Explore the vast range of titles available.

In this paper we make a case for the use of multiple theoretical perspectives—theory on boundary objects, epistemic objects, cultural historical activity theory, and objects as infrastructure—to understand the role of objects in cross-disciplinary collaboration. A pluralist approach highlights that objects perform at least three types of work in this context: they motivate collaboration, they allow participants to work across different types of boundaries, and they constitute the fundamental infrastructure of the activity. Building on the results of an empirical study, we illustrate the insights that each theoretical lens affords into practices of collaboration and develop a novel analytical framework that organizes objects according to the active work they perform. Our framework can help shed new light on the phenomenon, especially with regard to the shifting status of objects and sources of conflict (and change) in collaboration. After discussing these novel insights, we outline directions for future research stemming from a pluralist approach. We conclude by noting the managerial implications of our findings.

Diversity and mobility in education and work present a paramount challenge that needs better conceptualization in educational theory. This challenge has been addressed by educational scholars with the notion of boundaries, particularly by the concepts of boundary crossing and boundary objects. Although studies on boundary crossing and boundary objects emphasize that boundaries carry learning potential, it is not explicated in what way they do so. By reviewing this literature, this article offers an understanding of boundaries as dialogical phenomena. The review of the literature reveals four potential learning mechanisms that can take place at boundaries: identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation. These mechanisms show various ways in which sociocultural differences and resulting discontinuities in action and interaction can come to function as resources for development of intersecting identities and practices.

Many recent studies observe the increasing importance, influence, and analysis of resilience as a concept to understand the capacity of a system or individual to respond to change. The term has achieved prominence in diverse scientific fields, as well as public discourse and policy arenas. As a result, resilience has been referred to as a boundary object or a bridging concept that is able to facilitate communication and understanding across disciplines, coordinate groups of actors or stakeholders, and build consensus around particular policy issues. We present a network analysis of bibliometric data to understand the extent to which resilience can be considered as a boundary object or a bridging concept in terms of its links across disciplines and scientific fields. We analyzed 994 papers and 35,952 citations between them to reveal the connectedness and links between and within fields. We analyzed the network according to different fields, modules, and sub-fields, showing a highly clustered citation network. Analyzing betweenness allowed us to identify how particular papers bridge across fields and how different fields are linked. With the exception of a few specific papers, most papers cite exclusively within their own field. We conclude that resilience is to an extent a boundary object because there are shared understandings across diverse disciplines and fields. However, it is more limited as a bridging concept because the citations across fields are concentrated among particular disciplines and papers, so the distinct fields do not widely or routinely refer to each other. There are some signs of resilience being used as an interdisciplinary concept to bridge scientific fields, particularly in socialecological systems, which may itself constitute an emerging sub-field.

Arecognized challenge in innovation scholarship is how to coordinate the efforts of many minds contributing to the design of a single artifact. Much research shows that product concept representations can help coordinate design tasks, but we know little about the practices that make representations more or less effective. We used an inductive approach to examine how six teams in three industries used concept representations when creating novel products. All six teams crafted three types of representations: stories, metaphors, and prototypes. However, merely using representations did not ensure a shared repertoire and concept coherence—a common understanding of desired product attributes. Teams that failed to consistently engage in three practices—(1) collective scrutiny of representations, (2) linking representations to design constraints, and (3) active editing of representations—produced concept disunity, with disparate understandings of desired product attributes. Teams that maintained concept coherence were better able to coordinate design tasks than teams that experienced concept disunity. Our research explains how the ultimate effect of concept representations on the coordination of innovation is contingent on the practices used to manage a repertoire of representations in use.

This article reviews the variety of definitions proposed for “resilience” within sustainability science and suggests a typology according to the specific degree of normativity. There is a tension between the original descriptive concept of resilience first defined in ecological science and a more recent, vague, and malleable notion of resilience used as an approach or boundary object by different scientific disciplines. Even though increased conceptual vagueness can be valuable to foster communication across disciplines and between science and practice, both conceptual clarity and practical relevance of the concept of resilience are critically in danger. The fundamental question is what conceptual structure we want resilience to have. This article argues that a clearly specified, descriptive concept of resilience is critical in providing a counterbalance to the use of resilience as a vague boundary object. A clear descriptive concept provides the basis for operationalization and application of resilience within ecological science.

Boundary objects are entities that enhance the capacity of an idea, theory or practice to translate across culturally defined boundaries, for example, between communities of knowledge or practice. This concept thus has potential to both explain and predict technology adoption; however, it remains sociologically under-theorized. This article assesses, by recourse to a historical case study of innovations in surgical sterility, how boundary objects work and their relationship to social meanings within communities of practice. It is concluded that not only are there positive and negative boundary objects, but that technological devices or processes may themselves act as facilitative or inhibitory boundary objects during innovation. The approach set out here has potential as a sociologically informed model of improving adoption of technologies and policies by managing the positive and negative social meanings of technology objects.

Although past research has investigated the impact of exploration and exploitation on firm performance, there is limited research on these effects in interorganizational relationships. We examine whether the boundary condition for ambidextrous learning can be extended from firms to long-term interorganizational relationships. Specifically, we focus on a particular aspect of learning—namely, explorative and exploitative knowledge sharing—and examine its impact on the performance of long-term relationships. We also theorize how ambidextrous management of the relationship and ontological commitment to span the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge boundaries between partners enable knowledge sharing. Our theoretical predictions are tested using data collected from both account managers at customer firms responsible for the relationship with a leading supply chain vendor and account managers at the vendor firm responsible for relationships with customers. The findings suggest that both exploratory and exploitative knowledge sharing lead to relationship performance gains, that such sharing is enabled by the ambidextrous management of the relationship, and that such sharing is facilitated by ontological commitment. Interesting differences in the enablers and consequences of both forms of knowledge sharing are detected between customers and the vendor.

Healthcare is increasingly permeated with digital platforms supporting cooperative care involving both caregivers (i.e. nurses and physicians) and also patients. New mobile technologies allow for patients to continuously monitor and document their symptoms and gather data that can increase self-care and support the nurse’s decision-making process. A design process of such platforms calls for new design approaches involving heterogeneous conditions and goals. Our research is conducted at a clinic that supports cancer patients in their struggles with treatment induced illnesses. The methodological approach is design ethnography that draws from two years of following a design process that resulted in a digital platform to support the care provided by the clinic. The aim of the paper is to analyze how the boundary objects are engaged in the design phases, both concerning what type of boundary objects as well as how they play a role in the different stages of design and we show how boundary objects in design can be used as a mediator for different users’ needs and conditions. The research question that this paper explores is: what type of boundary objects can be used, and how are those boundary objects engaged in different design phases during healthcare platform design? We show how different boundary objects come into play during different design phases, from rich narratives, to conceptual formulations and finally into concrete prototypes of the platform. We argue that using boundary objects actively as design tools can inform and forward the design of healthcare platforms and that the approach can guide future design processes, where co-designing with boundary objects can be especially useful as a design approach when doing design with heterogenous user groups in complex settings, such as healthcare settings.

This article explores the complex challenges of co-designing an AI- and learning analytics (LA)-integrated learning management system (LMS). While co-design has been proposed as a human-centred design approach for scaling AI and LA adoption, our understanding of how these design processes play out in real-life settings remains limited. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in primary and secondary schools and employs a relational materialist approach to trace, visualise, and analyse the increasingly complex and transformative relations between a growing number of actors. The findings shed light on the intricate ecosystem in which AI and LA are being introduced and on the marketisation of K-12 education. Instead of following a rational and sequential approach that can be easily executed, the co-design process emerged as a series of events, shifting from solely generating ideas with teachers to integrating and commercialising the LMS into a school market with an already high prevalence of educational technology (EdTech). AI and LA in education, co-design and data-driven schooling served as negotiating ideas , boundary objects , which maintained connectivity between actors, despite limited AI and LA implementation and the development of a stand-alone app. Even though teachers and students were actively involved in the design decisions, the co-design process did not lead to extensive adoption of the LMS nor did it sufficiently address the ethical issues related to the unrestricted collection of student data.

This paper considers the limits and potential of ‘urban metabolism’ to conceptualize city processes. Three ‘ecologies’ of urban metabolism have emerged. Each privileges a particular dimension of urban space, shaped by epistemology, politics, and model-making. Marxist ecologies theorize urban metabolism as hybridized socio-natures that (re)produce uneven outcomes; industrial ecology, as stocks and flows of materials and energy; and urban ecology, as complex socio-ecological systems. We demarcate these scholarly islands through bibliometric analysis and literature review, and draw on cross-domain mapping theory to unveil how the metaphor has become stagnant in each. To reinvigorate this research, the paper proposes the development of political–industrial ecology, using urban metabolism as a boundary metaphor.