The coordination strategies employed, taking into account the loosely coupled nature of the collaborative activity, subscribe to a more objective than subjective means of coordination. To capture the essence of the collaborative activity the analysis strategy first identified the goal, the actors involved and the activities in which they are engaged; the ordering of the activities; the resources allocated; and the level of synchronisation between the activities. The interdependence between entities shapes the coordination mechanisms, as shown in Table 5.2. The interdependence subscribes to standardisation by developing rules and routines or procedures to guide practice, aimed at coordinating work with minimal effort. By planning and scheduling work activities, the flow or serial interdependence is managed and designed to reduce the burden on the organisation, except where unexpected events cause revisions in the sequence of work activities.
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Finally, reciprocal interdependencies exist, as entities mutually influence the plans of each other, requiring some form of conjoint adjustment, which often demands significant effort, as entities must monitor one another and communicate work activities. Entities monitor and respond to other units through discretional communication and sporadic meetings. Details of dependencies and the coordination mechanisms subsequently employed are discussed in Appendix C.
It appears that several different communication scenarios are utilised, ranging through dynamic information updates, simple phone consultation to clarify uncertainties, synchronous meetings, and engagements for more complicated consultation and common problem solving. The means of interaction employs different communication channels, from text based to voice and visual, according to the complexity presented by the situation. This accentuates the need to facilitate real-time and asynchronous text, voice, and video communication.
Examples include the receipt of simple updates in a structured process, where users receive meta-information for instance, checklist based confirmation, as in the submission of a WSP, thus employing both voice and visual interaction between the parties involved, with shared access to data. Owing to the variety of processes employed, there is a need for highly flexible and adaptable workflow functionality, to support the inter- organisational workflows, containing structured and unstructured processes. This denotes the requisite for knowledge and information sharing support, to account for more dynamic and emergent aspects during process execution.
The composition of the integrated committees should be well represented and balanced. The governance arrangements and procedures for the committee should support efficient adaptations. Coordination mechanisms, for instance frameworks, should be clarified, as with established structures, to ensure, inter alia, coherence, prevent duplication of effort and ensure clear lines of accountability and decision-making.
In summary, it appears that efforts have been made to manage the dependencies encountered in the capacity building process. However, as the coordination problem still persists, a deeper, more comprehensive evaluation of the existing mechanism is warranted. Thus, the fit and support capacity of the mechanism comes to the fore. The argument is that perhaps the mechanism is not well supported, whether in terms of management, organisation or technology. For instance, an appropriate technology and a well-designed process may be in place, but an uninterested or unwilling participant can cause problems. Implicit dependencies not accounted for may exist latently, not explicit enough to be detected. To acquire a deeper sense of what the problem(s) may be, an assessment of coordination relative to its service support capacity was undertaken. Fundamentally, if coordination is considered as a service provided towards the successful
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execution of production acts, it should have a sound support system to enable its effective reinforcement of the production acts. For instance, the SDF, which fulfils a coordination role between the municipalities and the LGSETA, for instance, must have the necessary tools or resources at their disposal to perform work. The cooperation of line managers from the municipalities and a functional committee to help the SDF perform their duties effectively, is important. The dependency relationships of the coordination mechanisms themselves must be considered, as well as being perceived as separate from the primary work, to make it more visible so that it is not seen as background work which happens to be part of a primary task. This kind of attitude can result in, for instance, the over-extension of staff, which can indirectly affect the work system overall. The following section considers this view from a service capacity perspective, using the proposition in Chapter 4 to guide the analysis and to help visualise alternatives that may not have been obvious, ensuring that important issues are not ignored. For instance, although the environment may promise a culture of knowledge sharing, it is not necessarily true that an entity will be willing to cooperate, perhaps well within reason, given the level of autonomy present.
Certain questions like: Are there built-in delay points that exist in the process, such as unnecessary inspections, sign offs or hand off points, which may cause delays? or Are the existing technologies compatible enough to support the level of integration required? are implied in the next section.