively few have involved ethnographic observation rather than retrospective analysis, using, for example, participant interviews. Through attendance at meetings involving rural residents, oil and gas company employees and regulatory staff this research identified how participants created objects that acted as boundaries that developed new, recursive relationships these diverse communities of practice.