A cognitive perspective on boundary-spanning IS design

This paper examines social cognition processes in IS design teams that span organizational boundaries. We question the relevance of goal-driven process models of IS design, exploring evidence for a model based on convergence between the problem-space and the solution-space. We then develop concepts of design "framing", based on three different perspectives on social cognition: socially-situated cognition, socially-shared cognition and distributed cognition. These three perspectives are often conflated in studies of IS framing. The separation permits insights that are not possible with a combined perspective.Findings are presented from a longitudinal, ethnographic study of boundary-spanning design in a midsize engineering company. These findings provide unique insights into the interior processes of boundary-spanning design. This study has significant implications for both the research and management of boundary-spanning design. We conclude that we may need a very different management process to the decompositional process employed for IT system design, that focuses on inquiry into organizational problems in a much more sustained way than is currently the case. We may also need to develop new models for assessing design progress, based not on the development of a "common vision" of the target system, but on the extent to which design group members share a common vision of organizational problems and the levels of trust that ensue.