The Constitutive Role of Conventions in Accomplishing Coordination: Insights from a Complex Contract Award Project

Abstract

This article advances understanding of how coordination is accomplished in organizations. It builds on and extends recent research, which suggests that coordination is an emergent process of situated interaction aiming to realize a collective performance. In particular, the paper focuses on deliberate efforts to coordinate and contribute to objectives of large-scale integration in practice (e.g., orchestrated, year-long delivery of a megaproject). Such efforts give rise to a novel form of interdependencies, which organizational actors experience as “external” to local activities and group interactions. Drawing on recent developments in social theory, the paper proposes a framework to study coordinative action in situations where organizational actors are faced with a multitude of task-specific and “external” interdependencies. Further, through an in-depth study of a contract award project, it sheds light on the ways ongoing project coordination was adjusted to address interdependencies arising from the deliberate pursuit of two objectives: the concerted delivery of a construction megaproject and the large-scale procurement policy coordination targeted at safeguarding market competition across the European Union. Findings highlight that the situated management of external interdependencies entailed a distinctive type of agency, mediated by formalized industry-wide and policy conventions, and concerned with developing relevant evidence of coordinated contributions. The article explains how and why actors may adjust coordination efforts by alternating between coordination modes. Implications are drawn for studying coordination dynamics in other organizational settings