Thanks a lot, Xavier!

Coordination Theory 1994 by Malone and Crowston (The interdisciplinary study of coordination) is interesting but not restricted to the information systems domain. Also for a simple base explanation I enjoy Malone (1988) "What is coordination theory?"

Okhuysen & Bechky (2009) are concerned with coordination within and between organisations. The do provide a good roundup of coordination literature. The problem is that coordination is mentioned in many other contexts such as generic teamwork literature, and in hospitals, military, emergency management, and lots of other literatures.

There is a roundup of coordination literature in my PhD thesis "A theory of coordination in agile software development" here...

http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10063/2505

Or if that's too boring to wade through, then try this article and its reference list.

Strode, D. E., Huff, S. L., Hope, B., & Link, S. (2012). Coordination in co-located agile software development projects. The Journal of Systems and Software, 85(6), 1222-1238.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.02.017 14th in the top 25 articles in 2012 for this journal: http://top25.sciencedirect.com/subject/computer-science/7/journal/journal-of-systems-and-software/01641212/archive/42/

I think that social network analysis would be an interesting way to study coordination. I used case studies myself. Best of luck with the research.

Thanks Diane! 

I also wanted to point to Malone and Crowston who also have an earlier conference paper on the topic:

Malone, T., Crowston, K.: What is coordination theory and how can it help design cooperative work systems?, CSCW '90 Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work , 1990

Although not focused on IS I always found the paper by Martinez and Jarillo helpful who differentiate basic coordination mechanisms:

Martinez, J.I. and Jarillo, J.C. (1989) The Evolution of Research on Coordination Mechanisms in Multinational Corporations, Journal of International Business Studies, 20, 3, 489-514.

I tried to apply the coordination perspective to IS in the area of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) in two rather explorative papers:

Abraham, R., Aier, S.: Architectural Coordination of Transformation: Implications from Game Theory, Rahman, H., Mesquita, A., Ramos, I., Pernici, B. (Eds.): Proceedings of the 7th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS 2012), Guimaraes, Portugal, 08.09.2012, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, LNBIP 129, 2012, pp. 82-96., http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33244-9_6

Abraham, R., Aier, S., Labusch, N., Winter, R.: Understanding Coordination Support of Enterprise Architecture Management – Empirical Analysis and Implications for Practice, Proceedings of the 19th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Chicago, IL, 15.08.2013, 2013, http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2013/EnterpriseSystems/GeneralPresentations/13/

Another paper in the area of EAM and coordination might be:

Espinosa, J.A., Armour, F. and Boh, W.F. (2011) The Role of Group Cognition in Enterprise Architecting, Proceedings of the 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Hope this is helpful.

In my understanding this issue has been research and discussed significantly within the areas of Systems Science and also Cybernetics. The issue hiding in many of the above references could be recognized by looking at what is the definition of *organization* and who defines? In other words - are *organizations* something which is *managed* and so to be treated as systemic objects or are they to be treated as the emergent result of facilitation of human interaction? Organizations as *emergent* properties of human activity systems - is this to be *coordinated* - by whom and for what purpose? Coordination of what exactly and by whom? Perhaps *coordination* is used as another word for *control*. And this would indeed be very different from *facilitation* and support for interaction between human actors.

Again, I thank you all for pointing out all the references. I have glanced through most of them, and they will certainly be of great help in my upcoming papers. I have one additional reflection though. I have tried to approach coordination from a humanistic perspective, basically grounded in the idea that whatever enables coordination must ultimately be grounded in our biological faculties for coordinating every-day actions (like reading a map for navigation, for example). 

I can't see much of this kind of thinking in the references; I mean coordination grounded in neurobiological research. Do you have any thoughts about this?

To Peter: in my understanding, an organization as we think of it today is but one possible form of human activity. This would comply with your view of organizations as *emergent* properties of human activity systems. Certainly, ancient mammoth hunters also needed to organize and coordinate their hunting, although it surely wasn't in the form of a corporate institution. In this sense, I do not think that organizations can be managed as a systemic object, mainly because people are involved. But every form of human activity requires coordination; otherwise we could not achieve anything. So, I think that coordination and control are different things, although they certainly may be related.

Just to add a completely different reference about our biological faculties, with extensive knowledge available:

Purves, D., Augustine, G., FitzPatrick, D., Hall, W., LaMantia, A.-S., McNamara, J., and Williams, M. (2004). NeuroScience. Sinauer Associates, Inc., 3rd edition.

I have no knowledge of any effort that ground coordination in these mechanisms. However, at certain point I find that biological body of knowledge is very rich and detailed which would deserve, at least, an exploratory effort.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305815882_Challenges_for_Atomix_System_Ltd_The_ITES_industry_in_Bangladesh

Article Challenges for Atomix System Ltd.: The ITES industry in Bangladesh