Working Misunderstandings: An Ethnography of Project Collaboration in a Multinational Corporation in India (Labor and Organization)

Misunderstandings are often perceived as something to be avoided yet delineate an integrative part of everyday work. This book addresses the role that misunderstandings play in collaborative work and, above all, their effects on the organisational result. As exemplified by project collaboration across three offices of a multinational corporation in India, Frauke Mörike explores how misunderstandings shape the organisational system and why they prove not only necessary but even productive for organisational functioning. In doing so, she offers new ways to think about collaboration and establishes `misunderstanding' as a key factor of insight for the field of organisational research.

Frauke Mörike works as a research fellow at the Division of Ergonomics at the Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics of Technische Universität Berlin. She studied business information technology, social anthropology and psychology. Prior to her PhD in organizational anthropology at the Universität Heidelberg, she worked as an IT-professional in the industry for over a decade. Her research interests focus on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) in complex organisations, on assistive technologies in the workplace, and on the development of ethnographic methods for systems design and evaluation.