Relevance conventions and problem boundaries in work redesign teams

Introduction Participatory and cross-functional teams have become widespread means of assessing organizational requirements and change directions. The quality movement, business process re-engineering and alternative system development methodologies have all contributed to the emergence of this practice (Clement and Van den Basselaar, 1993; Greenbaum and Kyng, 1991; Hammer and Champy, 1993; Katzenbach and Smith, 1994; Schein, 1985; Yates and Orlikowski, 1992).The very merit of the cross-functional work redesign or system development teams – their diverse group composition – presents its own challenges. The notion of “communities of practice” (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and other concepts of shared workplace knowledge tend to focus on longer term collectivities that have developed a background of tacit practices guiding activity and everyday decisions. The cross-functional team by definition lacks a portion of this common background. Although members do share experience in the larger organization they deliberately are drawn from different organizational milieux. Since the shared background is a seamless “web” (Kling and Iacono, 1989; Wynn, 1979), it holds many dimensions of practice, including conversational conventions, “common knowledge”, ranking systems, actual task practices and operational focus, priorities, a lexicon and a general organizational “viewpoint”. In the cross-functional team the background must be forged against the backdrop of: