Working misunderstandings : : an ethnography of project collaboration in a multinational corporation in India / / Frauke Mörike.

• Funder: Technische Universität Berlin
• VerfasserIn: Mörike, Frauke,
• Author: Technische Universität Berlin
• Place / Publishing House: Bielefeld, Germany : : transcript Verlag,, [2022]
• Year of Publication: 2021; 2022
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Arbeit und Organisation
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (318 p.); 470 MB 30 SW-Abbildungen

Misunderstandings are often perceived as something to be avoided yet delineate an integrative part of everyday work. This book addresses the role that misunderstandings play in collaborative work and, above all, their effects on the organisational result. As exemplified by project collaboration across three offices of a multinational corporation in India, Frauke Mörike explores how misunderstandings shape the organisational system and why they prove not only necessary but even productive for organisational functioning. In doing so, she offers new ways to think about collaboration and establishes `misunderstanding' as a key factor of insight for the field of organisational research.

Table of Contents

Cover -- Contents -- 1. Introduction, or: From IT Projects to Organisational Ethnography -- 1.1. "You should be able to resolve this, right?" -- 1.2. Office fieldwork in India -- 1.3. Misunderstandings as a research subject -- 1.4. Organisational ethnography and its limits -- 1.5. Client centricity and ground reality as opposing values -- 1.6. Chapter outline -- 2. Anthropology, Organisational Systems and Misunderstandings -- 2.1. Complex organisations as a field of inquiry -- 2.2. From organisational culture to social systems -- 2.3. The organisation as a social system -- 2.4. Conceptualising misunderstanding -- 2.5. Ethnography as a communication process -- 3. Fieldwork in Corporate Offices -- 3.1. Office ethnography: Access and the role of the researcher -- 3.2. The fieldwork setting: In and around Advice Company -- 3.3. Methods: Classics with a twist -- 3.4. Concluding remarks on fieldwork in corporate offices -- Part I: The Organisation as a Social System -- 4. System/Environment Boundaries -- 4.1. Passing gates: Access procedures -- 4.2. Differentiated environment: Clients, freelancers, universities, contractors -- 4.3. Organisational membership -- 4.4. Concluding remarks: Operative closure and openness to the environment -- 5. Internal Differentiation: The Offices -- 5.1. Increasing differentiation to reduce complexity -- 5.2. Access procedures: From elaborate to basic -- 5.3. Inside the offices: Differences in space and equipment -- 5.4. Atmospheres as "tempered spaces": Office perceptions -- 5.5. Concluding remarks: Client centricity as a continuum -- 6. Formal Boundaries, Informal Bridges: Departments and Teams -- 6.1. Differentiating function and hierarchy: Job types and teams -- 6.2. Lunchmates and batchmates: Informal bridges across the office -- 6.3. Concluding remarks on the organisational system.

Part II: Working Misunderstandings -- 7. Working Misunderstandings -- 7.1. Working misunderstandings and ethnographic insight -- 7.2. Working misunderstandings as an analytical category -- 7.3. The client project as a service commodity -- 8. Collaboration as a Working Misunderstanding -- 8.1. Discovering "collaboration" -- 8.2. From a non‐intentional to an intentional working misunderstanding -- 8.3. Working (with) a misunderstanding -- 8.4. Concluding remarks on collaboration as a working misunderstanding -- 9. Modus intentional: Date games -- 9.1. Double contingency and cross‐system interaction -- 9.2. Date games and working misunderstandings -- 9.3. Date games reversed: Status reports and escalation -- 9.4. Date games across system boundaries, and their limits -- 9.5. Concluding remarks on intentional working misunderstandings -- 10. Modus Non-Intentional: Project Representations -- 10.1. Organisational decision‐making and "black boxes" -- 10.2. Lead management: Translating uncertainty -- 10.3. From strategy to project actions -- 10.4. The client project as a plan and the "ground reality" -- 10.5. From data to presentations: Project view from "behind the wall" -- 10.6. From presentation files to strategy -- 10.7. Concluding remarks on working misunderstandings -- 11. Conclusion -- 11.1. How "Indian" is Advice Company? -- 11.2. Advice Company as a client‐centric social system -- 11.3. Guiding difference as working misunderstandings -- 11.4. Mutually exclusive values -- 11.5. Closing the black box -- Acknowledgments -- List of Figures -- References.