Coordination Mechanisms Illustrated with Project Management Using the Viable System Model (VSM) as Organizational Framework

Abstract

Besides authors of classic management who devoted ample works to comprehend coordination, comparatively hardly any other scholar has given a meticulous consideration to the coordination problem in organizations. Coordination is a necessity when two or more entities are interdependent and have to interact to achieve objectives, and essentially, it is the integration of independent endeavors to achieve collective objectives. Individuals and teams need to share their resources, skills, and knowledge to carry out complex tasks and achieve shared goals. In other words, individuals and teams are interdependent. A number of the mechanisms of coordination are profoundly entrenched on social routines and rituals, which complicates the effort to understand its nature. This article conceptualizes mechanism of coordination using the Viable System Model (VSM) as an organizational framework. The Viable System Model also provides a platform that allows to show the coordination mechanisms in the organizational context. While VSM includes coordination processes, it is not very specific, and coordination issues involve the whole organization and cannot be addressed only with feedback and control mechanisms. Consequently, an application that allows extending the usual context of the VSM is discussed. The amalgamation of these concepts is applied to the specific subject, the problem of coordination, having project management as an illustration. Although information and communication technologies (ICTs) have contributed in the praxis to reduce coordination problems, little effort has been undertaken to understand this phenomena. To bridge this knowledge gap, the present article addressed partially this necessity, using project management as an example.