Collaborative Work: Characteristics And Examples Of This Form Of Production
There are many ways to carry out a task, but it is clear that this action will be easier if it is done in a group.
But it is not enough for there to be several people for this coordination to automatically occur, but a series of premises must be met. Let’s discover what the foundations of collaborative work are and see some related examples.
Collaborative work is a way of producing elements or services whose key is the formation of a community of people who coordinate in carrying out the different tasks necessary to achieve, together, the common result that the group seeks This way of working is also known as peer production. In some places it is also called crowdsourcing.
In order to carry out collaborative work, it is necessary to previously establish a sociotechnical system by which all individuals can connect their activities to achieve the necessary level of cooperation Of course, today, the factor that has made this form of activity possible is none other than the Internet. Thanks to the network of networks, people in geographically very separate places can collaborate with each other without any difficulty.
Another characteristic of collaborative work is that There is no strict formality between the collaborators and the resulting project, but rather it is a kind of tacit agreement between all of them. Therefore, the final result is not authored by anyone specifically, but rather by all those who have contributed their efforts, together, as a true community of equals.
This methodology is reminiscent of organisms that work as a kind of hive mind, with bees and ants being the clearest examples. In the societies of these animals there is no individual, only the community of all of them. Therefore, all the tasks provided are part of a common objective, and are equally important for the purposes and needs of the group.
Etymologically, the terms of collaborative work were proposed by the professor of Business Law at Harvard University, Yochai Benkler. To establish the definition of this new concept, Benkler stated that two fundamental pillars had to be taken into account.
One would be the common good, which is what all the individuals in the group who are collaborating on the task seek. The other would be altruism, since there is no selfish purpose in the actions of anyone, but rather it is done for everyone. Hence there is no individual authorship in this type of projects since no one is more important than another, regardless of whether some people have dedicated more time or effort than others, since it is understood that each individual contributes what they can or want, without this posing a problem.
Differences with teamwork
There are several characteristics that make collaborative work and teamwork similar, but they are very different concepts. For a start, The team is made up of a group defined for that task , while in collaboration, a series of subjects decide to pool their knowledge and effort. The team also has a clear leader, a figure who does not need collaborative work, since everyone has the same status, without there being a hierarchy between them.
Responsibility for tasks in the team is shared among all members; In a collaboration, on the contrary, each subject is responsible for the task they are doing at that moment
Another concept that also varies is the objective sought, since in the team this is reflected in an optimized result, and in collaborative work it is a production of new knowledge thanks to the union of the contributions of each one.
The last point in which both styles would differ would be in the existence of coordinator , the person in charge of assigning and connecting the tasks of each team member. This position does not fit the definition of collaborative work, and when an individual decides to join one of these projects, he or she already selects the part that he or she is going to develop at that moment, without the need for a person in charge to tell him or her.
It is interesting to observe the psychological processes that occur in collaborative work and that we do not necessarily find in teamwork. Knowledge is built among all project collaborators, and all tasks are regulated by all members, in what is known as metagroup activity. The motivation comes from the collaboration itself, since the individual wants to be part of the whole, through its participation.
The best example of collaborative work is the different free and open source software projects that hundreds of programmers from all over the planet have developed, working in a community even though they are thousands of kilometers from each other. Thanks to their altruistic work, today there are many programs that allow us all to perform a multitude of tasks, some of which are quite complex using a computer, without having to pay an economic cost for it.
Of course, this does not imply that everyone who wishes can make whatever contribution they consider, as a donation. Many times this money is reinvested to be able to cover the costs of servers and other elements necessary in software development, and in this way to continue offering new products to all citizens, in a totally free and altruistic way.
This type of work includes examples as well known as Wikipedia , a global encyclopedia in which anyone can become an editor and contribute their knowledge, always with properly referenced sources. It is currently one of the main sources of knowledge worldwide, and can even be downloaded to a pendrive (logically up to the point at which it is edited at that moment) to take it to places without an Internet connection and thus provide access to rich source of knowledge.
Linux is also very popular, as well as its different variants It is an open source operating system that breaks with the limitations of the classic Windows or macOS, and in which everyone can contribute their technique to continue improving it every day, thus offering a free alternative for anyone who decides to install it on their computer. .
exist programs also like LibreOffice or OpenOffice , which provide the same functionalities as the Office package from Microsoft, with the difference that the former have no cost and anyone can download and install them without the slightest problem. Being compatible with classic Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other programs, many users decide to opt for this alternative to create and open their documents.
Although collaborative work is an altruistic mechanism and therefore free, some organizations and companies have been able to take advantage of this type of activity to achieve other types of benefits. This is the case, for example, of NASA, the North American space agency. NASA asked anonymous citizens to collaborate on a very important, but at the same time long and tedious, task as was mapping a certain area of ​​the surface of craters on the red planet.
This proposal turned out to be an absolute success, since more than 85,000 people decided to provide their help, in very short time intervals, but together, they allowed NASA doctors to free up hundreds of hours of effort, which they were able to dedicate to other types of questions for their investigations. It is an example of the potential and strength that collaborative work can acquire, even with very small contributions from its different components.
IBM also achieved it , although from a different prism. In this case, what the technology giant decided was to make financial contributions to different free and open source software projects, like the examples we have seen previously. But what was his benefit from this practice? Was it a non-refundable investment? Nothing is further from reality. This practice, in the long run, returned good profits to IBM.
And the fact is that, by contributing to expanding the offer of free software and making the use of computers something simple and economically very accessible for the average citizen, many people would decide to purchase a computer for their home (and even work) use, and in Many of these cases would opt for one of the computers that IBM would offer them. A masterful plan, which demonstrates how everyone can benefit from collaborative work, even in the long term.
