Distributed Team-to-Team Work
Between January 2002 and September 2005, I studied collaborative, space mission design teams at NASA:
- the co-located Team X (JPL; JAN-MAY 2002)
- the 4-site, distributed Team NSI (JPL, GRC, MSFC, SNL; JUN 2002),
- the 4-site, distributed Team Prometheus (JPL, GRC, MSFC, ORNL; APR-SEP 2004), and
- the 8-site, distributed NASA Exploration Design Team (JPL, KSC, GSFC, ARC, GRC, MSFC, LaRC, and The Aerospace Corporation; August 2005).
Network-Centric Work
Since May 2006, I have been studying distributed teams at The Boeing Company as part of an investigation of Boeing's attempts to transition to a "network-centric" organization (NCO). A NCO, as an ideal type, is one in which the primary means of accomplishing work is through self-initiated/directed networks within the organization. Though much of the rhetoric, so far, seems to reflect a new buzzword for similar prior concepts (e.g. network organizations, virtual organizations, post-bureaucratic organizations, post-structural organizations, etc. ad nauseum). The difference, here, is this is not theoretical musings, but a real attempt to develop a work environment based on self-initiated/directed networks.
this has resulted in a topic shift for my dissertation from sensemaking in distributed, team-to-team work to the technolgoical and organizational infrastructures necessary to support network-centric work. One thing is clear, in the forseeable future: network-centric work will always occur in a context shaped by externally, hierarchically-structured environments (whether within a formal, bureaucratic organization or subject to an external governance system). So, my dissertation topic seems to be pointing towards the so-far neglected interface between network-centric activity ("teams" will suffice, for purposes here) and that hierarchically-structured environment ... and how that interface is manifested (or "inscribed," alá Bowker's descriptions of his method of inquiry, called "infrastructural inversion") in organizational and Technological infrastructures.
For those who know me, that's quite a shift in topic <grin>.