Tangible Purposes and Common Beacons: The Interrelated Roles of Identity and Technology in Collaborative Endeavors

Drawing on structuration theory, research on improvising, technologies-in-practice, organizational identity, and examples of collaborative endeavors from an eight-month field study I conducted at an internet-based startup, I propose that an essential structure to collaboration is a complementary set of understandings between participants regarding the purpose of their collective endeavor what I term project identity. I use an improvising framework to describe how participants attempted to innovate collectively (at first, unsuccessfully, then, successfully). Improvising consists of enacting structures that guide three sets of activities: assessing continuously, creating resourcefully, and adapting extemporaneously. As they worked together, participants both improvised a project identity and drew on a project identity as a set of rules and resources to guide their improvising. Technological artifacts were integral to enacting project identities. DotOrg participants created and adapted artifacts, and used them as tangible structural referents to bridge boundaries and structure and coordinate their activities.