TITLE:
Collaborative Meeting as an Integrative Mechanism in a Multinational Investment Project
AUTHORS:
Leena Pekkinen, Jaakko Kujala
KEYWORDS:
Collaboration; Integration; Coordination; Uncertainty; Equivocality
JOURNAL NAME:
Technology and Investment,
Vol.5 No.1,
February
17,
2014
ABSTRACT: In multinational and complex projects that are often
implemented by multiple organizations, the entire projects need to be divided
into manageable subprojects. At the same time, all subprojects
are needed to be kept aligned with the project goals and targets by integration
and coordination. The
purpose of this article is to study the role of a particular, work-shop type,
collaborative meeting by utilizing the characteristics of an integrative
information processing framework. A single case study method
was used to observe the practices of collaborative meetings. This study contributes to the
project management research by analysing how collaborative meeting practice can
be used as a mechanism to reduce uncertainty and equivocality in a large investment
project. The results of this study are two folds: Firstly, the
case project’s collaborative meetings are described in detail; secondly, the perceived features and
procedures of the collaborative meetings in the case project are illustrated
showing the role of the collaborative meetings as an integrative tool.
Moreover, the perceived integrative characteristics of the collaborative
meetings reducing uncertainty and equivocality are presented. This study
indicates that collaborative meeting is an integrative mechanism reducing
uncertainty and equivocality in a large investment project context.