Regulating Nimbus and Focus: Organizing Copresence for Creative Collaboration

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Creative collaboration often takes place in collaborative spaces that increasingly use virtual modes of interaction. To better understand the organizational conditions and organizing practices that facilitate collaboration in such spaces, we compare ethnographies of an online platform for collaborative songwriting and a physical songwriting camp, with each of these spatial settings coming with distinct advantages and disadvantages for creative collaboration. We identify the emergence of copresence – an active mutual orientation toward one another – as a common organizational condition for collaboration. Copresence was fostered by practices of regulating nimbus (i.e. making people more or less visible) and focus (i.e. directing attention to others) that not only stimulated moments of converging copresence marked by collaborative problem-solving, but also enabled diverging copresence marked by undirected attention and more serendipitous interactions. Our comparison reveals the challenges of negotiating between converging and diverging copresence to counteract tendencies towards excessive, or conversely, insufficient nimbus and focus of the participants, both of which are barriers to copresence. These insights contribute to ongoing debates about the organization of online and offline collaborative spaces by shifting the focus away from co-location towards copresence, highlighting the oscillation between converging and diverging copresence as important for a collaborative atmosphere and identifying practices by which copresence can be organized in different spatial settings.

Original languageEnglish
JournalOrganization Studies
Volume44
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)545-568
Number of pages24
ISSN0170-8406
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 04.2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Heterogenitätssensible Hochschullehre
  2. The implications of knowledge hiding at work for recovery after work: A diary study
  3. Divert when it does not hurt
  4. Conditions of One-Way and Two-Way Approaches in Strategic Start-Up Communication
  5. Experimental investigation of crack propagation mechanism in refill friction stir spot joints of AA6082-T6
  6. The Structure and Behavioural Effects of Revealed Social Identity Preferences
  7. Insight into layer formation during friction surfacing
  8. The importance of understanding the multiple dimensions of power in stakeholder participation for effective biodiversity conservation
  9. Influence of measurement errors on networks
  10. Introduction to the basics of life cycle sustainability assessment focusing on the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative LCSA framework
  11. No-Code Platforms in Startups: Explaining Decisions for Adoption and Abandonment
  12. Later Life Workplace Index: Validation of an English Version
  13. Fast response of groundwater to heavy rainfall
  14. Control of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors for Track Applications
  15. Fatigue crack propagation in AA5083 structures additively manufactured via multi-layer friction surfacing
  16. Kultur als Materialität oder Material – Diskurstheorie oder Diskursanalyse?
  17. Schulleistung in Diskussion
  18. Recognizing Guarantees and Assurances of Non-Repetition
  19. Die Bedeutung der Zeit
  20. University-linked programmes for sustainable entrepreneurship and regional development
  21. Mindsets and reflection in teacher education for inclusive language classrooms
  22. The influence of balanced and imbalanced resource supply on biodiversity-functioning relationship across ecosystems
  23. Nutzen – Nutzung - Nutzer_innen
  24. Uncertainty, Pluralism, and the Knowledge-based Theory of the Firm
  25. Lexical markers of common grounds
  26. Vorstellungen über null und Null
  27. Identitäten im Netz