“Matter Battles”: Cognitive Representations, Boundary Objects, and the Failure of Collaboration in Two Smart Cities

Abstract

In this paper, I present a longitudinal study of two smart city projects that brought together experts from diverse knowledge domains. Both projects structured collaboration around the development of boundary objects that could integrate actors’ expertise. In both projects, however, the objects sparked conflicts that exacerbated rather than attenuated differences. I develop a process model exploring how and why the development of boundary objects can manifest as divisive conflict that derails collaboration. In both projects, extreme novelty gave rise to concept ambiguity, a lack of shared ideas about what smart cities were, and process ambiguity, a lack of shared ideas about how smart cities should be developed. Ambiguity led actors from diverse domains to form divergent cognitive representations about smart cities. As they developed boundary objects, actors made decisions that violated some cognitive representations, while reifying others into material outcomes. Their efforts to develop the objects manifest as matter battles: high-stakes conflicts about material outcomes that, over time, set the stage for collaboration failure. In advancing these ideas, I provide an alternative perspective to the literature on collaboration across boundaries, which has primarily treated boundary objects as tools of integration rather than weapons of division.