Abstract
The development of a novel boundary infrastructure for large-scale interorganizational collaboration presents a challenge that is ill-understood: how can individual boundary objects, which do not suffice for large-scale collaboration and might even engender conflict, be developed into a coherent boundary infrastructure that facilitates the crossing of multiple boundaries? In a longitudinal study, we investigated how Helix Nebula – a collaboration among Europe's big science and big business organizations – developed a cloud computing infrastructure for scientific research. Our findings show that the process involves two recursive mechanisms. The scaffolding of boundary objects helps organizations to iteratively create various technical and organizational objects that support each other's development. The reconfiguring of coalitions involves organizations constantly rearranging into subgroups, which enables them to accommodate their differences and common needs. Our study contributes a process model of how organizations develop boundary objects into a coherent boundary infrastructure and shines light on the role of scaffolding and the political dynamics of coalitions as a driving force for large-scale interorganizational collaboration.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1644-1679 |
| Number of pages | 36 |
| Journal | Journal of Management Studies |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Funding
We want to thank the members of Helix Nebula who have kindly volunteered their time for our research. We are particularly grateful to Bob Jones and Markus Nordberg of CERN for facilitating our research project. We also thank many members of the academic community who offered their comments on early drafts of this paper, including Paul Carlile, Barbara Czarniawska, Fleur Deken, Raghu Garud, Barbara Gray, Ola Henfridsson, Ann Majchrzak, Eric Monteiro, Wouter Stam, and colleagues at the KIN Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We thank participants at the 2016 and 2017 Academy of Management Annual Meetings and the 2017 European Group for Organizational Studies conference for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. We want to express our gratitude to Elena Dalpiaz for her invaluable guidance as senior editor at the Journal of Management Studies and to the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. This work is part of the research program New Ways of Working and Human Capital Development, number 409-13-212, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Given the scale and scope of Helix Nebula, individual boundary objects were insufficient to accommodate all differences and common needs across organizations. Accordingly, organizations switched to developing complementary boundary infrastructure components. While much progress had been made in developing the interface supported by the NDA and decision\u2010making protocol, development stalled again in July 2012 because organizations had conflicting views on prototype selection and funding. After a period of inaction, the organizations diverged into two new coalitions, each developing prototypes for a new funding model for technical developments. \u2018The issue is how it will be funded, which must be resolved before the solution can be delivered\u2019, meeting minutes stated in July 2012. Atos, CloudSigma, SixSquared, and T\u2010Systems joined forces to develop a prototype for funding from the European Commission. However, CERN, EGI, EMBL, and ESA did not endorse this prototype and formed a separate coalition to work on a different funding model. \u2018The funding proposal that they [the other coalition] designed was not something we were very happy with\u2019, EMBL said, \u2018We instead wanted everybody to self\u2010fund their developments and work\u2019. These different funding model prototypes represented funding approaches with different time horizons, each aligned with the needs of different prototype coalitions. Thus, divergence and working in parallel coalitions resulted in infrastructure components that were complementary and supported the development of multiple interface prototypes instead of having to choose one. We want to thank the members of Helix Nebula who have kindly volunteered their time for our research. We are particularly grateful to Bob Jones and Markus Nordberg of CERN for facilitating our research project. We also thank many members of the academic community who offered their comments on early drafts of this paper, including Paul Carlile, Barbara Czarniawska, Fleur Deken, Raghu Garud, Barbara Gray, Ola Henfridsson, Ann Majchrzak, Eric Monteiro, Wouter Stam, and colleagues at the KIN Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We thank participants at the 2016 and 2017 Academy of Management Annual Meetings and the 2017 European Group for Organizational Studies conference for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. We want to express our gratitude to Elena Dalpiaz for her invaluable guidance as senior editor at the and to the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. This work is part of the research program New Ways of Working and Human Capital Development, number 409\u201013\u2010212, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Journal of Management Studies
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
| European Commission | |
| Helix Nebula | |
| CloudSigma | |
| CERN | 409‐13‐212 |
Keywords
- boundary infrastructure
- coalitions
- interorganizational collaboration
- process research
- scaffolding
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