Latitude or Latent Control? How Occupational Embeddedness and Control Shape Emergent Coordination

Abstract

We examine how different occupational communities that are embedded in organizations exercise control processes to achieve emergent coordination as they create complex products together. We compare two types of organizations, equipment manufacturing and film production, and find that although occupational control was important for emergent coordination in both settings, this relationship varied according to two aspects of occupational embeddedness: organizational acknowledgment of occupational control and occupational interdependence. In the equipment manufacturing setting, occupational control was latent: the communities visibly conformed to organizational control processes while exercising occupational control behind the scenes to coordinate emergently. In the film setting, the organization granted the occupational community significant latitude over its tasks, which enabled members to coordinate emergently to solve problems the majority of the time. We propose that these two aspects of occupational embeddedness must be analyzed together with occupational control processes to explain how integration unfolds in knowledge-based settings in ways that organizational control processes are ill-equipped to manage.