@inbook {Crowston:1994b,
	title = {A Taxonomy of Organizational Dependencies and Coordination Mechanisms},
	booktitle = {Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook},
	year = {2003},
	pages = {85-108},
	publisher = {MIT Press},
	organization = {MIT Press},
	type = {Working paper},
	abstract = {Interdependency and coordination have been perennial topics in organization studies. The two are related because coordination is seen as a response to problems caused by dependencies. Past studies, however, describe dependencies and coordination mechanisms only in general terms, without characterizing in detail differences between dependencies, the problems dependencies create or how the proposed coordination mechanisms address those problems. This vagueness makes it difficult or impossible to determine what alternative coordination mechanisms might be useful in a given circumstance or to directly translate these alternative designs into specifications of individual activities.

In this paper I develop a taxonomy of dependency types by considering possible combinations of activities using resources. The taxonomy includes task-resource dependencies and three types of task-task dependencies: shared resources, producer-consumer and common output. For each type of dependency, alternative coordination mechanisms are described. I conclude by discussing how the taxonomy helps to analyze organizational processes and suggest alternative processes.

Although you will perform with different ingredients for different dishes, the same general processes are repeated over and over again. As you enlarge your repertoire, you will find that the seemingly endless babble of recipes begins to fall rather neatly into groups of theme and variations...

--Child, Bertholle and Beck (1981, p. vii) },
	keywords = {Coordination},
	isbn = {0585480249},
	attachments = {https://crowston.syr.edu./sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/ATaxonomyOfOrganizationalDependencies.pdf},
	author = {Kevin Crowston},
	editor = {Malone, Thomas W. and Kevin Crowston and Herman, George}
}
@article {Malone:1999,
	title = {Tools for inventing organizations: Toward a handbook of organizational processes},
	journal = {Management Science},
	volume = {45},
	number = {3},
	year = {1999},
	note = {Reprinted in Malone, T. W., Crowston, K. \& Herman, G. (Eds.) Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
Reprinted in Malone, T. W., Laubacher, R. \& Scott Morton, M. S. (Eds.). Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.},
	pages = {425{\textendash}443},
	abstract = {This paper describes a novel theoretical and empirical approach to tasks such as business process redesign and knowledge management. The project involves collecting examples of how different organizations perform similar processes, and organizing these examples in an on-line "process handbook." The handbook is intended to help people: (1) redesign existing organizational processes, (2) invent new organizational processes (especially ones that take advantage of information technology), and (3) share ideas about organizational practices. 
A key element of the work is an approach to analyzing processes at various levels of abstraction, thus capturing both the details of specific processes as well as the "deep structure" of their similarities. This approach uses ideas from computer science about inheritance and from coordination theory about managing dependencies. A primary advantage of the approach is that it allows people to explicitly represent the similarities (and differences) among related processes and to easily find or generate sensible alternatives for how a given process could be performed. In addition to describing this new approach, the work reported here demonstrates the basic technical feasibility of these ideas and gives one example of their use in a field study.},
	keywords = {Coordination, Handbook, Process},
	doi = {10.1287/mnsc.45.3.425},
	attachments = {https://crowston.syr.edu./sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/ms99.pdf},
	author = {Malone, Thomas W. and Kevin Crowston and Lee, Jintae and Pentland, Brian and Dellarocas, Chrysanthos and Wyner, George and Quimby, John and Osborn, Charley and Bernstein, Avi and Herman, George and Klein, Mark and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Elissa}
}
@article {Malone:1994,
	title = {The interdisciplinary study of coordination},
	journal = {Computing Surveys},
	volume = {26},
	number = {1},
	year = {1994},
	note = {Reprinted in Olson, G. M, Malone, T. W., and Smith, J. B. (Eds.) Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology (pp. 7{\textendash}50). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.
Reprinted in Malone, T. W., Crowston, K. \& Herman, G. (Eds.) Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.},
	pages = {87{\textendash}119},
	publisher = {ACM},
	abstract = {This survey characterizes an emerging research area, sometimes called coordination theory, that focuses on the interdisciplinary study of coordination. Research in this area uses and extends ideas about coordination from disciplines such as computer science, organization theory, operations research, economics, linguistics, and psychology.
A key insight of the framework presented here is that coordination can be seen as the process of managing dependencies among activities. Further progress, therefore, should be possible by characterizing different kinds of dependencies and identifying the coordination processes that can be used to manage them. A variety of processes are analyzed from this perspective, and commonalities across disciplines are identified. Processes analyzed include those for managing shared resources, producer/consumer relationships, simultaneity constraints, and tank/subtask dependencies. 
Section 3 summarizes ways of applying a coordination perspective in three different domains: (1) understanding the effects of information  technology on human organizations and markets, (2) designing cooperative work tools, and (3) designing distributed and parallel computer systems. In the final section, elements of a research agenda in this new area are briefly outlined. },
	keywords = {Coordination},
	doi = {10.1145/174666.174668},
	attachments = {https://crowston.syr.edu./sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/acmcs94.pdf},
	author = {Malone, Thomas W. and Kevin Crowston}
}
@proceedings {Malone:1990,
	title = {What is coordination theory and how can it help design cooperative work systems?},
	year = {1990},
	note = {Reprinted in D. Marca and G. Bock. (Eds.) Groupware: Software for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 100{\textendash}115). Washington: IEEE Press, 1992.},
	pages = {357{\textendash}370},
	publisher = {ACM Press},
	address = {Los Angeles, CA},
	keywords = {Coordination},
	doi = {10.1145/99332.99367},
	attachments = {https://crowston.syr.edu./sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/10.1.1.92.4445.pdf},
	author = {Malone, Thomas W. and Kevin Crowston},
	editor = {Tatar, Deborah}
}
@proceedings {Mackay:1989,
	title = {How do experienced Information Lens users use rules?},
	year = {1989},
	note = {Proceedings Reprinted as ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, Volume 20, Issue SI.},
	pages = {211{\textendash}216},
	address = {Austin, TX},
	abstract = {The Information Lens provides electronic mail users with the ability to write rules that automatically sort, select, and filter their messages. This paper describes preliminary results from an eighteen-month investigation of the use of this system at a corporate test site. We report the
experiences of 13 voluntary users who have each had at least three months experience with the most recent version of the system. We found that:
1. People without significant computer experience are able to create and use rules effectively.
2. Useful rules can be created based on the fields present in all messages (e.g., searching for distribution lists or one{\textquoteright}s own name in the address fields or for character strings in the subject field), even without any special message templates.
3. People use rules both to prioritize messages before reading them and to sort messages into folders for storage after reading them.
4. People use delete rules primarily to filter out messages from low-priority distribution lists, not to delete personal messages to themselves.},
	keywords = {Computer-Mediated Communication},
	doi = {10.1145/67449.67491},
	attachments = {https://crowston.syr.edu./sites/crowston.syr.edu/files/sigchi89.pdf},
	author = {Mackay, Wendy E. and Malone, Thomas W. and Kevin Crowston and Rao, Ramana and Rosenblitt, David and Card, Stuart K.},
	editor = {Bice, Ken and Lewis, Clayton}
}
