Organizational Coordination and Communication: A Critical Review and Integrative Model

Abstract

We identify, and then attempt to redress, four problematic issues in the organizational coordination literature. First, we distinguish coordinating as the overarching process, coordinating mechanisms as the structures that are brought to bear, and coordination as the in situ interaction. Second, we explicate and distinguish coordinating mechanism from coordination, and reframe the myriad mechanisms in past research into three levels of consciousness specified by structuration theory. Third, we propose a model relating structures (mechanisms) that affect practices (coordination) to outcomes—all within organizational members’ ongoing streams of activity and interaction. Fourth, we theorize organizational coordination as a distinctly communication phenomenon.