Sympathetic communicative action: A preliminary theory and conceptual model of human collaboration

The scope of this research is the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of the subjective and affective aspects of human interaction when used collaboratively to improve awareness. A sympathetic dimension to Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative action is modeled from an interdisciplinary integration of theories from cultural anthropology, process philosophy, cross-cultural psychology, sociology and group dynamics to balance rational reproduction with the subjective, intrapsychic and social psychology aspects of intra-group collaboration. The dual nature of Petri net places and transitions is used as an analogy to constitute a structural as well as an inter-related process model for human collaboration science. A brief background on collaboration in society is reviewed including medicine, education, engineering and organizational collaboration. Examples of collaborative learning, teacher collaboration and co-teaching lead to subjective aspects of collaboration including trust, openness, emotion, conflict, spiritual values and creativity. The lack of an interdisciplinary theory is identified as a core problem for building a conceptual model of human collaboration to improve collaborative software tools. An inductive synthesis methodology is used to integrate theories into a consistent, preliminary theory of intersubjective understanding including objective truth, subjective sincerity and normative rightness. Diverse, interdisciplinary perspectives are united to produce a useful theory and model of how humans collaborate. An empathetic or sympathetic communicative action theory is synthesized and examined for consistency to begin the validation of this preliminary theory of human collaboration. Implications are examined with respect to collaboration science toward improving collaborative tools and the will to use them. Ramifications for collaborative tool design suggest the need for an affective and subjective dimension. Future research directions are proposed including the need for a formal affective expressive language as found in storytelling and sand art therapy. This affective expressive language may be useful to associate values and intentions for agent collaboration in context-invariant decision support systems and computer mediated communications.