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2.4 Research Agenda
We have seen how a number of different disciplines can contribute to answering the questions about coordination, and how theories of coordination can, in turn, be applied to the concerns of several different disciplines. What is needed to further develop this interdisciplinary study of coordination?As we suggested above, a central concern of coordination theory should be identifying and analyzing specific coordination processes and structures. Therefore a critical item on the agenda for coordination research should be developing these analyses. A number of questions arise, as will be explored next.
2.4.1 Representing and Classifying Coordination Processes
How can we represent coordination processes? When should we use flowcharts, Petri nets, or state transition diagrams? Are there other notations that are even more perspicuous for analyzing coordination? How can we classify different coordination processes? For instance, can we usefully regard some coordination processes as ''special cases''of others? How are different coordination processes combined when activities are actually performed?Characterizing Dependencies What kinds of dependencies are there? Are there ways to organize them that highlight common possibilities for managing them? Are some special cases of others? What causes dependencies? As we modify or alter a process, what techniques will be useful for keeping track of existing dependencies or identifying new ones? What techniques are useful for identifying dependencies in a field study of a particular process?How General Are Coordination Processes? Another set of questions has to do with how generic coordination processes really are: How far can we get by analyzing very general coordination processes, and when will we find that most of the important factors are specific to coordinating a particular kind of task? For example, are there general heuristics for coordination that are analogous to the general problem-solving heuristics studied in cognitive science and artificial intelligence?
2.4.2 Analyzing Specific Processes
At least as important as these general questions are analyses of specific processes. For example, how far can we go in analyzing alternative coordination processes for problems such as resource allocation? Can we characterize an entire ''design space''for solutions to this problem and analyze the major factors that would favor one solution over another in specific situations? Could we do the same thing for other processes such as goal selection or managing timing dependencies? Are there other processes (e.g., managing other kinds of dependencies) that could be analyzed systematically in ways that have not yet been done?In analyzing alternatives processes for specific problems, we might consider various kinds of properties: Which processes are least ''expensive''in terms of production costs and coordination costs? Which processes are fastest? Which processes are most stable in the face of failures of actors or delays of information? Which processes are most susceptible to incentive problems? For instance, how does the presence of significant conflicts of interest among actors affect the desirability of different resource allocation methods? How do information processing limitations of actors affect the desirability of different methods? For example, are some methods appropriate for coordinating people that would not be appropriate for coordinating computer processors, and vice versa? What new methods for coordinating people become desirable when human information processing capacities are augmented by computers?
2.4.3 Applications and Methodologies
A critical part of the research agenda for this area is developing coordination theory in the context of various different kinds of systems. For instance, in the preceding section, we suggested numerous examples of these possibilities for human organizations and computer systems.In some cases this work may involve applying previously developed theories to these application areas. In many cases, however, we expect that new systems or new observations of these systems will stimulate the development of new theories. For example, all of the following methodologies appear likely to be useful in developing coordination theory: (1) empirically studying coordination in human or other biological systems (e.g., field studies, laboratory studies, or econometric studies), (2) designing new technologies for supporting human coordination, (3) designing and experimenting with new methods for coordinating distributed and parallel processing computer systems, and (4) formal modeling of coordination processes (e.g., mathematical modeling or computer simulation).
