Understanding Organizational Coordination and Information Systems - Mintzberg's Coordination Mechanisms Revisited and Evaluated

This paper investigates organizational coordination and its relationship to computer-based information systems. As a basis for understanding organizational coordination and information system use, Mintzberg’s well-known set of coordination mechanisms is used as a point of departure in this paper. The set of coordination mechanisms is evaluated by applying it in an interpretive case study of a house building firm and confronting the set of mechanisms with other theories of coordination. The result of the evaluation shows that the applied set of coordination mechanisms does not sufficiently cover important aspects of organizational coordination and information system use, such as more dynamic issues (e.g. coordination history, external influence, emergent processes, concurrency and variation, and communication). The set of coordination mechanisms is, however, more sufficient when it comes to understanding formal division of labour, stable organizational structures and roles, and planned coordination.