Towards a theory of collaborative systems

Abstract

High failure rates often observed in practice suggest that collaborative relationships are still not well understood. In this paper we investigate the nature of these relationships from second-order Cybernetics and Social Systems Theory perspectives. Thereby we develop a novel theoretical framework, the Collaborative System, which explains: 1. the organizational function of collaboration; 2. the system's elementary operation; 3. its coupling mechanism; 4. the system autonomy and; 5. its 'value' creation mechanism. The proposed framework is innovative and has far reaching consequences for the understanding of different forms of collaborative relationships. Nevertheless, it raises a whole new set of questions yet to be explored. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.