Making sense of collaboration at work: A thematic discourse analysis of workers’ accounts of collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration is characterised as a critical tool for modern organisations and is much theorised in Organisational Psychology. Despite the theoretical understanding, there is little examination of how people make sense of collaboration in workplaces. This study investigates the concept of collaboration in the workplace using thematic discourse analysis of 16 interviews with people engaged in professional services work. Interviews focused on workers’ understanding and experiences of collaboration. Thematic discourse analysis of interview materials identified a broad in-principle/in-practice contrast, where descriptions of the nature of collaboration did not align to descriptions of how collaboration occurred in practice. The in-principle/in-practice contrast was used as an organising principle for the thematic analysis, distinguishing themes that related to the nature of collaboration from those that reflected the experience of collaboration in practice. Six themes were identified – three related to descriptions of the nature of collaboration: ‘Bringing different workers together’, ‘Addressing a specific and appropriate purpose’, and ‘A shared positive experience; and three related to collaboration in practice: ‘Collaboration as business-as-usual’, ‘Collaboration as rhetoric’ and ‘Collaboration as hampered by systematic barriers’. The findings are discussed in relation to existing theories of collaboration and the implications for collaboration in the workplace. Keywords: Collaboration, thematic analysis, organisations, qualitative analysis, discourse