Collaborate and die! Exploring different understandings of organisational cooperation within Scotland's uncertain North Sea oil and gas industry

Abstract

This study ethnographically explores how collaboration is enacted within two differently structured sub-sea engineering organisations local to the oil & gas industry in Aberdeen, Scotland. Literature suggests organisational collaboration practices are largely dependent on trust, historical cooperation, establishing interpersonal relations and information sharing networks. Such notions are suggested as readily enacted in Aberdeen. However, following changes in industry landscape, we uncover a variety of additional factors pertaining to macro-level local industry climate, and meso-level organisational cultures that shape different perceptions, understandings, and enactments of collaboration. To grow current scholarly thinking, we define how such diverse understandings actively prevent organisational collaboration in the restrictively competitive climate of Aberdeen’s oil & gas industry. Implications for expanding understandings of collaboration in employment sectors facing substantial industry destabilisation and reformation are discussed.