49

International Journal of Innovation ManagementVol. 5, No. 1 (March 2001) pp. 49–71© Imperial College Press

ROUND THE CLOCK: COLLABORATIVE WORKIN THE INTERNATIONAL MOULDING INDUSTRY

JOÃO VIEIRA DA CUNHAUniversidade Nova de Lisboa

Faculdade de EconomiaTravessa Estêvão Pinto

1099-032 Lisboa–Portugale-mail: jvc@fe.unl.pt

MIGUEL PINA E CUNHA*

Universidade Nova de LisboaFaculdade de Economia

Rua Marquês de Fronteira, 201099-038 Lisboa–Portugal

e-mail: mpc@feunix.fe.unl.pt

Received 21 March 2000Revised 18 July 2000

Accepted 4 January 2001

This case presents the development of an administrative innovation aimed at introducing anorganisational arrangement that allows new product development and innovation to occuraround the clock. This innovation had an underlying plan that was swept away by a wave ofunforeseeable events, forcing its participants to improvise to attain their goals. We showhow this process evolves around four stages of increasing structure, and to argue thatinnovation and creativity can, in fact, happen because of rules and norms and not in spite ofthem.

Background

Portugal is one of the smaller members of the European Union. In recent years,the Union’s efforts towards nominal convergence among its countries, grounded

*Corresponding author

50 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

on strict policy requirements and on an abundant supply of subsidies, hasmoved Portugal from an economy with double-digit to one with single-digitinflation. Additionally, the emergence of the Euro—the European singlecurrency — has removed from the hands of the government the ability to fosterthe country’s international competitiveness on exchange-rate related costadvantages. Moreover, there has been a strong impetus towards economicliberalisation — of which the recent number of privatisations is a clear indicator.

There are very few industries in Portugal that are globally competitive (MonitorCompany, 1994). The moulding industry is a member of this group (see Table 1).This sector emerged around 75 years ago as a spin-off from the Portugueseglass industry, in an attempt to domestically supply the moulds that this sectorhad been importing. The first companies to tackle this challenge soon diversifiedinto moulds for plastic injection, as it gained prominence as a raw material.Some time later, between the mid-1940s and early 1960s, workers from theseindustries, benefiting from a more permeable legislation regarding industrycompetition, forfeited their jobs in the name of entrepreneurship, leading toa surge in the number of incumbents in this sector. This expansion led to thecreation of a supply-side overcapacity that forced companies to export if theywanted to survive, turning Portuguese companies into those with the highestratio of international/domestic sales of all the ISTA countries (ISTA is theInternational Special Tooling Association, members of which include mouldproducers). In fact, the country boasts an 80% export rate against a 30% averagefor ISTA members (ISTA, 1999). In addition, the fact that the sector incumbentsare clustered around two geographical regions, allows companies to operate asa network of firms. Only in Spain and Japan do mould producers have moreextensive subcontracting ties than their Portuguese counterparts. However, asin most Portuguese industries, the focus is more on the internal efficiency ofproduction (grounded mainly on cheap labour) than on external effectivenessof commercialisation and marketing, which is a problem in an industry witha growing technical and technological component and a growing number ofaggressive global players. Thus, in spite of having one of the highest revenuegrowth in the industry (surpassed only by those of Germany and France), Portugalstill has the lowest productivity per worker among ISTA members (ISTA, 1999).

In the end, in an industry advancing towards closely-knit partnerships withcustomers, which demand increasing levels of speed and quality, and towardsunprecedented levels of knowledge intensity, a cost-leadership strategy comingmore from external factors (e.g. low wages) than from internal efficiencies offerslittle promise of profit and sustainability.

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry51

Iberomoldes

Iberomoldes is among the leading firms in this sector, serving such customersas Ford and Hasbro. The company was founded in 1975 by two former employeesof AHA, one of the earlier firms of the industry, which had already earnedsome credibility and reputation among customers and peers. Iberomoldes enjoyeda tremendous development, making the passage from an entrepreneurial firmto a divisional one (not without going through the functional form) in littlemore than a year. In fact, the founding partners’ starting idea, which wasimplemented at the onset of the company, was to act as a “systems integrator”(Peters, 1992) weaving and controlling a network of subcontracted firms intoa single production process aimed at delivering moulds with high levels ofreliability, as far as both quality and speed of execution were concerned. However,both partners soon realised that this reliability could be obtained only if theyowned the production, and decided to acquire it from their “subcontractees”in order to attain this end. A few months later, Iberomoldes was thus transformedinto a group of firms that encompassed all the phases of mould production,from design and conception to assembly and polishing. A short time after thisreorganisation, the company entered a joint venture with RAR, the leadingPortuguese sugar refinery, in order to produce plastic goods, thus achieving aconsiderable level of downstream integration. Nonetheless, when RAR’s boarddecided to reduce the company’s non-core diversification, this integration wasforfeited. However, in the first IPO in Lisbon’s Stock Exchange following the1974 civil revolution, Iberomoldes teamed up with Hasbro (which was at the

Year Total

Exports

(×109 PTE)

Growth

Rate

(%)

Mould

Exports

(×109 PTE)

Growth

Rate

(%)

Weight

(%)

Mould

Imports

(×109 PTE)

Mould

Exports as a

Percentage of

Imports (%)

1990 2335.8 – 18.8 – 0.8 2.6 723.1

1991 2354.1 0.8 20.5 9.0 0.9 3.3 621.2

1992 2475.2 5.1 22.1 7.8 0.9 3.9 566.7

1993 2774.4 12.1 22.1 0.0 0.8 3.2 701.6

1994 2810.6 1.3 25.3 14.5 0.9 3.6 702.8

Table 1. The importance of the mould sector in Portugal’s balance (Source: Estísticas do comércioexterno, INE).

52 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

time one of its most important customers) to acquire AHA — one of the mostprestigious firms in the moulding industry. At that time, Joaquim Menezes (whohad recently finished an extensive executive education programme at HarvardBusiness School) incorporated SET in Iberomoldes. SET was a company targetedat achieving close linkages between the group and its customers’ new productdevelopment processes in order to achieve lower lead times in mould production,which ultimately resulted in lower time-to-market figures for its clients. Thisallowed Iberomoldes to achieve a considerable level of upstream integrationand increasingly closer linkages to its customers.

Using Miles and Snow’s typology (Miles & Snow, 1980), we can thus classifyIberomoldes as an “analyser” firm, which has been actively pursuing a processof adding knowledge and service intensity to its products.

Round the Clock

Triggers

These characteristics of Iberomoldes and a set of contingencies in its clients’industry as well as its own provided the motivation for the “Round the clock”(RTC) project to come into fruition. Iberomoldes’ purpose for this project wasto create a global virtual team (i.e. a team of people located in different countries,working together via electronic communication) (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1997)for mould innovation, conception and design (see Fig. 1 for the traditionalworkflow of this process). More specifically, team members were to be locatedat points of the world separated by eight (one hour) time zones so that theycould work on a project 24 hours a day — i.e. around the clock — whichwould allow the company to respond to the most pressing of its customers’demands: speed of execution. However, speed of execution was not the onlytrigger underlying the option to undertake this project. In fact, the triggers canbe grouped under two categories: explicit and implicit. Explicit triggers werethose articulated by the project’s members, often grounded on an economic orcompetitive rationality. There were five such triggers, which parallel some ofthe factors that Bettis and Hitt (1995) identified as the major shapers of newcompetitive landscapes. The first was related to the increasing demand for speedmade by customers. They cannot start production without having the necessarymoulds, and the conception and production of the latter was a determinant factorfor Iberomoldes’ customers’ lead time and time-to-market. The second was relatedto the growing knowledge intensity of moulds as a product. This growth calledfor more diverse team composition in order to expand the size of the knowledge

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry53

Fig. 1. Workflow of a mould conception project (adapted from Gomes, 1998)

Sales Department

Budget Approval

Conception/DesignDepartment

Customer Approval

Project/Drawing

Production Department

Customer Approval

Production/Assembly

54 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

base available for product conception. The third trigger was the availability ofthe necessary technology to undertake such a process. The lower costs that theInternet brought to computer-mediated work and the very possibility of its useas a workspace (Jarvenpaa & Shaw, 1998; Yates & Orlikowski, 1999) makeglobal virtual teams not only possible but viable. The two final factors are relatedto resource availability. In fact, this project was mostly hosted by CENTIMFE,a research and development consortium created by the companies comprisingthis sector. CENTIMFE provided the people and the technology necessary forthis project to be implemented. Moreover, the fact that Iberomoldes was ableto gain access to European Union funds for applied research for RTC supplementedthe resources of CENTIMFE and those made available to it by the companyitself.

Implicit arguments for bringing about RTC are those that, although not beingstated by project members, emerge from the patterns their actions weave (Argyris,1974). Two main implicit justifications were visible during the course of theproject. The first is grounded on the contention that fashion has a considerablenormative effect upon organisations, placing the enthusiasm with global virtualwork as a result of the permeability organisations have towards trendy managementtechniques (Abrahamson, 1991). The second refers to an organisational attemptto gain a higher level of visibility among resource holders (e.g. government)in order to further project legitimisation and thus increase access to resources(cf. Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).

Process

The actual enactment of the RTC project was a planned endeavour. Predictably,however, because of the emergent and improvisational nature of informationtechnology (Johnson & Rice, 1987; Orlikowski, 1996), the actual path it followedturned out to be very different from the intended one. In order to illustrateand learn from this process, we will first present the intended strategy for itsimplementation and then contrast it with a post-hoc formalisation of its realizedstrategy (comprising an extensive emergent component) (cf. Mintzberg & McHugh,1985; Mintzberg & Waters, 1982).

The planned implementation path of the RTC project had three different phases,which succeeded each other sequentially. The first phase was intended to beone of experimentation. In this first stage, an actual mould was to be developedby a global virtual team staffed by people from CENTIMFE, Iberotec(an Iberomoldes affiliate in Mexico) and members from GMI (an R&D consortiumin China), in this order. People at Iberomoldes were responsible for the secondstage, where whatever had been learned from this process was to be articulated

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry55

and later, in the third stage, formalised into a standard methodology that couldbe followed whenever global virtual workgroups were needed. The choice ofthis particular configuration for this process, conceived by CENTIMFE andIberomoldes, was grounded on four major reasons. The first one was relatedto the success that Iberomoldes and Iberotec were experimenting in virtualcollaboration. In truth, RTC was often presented as an extension of thiscollaboration to the global arena, allowing for 24-hour work on a given mould.The experience with Iberotec allowed the formalisation of a set of practicesthat could easily be transferred to RTC and thus permit a more experimentalstance in its implementation. This stance was also favoured by another fact,the professional culture of most people assigned to RTC. These people weremostly computer systems engineers, with a predisposition to action over reflection(DeSmet, 1992). Another reason for this choice of process was the existenceof available resources, namely people and equipment at CENTIMFE and thefunds provided by the EUREKA grant which the project received. Finally, theemphasis placed on learning and formalisation came mostly from Iberomoldes’organisational culture, which espouses, among other values and beliefs, theimportance of formalising procedures for communication and interaction.Concurring with this reasoning is the frequency with which “formalisation ofa working methodology” was given as an answer when RTC team memberswere queried about the goal of this project.

Underlying these reasons was a threefold set of assumptions that needs tobe made explicit for this option to be better understood. The first of theseassumptions was that tasks and issues are to be the major coordination mechanismsof the RTC implementation process. In fact, there wasn’t any kind of structureprescribed for it because of the belief that when problems or opportunities arose,talented individuals would self-coordinate in order to address them effectively.The absence of any clear roles, goals and deadlines at the onset of the projectis an indicator of this assumption. In addition, perhaps because of Iberomoldes’previous experience with virtual collaboration with Iberotec, team membersassumed that they needed to invest heavily in communication at “junctions”.Junctions are the moment when a part of the global virtual team “hands”/passeson the work to people in another country. The effort CENTIMFE undertookin assuring effective video and voice communication via the Internet was a cleareffort towards achieving the conditions for such a communication to take place.If this assumption were not present, then assuring safe and reliable e-mailcommunication, which is a far less daunting task, would be enough to achievefluid and effective interaction (Yates & Orlikowski, 1999). Nonetheless, the factthat there was no overarching person/organism with authority over team memberscalled for trust to be developed. Although this trust was present between the

56 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

Portuguese and the Mexican members of the team because of some prior interaction(interaction-based trust) between them and because both belonged to the sameorganisation (institution-based trust), such was not the case regarding therelationships with the Chinese. This, then, created the need for more intensivecommunication, at least while waiting for interaction-based trust to emerge(McAllister, 1995). A final assumption was related to the belief that solutionsto technical problems should precede any attempts to tackle organisational issues.A number of failed attempts to have a clear video and voice communicationin the first joint RTC videoconference persuaded management to let engineerssolve the technical issues first because, without communication, any effort inthe project organisation would be fruitless.

Ultimately, the guiding premise was that technology implementation can bedesigned and is mostly deliberate — a premise that those who do research on,or work in, electronic-mediated settings know how to be untenable (Johnson& Rice, 1984; Orlikowski & Hofman, 1997). This led to an actual implementationprocess for RTC that turned out to be significantly different from that plannedat the onset, and that unfolded along four sequential strategies for which wepresent the articulated justification ascribed by project members, its correspondingunderlying (and unstated) purpose and, finally, the results it produced (see Table 2).

Taking as a departure point the assumptions above, which at that time werestill unchallenged because members had no actual experience in working underRTC, the team undertook the building of some common ground among themas their central task. Their articulated justification for pursuing this goal wasas follows. Firstly, they were concerned about developing a shared language.As Orr (1990), and Brown and Duguid (1991) have shown, a shared professionallanguage (i.e. the designation of artifacts and experiences unique to a profession)is the cornerstone of a community of practice, be it virtual or face-to-face. Inparticular, people from CENTIMFE and Iberomoldes were concerned that thefact that group members did not share a common language and that Englishfluency varied immensely among them would add to different professional dialects,thus expanding the possibilities of misunderstanding brought about by theambiguity of current words. The absence of the possibility of directly supervisingother members’ work, coupled with the difficulty of tracing mistakes in ever-growing CAD files, made this issue even more problematic. A “social” video-conference that included all partners was thus perceived as an opportunity toalign languages, or at least to detect the discrepancies among them. Additionally,two sets of standards were seen as critical: equipment (including communicationhardware, communication software and CAD software) and file-sharing norms.A lack of agreement regarding these topics would compromise the very possibilityof passing work back and forth among team members.

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry57

Underlying these avowed justifications was the need to build a basis fortrust among people from different backgrounds, cultures and countries. In fact,this first “social” video-conference was framed as a shared experience that waslater drawn upon in order to enact a similarity-based trust, since the other groundsfor trust — prior experience of face-to-face interaction and belonging to thesame organisation (Mayer, et al 1995) — were not available options becauseof this group’s geographical dispersion. In addition, the importance of establishingfile-sharing and equipment standards (articulated as the most important factorsfor cooperation) paled in comparison to the perceived necessity of establishing

Articulated Justification Underlying Purpose Results

Stage 1 — Building

common ground

— Need for a shared

language

— Need for equipment

standards

— Need for file-

sharing norms

Build a basis for trust — Expansion of trust

— No formalisation of norms

and standards

— Non-formalised

improvisation

— Greater visibility of

technological problems

Stage 2 — Local

experimentation

— Need to find a

software platform

— Solve hardware

problems

Legitimising

the “technology

before management”

assumption

— Hindrance of trust

— Low group rationality

— Unformalised minor

improvisations

— Maintenance of earlier

choices

— Further demonstration of the

unreliability of technology

Stage 3 — Actual

product

development

— Perceived need of

goals and deadlines

for solutions to

emerge

— Previous experience

between Iberotec

and Iberomoldes

Need to present

results to the project

leader

— Delivery of a final product

— Abandonment of video-

conferencing as an

interaction mechanism

— Formalisation of some

improvisations

— Mixed effects on trust

Stage 4 — Reaping

opportunities

Need to take advantage

of opportunities for

gaining further

resources

— Drive to respond

to urgent and

important events

— Opportunity for

an “all-hands”

interaction

— Need to regain

momentum

— Formalisation of some

improvisations

— “Efficient

effectiveness”

— Increased trust

— De-mystification of

multinational virtual work

Table 2. The four stages of RTC, their justifications, underlying purposes and results.

58 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

a social and task structure. This explains why, in this first video-conference,the issues discussed were related mostly to the division of labour and to thenature of the tasks the group faced. Equipment and file-sharing were very nearlyforgotten, and CENTIMFE members prepared a questionnaire that, as one ofthem said, “[was] enough for what we need, these are minor aspects that [did]not need to be discussed live”. He continued by stating that “in such complexwork [as designing a mould is], we need to understand each other and whateveryone has to do, that’s what’s important”, thus concurring with Bastien andHostager’s (1991) findings on how complex tasks demand the pre-existence ofa task and social structure even in the most self-managed of teams.

In the light of all this, the results of this first interaction are anything butsurprising. A first result was the expansion of trust grounded on the perceptionof similarity that transpired from a shared experience, which was a noveltyto most team members. In spite of this, this trust was somewhat diminishedby the fact that some members experienced difficulties in following up assignedtasks. GMI and CENTIMFE, for example, had a hard time arranging a sessionto experiment with communication software. A second result was that normswere not discussed, which is only superficially surprising given, on the onehand, the relevance that team members explicitly gave to this issue and, onthe other hand, its irrelevance for the group’s underlying necessities. Thirdly,some improvisation was enacted as the intended plan for the session was notfollowed due to the obvious technical difficulties of maintaining a continuousvideo and voice communication over the Internet and to the appearance of anunexpected business opportunity GMI brought to the table. Finally, the visibilityof problems associated with Internet communication acutely pointed out theunreliability of this technology for such a communication-intensive task.

This set of realisations led the team to attempt to build the project’sinfrastructure and handle technological issues locally, i.e. by experimenting withconnections between Iberomoldes and CENTIMFE, which are located only afew miles from each other. To achieve this, a team member from CENTIMFEwould experiment video-conferencing with another from Iberomoldes, and tryto solve the problems they encountered. This occurred twice in a two-weekperiod. The articulated reasoning behind this shift was related to the need tofind a software platform for communication and to solve the hardware problemsthey had encountered in the first video-conferencing attempt. Apart fromscheduling considerations, similarity and technological reliability dictated thechoice of partners for this endeavour. The high complexity and ambiguity oftenascribed to information technology (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994), amplified bycultural and language differences, would render such an exploratory task closeto impossible, thus limiting the team (in this stage) to two people from the

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry59

same town. A close professional background, and national and sector-specificlanguages seemed the only real possibility of achieving a reliable communicationplatform. One can further argue that cultural differences other than language,such as the level of uncertainty avoidance and power distance (Hofstede, 1980),would undoubtedly affect the quality and speed of resolution. Noticeably enough,the group maintained an orientation to action in detriment to reflection, andcontinued to view experimentation (instead of thinking and planning) as thebest way to find a solution to the tasks at hand.

Underlying this logic was the assumption that technical problems shouldprecede organisational and managerial issues. This strategy (local experimentation)soon turned into a legitimisation effort, giving rise to a “garbage can” decisionmodel in which problems were sought to which “pet solutions” could be applied(Cohen, et al., 1972). In one instance, for example, team members found asoftware that could solve some problems that NetMeeting created, but they simplydropped it for no apparent reason. At the end of the process, they reportedthat “no solution better than NetMeeting was found”. However, in the wordsof the project leader (and as the group realised in the next stage): “thevideo-conferencing is but a minor issue and Iberomoldes seldom uses it in itsfrequent joint projects with Iberotec”. Apparently, the overall task the grouphad set itself upon was of little relevance for their ultimate goal.

This strategy resulted in little progress. The absence of non-Portuguese teammembers from this process hindered trust-building not only because an importantopportunity to create similarity-based trust through shared experiences wasforegone, but also because the increase in this type of trust among Portugueseteam members resulting from this increased interaction drove a deeper wedgebetween them and the remainder of the group. In addition, this exclusion limitedgroup diversity, one of the explanations presented in the literature for lowerrationality in group choices (Harvey, 1996; Janis, 1971), as the selection ofNetMeeting as the communication software to be adopted and the verypervasiveness of video-conferencing as the central issue for the project’s successeloquently confirmed. This went so far that at one point of this stage, Iberomoldesand CENTIMFE were experimenting with a point-to-point dual-line ISDNconnection, which was virtually impossible to replicate over the Internet or overinternational communication lines, and which was therefore all but irrelevantfor the final RTC technology.

During the two sessions that this phase comprises, some minor improvisationswere again visible. The high adaptability of the type of technologies team memberswere dealing with and their sheer unpredictability made this a more expectedresult than usual (Johnson & Rice, 1984; Orlikowski, 1996). However, in spiteof the interest in formalisation, articulated in the project’s plan, none of the

60 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

improvisations resulted in formalised learning for the team and, in the end, norecommendation related to communication architecture was put forth. Instead,earlier choices were maintained and, if anything had been accomplished at all,it was the reduction of choices by retrospective justification (Weick, 1979) andthe demonstration of the unreliability of the Internet as an interaction space.

The absence of any perceived progress in arriving at something close toa formalised methodology led the project leader to make the decision to replicatethe type of interaction that Iberomoldes and Iberotec already had in place. Forthis purpose, Iberotec suggested a specific part for CENTIMFE and Iberotecto develop together. Iberomoldes provided the team with some of thecommunication procedures it already used with Iberotec, leaving the rest to beintroduced as needed during the course of the work. However, when this attemptwas made, “the introduction of further norms was hindering the flow of workand [the team] decided to keep working only with the initial rules”, a projectmember explained. This third strategy, built upon the previous one, was hinderingthe building of trust with the Chinese partners; however, it went a long wayin creating that trust between the rest of the project participants (CENTIMFE,Iberomoldes and Iberotec).

The articulated justification for following this new path was thus groundedon the realisation that idle experimentation would not go far in introducingnorms, standards and procedures from which a methodology for RTC couldbe built. A real mould development project, with clear goals and deadlines,was necessary to achieve this objective, as authors on new product development(e.g. Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997; Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995) and organisationalimprovisation (e.g. Crossan & Sorrenti, 1997; Cunha et al., 1999; Weick, 1998)have extensively argued. Moreover, the previous successful experiences thatIberomoldes and Iberotec had in doing this type of work in virtual settings,built the expectation that the latter participation in this process would allowfor visible results to appear in a short period of time.

Underlying this reasoning was the need to present actual results to the projectleader who had already been arguing against some of the premises of the originalplan that had migrated to these emergent strategies. More precisely, he had beenarguing against the assumption that rich, video-conference-based communicationwas the central issue of the RTC methodology and, concurrently, that technicalproblems possessed a higher degree of relevance than did managerial ones. Infact, it was to test the validity of these that he pushed for an actual projectto be attempted. To the keener eye, this is a clear shift from the “technicalbefore management” proposition: the organisational setting was changed in anattempt to alter the framework for technical solutions and the behaviour of thoseseeking these solutions. The emphasis that the leader put on results was sufficient

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry61

to legitimise this strategy, which was perceived not as an emanation of a personalwhim, but as a requirement (or law) of the situation (cf. Follett, 1940).

The results of this strategy were different from those of the two earlier phases,mainly because of this change in setting. A final product was indeed deliveredby the team, but not without problems. In some instances, either the Portugueseor the Mexican members were absent at the junctures where work was passedfrom one part of the team to the other, because unforseen events preventedthem from being there. More significantly, communication problems due tohardware, software and/or Internet failures still persisted. However, on the onehand, the more experienced Iberotec members reduced video-conferencecommunication by relying on standardised e-mail forms to convey projectinformation and, on the other, the team accomplished some major improvisations,which were later formalised, turning problems into opportunities. A case in pointis the improvisation of a norm under which members would always end theirparticipation in dialogue with the word “over”. This first appeared as an attemptto solve a problem caused by breaks in voice transmission that the receivingparty interpreted as silence, indicating the end of a statement. However, thisproblem was turned into an opportunity, setting this communication procedureas a standard, eventually streamlining and speeding up communication. It isimportant to notice though, the impact of a goal-and-deadline work settingnotwithstanding, that these improvisations were facilitated by the similarity ofthe Portuguese and Spanish languages and by the institution-based trust thatemerged. This trust was grounded not as much in prior interaction as in thefact that both CENTIMFE and Iberotec share the same leader, creating a perceptionthat they belonged to the same extended organisation (Mayer et al., 1995). Inaddition to this, this strategy demonstrated that “poor” communication at junctures(i.e. e-mail based communication) was not only possible but more effective thanits “rich” counterpart (i.e. video-conference-based communication). Finally, italso hinted at the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship betweenformalisation and mould development effectiveness. Some rules were indeednecessary for the team to get work done but too many would have inevitablyhampered its performance (cf. Moorman & Miner, 1995).

The fourth strategy followed by the team was that of having the highestemergent component. This stage resulted from two unexpected events that theteam perceived as two opportunities, handling them accordingly. The first ofthose events was the visit of the Portuguese Minister for Science and Technologyto CENTIMFE. This was taken as an opportunity to demonstrate “live” virtualwork and corresponded to a display of team members from Iberomoldes andCENTIMFE working simultaneously on a CAD drawing of a mould, sharedover the Internet. The second event was a demonstration of “live” global virtual

62 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

work at an innovation fair in Portugal. In this performance, people fromCENTIMFE, Iberomoldes, Iberotec, GMI (in China) and a German partner ofIberomoldes worked together on a CAD file shared over the Internet whilecommunicating via video-conferencing. The “active” screen (meaning the computerscreen of the person actively working on the CAD drawing) was fed, againvia the Internet, to a projector in the fair grounds. Sitting next to that projectorwas the team leader, serving as a narrator to the audience.

The articulated justification for taking advantage of these unforseen eventsas opportunities was related to issues of legitimisation and obtaining of resources.On the one hand, the demonstration of the project merits to members of thegovernment and to a general audience interested in innovative products andpractices made the project visible and, in a team member’s view, “somethingworthy of enough attention as to facilitate its diffusion through other incumbentsof the industry”. The project leader, also concerned with the profitability ofRTC, further claimed that “seeing RTC in action made it more trustworthy toits clients and positioned Iberomoldes as an innovative company, and that hasgood marketing repercussions”. On the other hand, this same demonstrationallowed the project to gain access to additional financial resources. An increasinglegitimisation in the eyes of the government placed it in a favourable placefor obtaining further subsidies. This same increase in the eyes of its industrypeers could mean the ability to extract more funding for CENTIMFE in general,and RTC in particular.

Underlying these arguments was a heightened sense of urgency and significancebrought on by the importance of the observers (e.g. the Minister of Scienceand Technology) and by the short period of time the team had in which toprepare for both events. Additionally, an opportunity to bring the whole teamback together had been lacking in the previous stages. The “live” full-teamdemonstration remedied this condition. Finally, as the team was losing momentumbecause of the absence of clear results, these two events improved motivationby generating positive feedback with very little lag from action.

Because of these characteristics, i.e. because of its shorter feedback cycles,high visibility, clear goals, short deadlines and high relevance/importance, thisstage was the richest of all as far as improvisation and subsequent formalisationwere concerned. A set of technological solutions and interaction norms emergedbecause of the need for actual cooperation to be enacted. Additionally, the teamlived up to the expectations it imposed on itself from the start, by being ableto achieve an integration between the poles of several paradoxes that had plaguedit. The paradox bounded by the poles of efficiency and effectiveness was oneof these. In improvising these two sessions, team members were able to solvea significant set of issues, related both to technology and workgroup interaction

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry63

that had been with the project right from its start, such as being able tocommunicate while sharing a CAD file — thus achieving effectiveness.Additionally, they were able to do this with few resources, little investmentin searching for solutions or in acquiring them, resulting in a communicationstandard that was extremely fast and reliable — thus achieving efficiency. Thisand other improvisations were later formalised in the project’s follow-up meeting.

The events of this stage also provided a fresh and richer ground for trust.Both these demonstrations were emotionally-charged events because they hadsome possibilities of going awry and because of the social importance of theirwitnesses (Banton, 1965). Thus, participating in them created a heightenedperception of similarity boosted by the high emotionality present, counteringthe perception of difference that previous stages had been enacting betweenthe GMI on one side, and Iberomoldes, Iberotec and CENTIMFE on the other.Moreover, the final event showed how multi-cultural integration is possible withoutprior institution-based trust, by using shared and visible goals, and deadlinesas integration mechanisms — showing that multi-cultural virtual work is a lessdaunting goal to achieve than the team had first realised.

Outcomes

A relevant outcome of this account was that the prescribed process for enactingRTC as an administrative innovation was far from being implemented. Thus,by comparing Figs. 2 and 3, we find a striking contrast between the intendedimplementation course for this project and the one realised. Apart from theoff-the-shelf explanations grounded in the complex nature of environments (Emery& Trist, 1965; Stacey, 1961) and the inherently emergent nature of strategy(Mintzberg & McHugh, 1985), two factors can be put forward to explain thisdifference. Firstly, there was a set of unexpected circumstances that preventeda smooth implementation of the preconceived plan. The technical difficultiesencountered in achieving reliable video-conferences over the Internet, theopportunities created by the visit of the Minister of Science and Technology,and the live demonstration at the innovation fair, exemplify this statement.Secondly, some of the critical assumptions made at the outset of the projectdid not hold in “real-life”. The relevance of a video-conference at communicationjunctures (when work was passed from one part of the team to another) wasnot as significant as foreseen, as the Iberotec/CENTIMFE joint mould developmenteloquently demonstrated. The belief that technological problems had to be solvedbefore managerial issues were tackled was disproved when a change of settingfrom idle experimentation to goal-and-deadline product development ended up

64 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

producing improvisations important enough to be formalised as a part of theRTC methodology.

In spite of this discrepancy between what actually happened and what wasplanned to happen, the project goal was attained. A set of norms and standardsemerged from these four strategies and, additionally, several hints about howto proceed towards a full-fledged methodology were visible in these results.The norms and standards were generated by one of two processes. The firstprocess was experimentation. Team members from Iberomoldes adapted the normsthey were already using in joint projects with Iberotec, and attempted to introducethem, with mixed success, in the CENTIMFE/Iberotec venture. This providedthe team with a set of working standards and, more importantly, with somegeneral directions on how to proceed when conceiving new ones. The invertedU-shaped relationship between norms and performance was “an unexpected but

Adjust, adjust, adjust.

Test, test, test.

“Plan” Methodology

Fig. 2. RTC timeline (planned).

Ministervisit

1st CENTIMFE /Iberomoldes test (fail)

2nd CENTIMFE/ Iberomoldes testLearn about Minister visit

Work rules are issued

1st session of CENTIMFE /Iberotec project

Fig. 3. RTC timeline (real).

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry65

important lesson”, in the words of one of the project members. The secondstandards-generating process was improvisation. By adapting in real time tounforeseen challenges and opportunities (Moorman & Miner, 1998), the workgroupwas able to introduce a set of technical standards and interaction norms thatallowed more fluidity in virtual collaborative endeavours (Table 3 relates theobserved improvisation with team composition and the presence of structure).

Apart from these planned results, a set of unexpected outcomes surfacedfrom the project. Firstly, at least two assumptions were proven wrong. The jointmould design involving CENTIMFE and Iberotec showed that e-mail-basedcommunication was more effective than video-conferencing in coordinating thegroup’s actions, thus challenging the belief that achieving fluid and “rich”communication was essential to the success of RTC. Furthermore, the qualitativechange to the team performance that a managerial intervention aimed at movingthe group from an “idle experimentation setting” towards one of “deadline andresults” disproved the contention that managerial issues were second totechnological ones. A further unexpected outcome was the increased trust that

Event Present

Partners

Presence of a

Minimal

Structure

Appearance of Improvisation and

Subsequent Formalisation

First video-conference

with all project members

All partners No Some improvisations, none were

formalised.

First test CENTIMFE /

Iberomoldes

No Some improvisations, none were

formalised.

Second test CENTIMFE

/ Iberomoldes

CENTIMFE,

Iberomoldes

No Some improvisations, none were

formalised.

Visit from the

Portuguese Minister of

Science and Technology

CENTIMFE,

Iberomoldes

Yes Improvised a software communication

protocol, which was formalised

Actual product

development project

CENTIMFE,

Iberotec

Yes Improvised a voice communication

script, which was formalised

“Live” session All partners Yes Many improvisations, some were

formalised

Table 3. Participating members, presence of a previous structure and improvisation in RTC’s majorevents.

66 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

emerged among project members. As one of the participants stated, “we thoughtthat if we developed the methodology correctly, then the rest would follow,now I see trust is also necessary”. The number and emotional weight of someof the group interactions helped to build a significant shared past that fueleda feeling of similarity-based trust between its participants.

Another unforeseen outcome of the whole process was the increased legitimacythat RTC gained in the eyes of the industry and in those of the general public.A few articles about this project were even published in major circulationnewspapers. This legitimacy was important, among other reasons, because ofthe role played by external funding in CENTIMFE’s projects, including RTC.Finally, the success of the project and its visibility apparently contributed toa heightened feeling of commitment by the members of the project team.

Discussion

A careful look at the events portrayed in the RTC case uncovers some issuesworthy of a closer scrutiny. In fact, this case confirms at least three significantpropositions in management theory and unearths three unexpected relationships.As far as expected findings go, this case confirms that strategy implementationis indeed an emergent phenomenon. As stated above, the difference betweenthe initial plan for this project and its actual enactment differed significantlybecause of a variety of reasons. One of the most relevant of these, which isan additional possibility surfaced by this research, is the inherent emergent natureof information technology. In fact, if there is one thing in common to all thephases described, it is surely the ability that this type of technology has tosurprise its users. This is not only related to the minor glitches and substantialmalfunctions that we have witnessed but, more importantly, to the “radicallytailorable” nature this type of worktool possesses (Malone et al., 1992). It wasthis very adaptability that allowed the project to attain the objectives set forit, as team members “bricolated” and improvised around problems andopportunities (Johnson & Rice, 1984), creating practices and rules that werelater formalised into norms and standards. Had this flexibility been absent, theflow of problems put forth by the technology would have impeded the teamfrom reaping the advantages of the number of unexpected opportunities thatarose during the course of this process (cf. Orlikowski, 1997). In the end, althoughthis characteristic drove a wedge ever further between what had been plannedand what was de facto happening, it also allowed that unforeseen events wereincorporated in the process of materialising RTC, enriching and expanding itsoriginal concept. Finally and, again, as expected, this process was most illuminatingas far as the nature of trust goes. As one can see in the dynamic sequence

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry67

of strategies presented above, there was an almost complete lack of groundsfor trust to emerge. Members had little or no prior joint work experience, didnot belong to the same organisation and did not even have entirely positivestereotypes of each other — thus having little ground for similarity/interaction-based, institution-based, and “swift” trust, respectively (Jarvenpaa & Shaw, 1998).This notwithstanding, the sheer emotional weight of their interactions — becauseof their novelty, difficulty and perceived importance of witnesses — allowedfor similarity-based trust to build up quickly. As the literature argues (e.g. Mayeret al., 1995), this process was faster among those who did have something incommon, such as common language and culture (CENTIMFE and Iberomoldes)or a common leader (CENTIMFE, Iberomoldes and Iberotec), but in the endof the project, it was enough for all parties to be willing to cooperate and relyon each other.

The unexpected findings were still more interesting. The first of these findingswas related to the interaction between national culture and the willingness toimprovise. The most puzzling observation regarding this issue came from thefollowing realisations. Firstly, RTC’s Chinese members were able to improviseand to even produce high-novelty improvisations. Additionally, they were thosewith a higher degree of routinisation of improvisation. Nonetheless, whenanswering a question in an exploratory survey regarding the “live” projectdemonstration, they stated: “in our opinion, the actions we took during the video-conference followed the plan. So must we answer the question about unplannedactions/decisions?” However, in that event, the Chinese did improvise and avowas much. Furthermore, in that survey, the same Chinese RTC members saidthat they completely figured out actions as they went along, that they strictlyfollowed a plan in taking these actions (!), and that these actions were mostlyspontaneous. How can all of this be integrated? One alternative is arguing thatthese RTC members have, in fact, a culture that permits improvisation but aneed to “save face” keeps them from avowing it, even though they knew thatthey were being observed when it occurred.

The second unexpected finding was related to a number of dialecticalphenomena observed during the course of the project. In the absence of someoneofficially in charge during the CENTIMFE/Iberotec project, the exercise of actualauthority and impersonal control mechanisms (e.g. standardisation of procedures),one cannot help but wonder about how coordination was achieved. A possibleanswer to this paradox lies in the presence of invisible control mechanismsthroughout the members’ interactions. In fact, as Sewell (1998) observed, peerpressure can be as strong an integration system as direct supervision. Theorganisation is simply transferring that responsibility from a superior to a person’speers. Moreover, this author also contended that technology and production

68 J. V. Cunha & M. P. Cunha

processes can incorporate this type of system. The time pacing imposed by thedaily communication junctures and the project’s deadlines probably served sucha function (cf. Ancona & Chong, 1996). Additionally, the group’s improvisationsenacted a synthesis between planning and action. Several of the team endeavourshad carefully planned scripts — the two live demonstrations are a case in point.Nonetheless, these scripts were seldom followed. They were used instead toground the novel solutions that unexpected occurrences during those eventsdemanded. Flexibility happened because of previous planning and not in spiteof it.

The third unexpected finding is somewhat related to these dialecticalphenomena. RTC was essentially a process grounded on creativity and on thedevelopment of an innovation. However, several factors that are often accusedof hindering innovation were actually fueling it. The presence of an affirmativeleadership, tight deadlines and a sense of urgency, often assumed to be harmfulpressures hindering creative tasks (Amabile, 1998), were the very conditionsthat, in the two latter strategies, allowed most of the solutions to the underlyingproblems of the project to emerge and to be formalised. This concurs with theabove discussion to hint at the possibility of reaching a synthesis betweenapparently divergent and contradictory phenomena.

Conclusion

This case presents the development of an administrative innovation aimed atintroducing an organisational arrangement that allows new product developmentand innovation to occur around the clock. This innovation had an underlyingplan that was obviated by a wave of unforeseeable events, forcing its participantsto improvise in attaining their goals. The project evolved around four stagescorresponding to two different management settings. The first was one we canterm as “idle experimentation” while the second can be labelled “goal-and-deadlineimprovisation”. Although the first setting is considered to be more attuned toinnovation and creativity, the story of RTC demonstrates that it is in the secondtype of setting that these kind of behaviours are indeed possible. By statingthis, we contribute with an illustration to what has been almost a singularlytheoretical effort [with the notable exceptions of Moorman and Miner (1998)and Brown and Eisenhardt (1997)] — the theory of organisational improvisation.In doing this, we hope to encourage others to find other stories — at leastas compelling as ours — and ultimately to aggregate them into variables andconstructs, so that this topic can start gaining the necessary legitimisation tobe recognised by practitioners and start delivering on its promise of integrating

Collaborative Work in International Moulding Industry69

paradoxes into syntheses, moving organisational members from anxiety intoperformance.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank José Manuel Fonseca and especially Joaquim Menezesand the people from the mould industry for sharing their knowledge and time.We gratefully acknowledge the anonymous reviewers’ comments on an earlierdraft of the paper.

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