Christina Mauléon

‘Getting’ it Together In Joint Directed Action Department of Technology Management and Economics Division of Quality Sciences Chalmers

by Christina Mauléon
University of Technology Göteborg, Sweden 2009

This thesis is focused upon investigating why activities in organizations are sometimes not aligned with an objective at hand, be it a project goal, safety, quality or other. When something goes wrong, where are the answers to be found? In the pursuit to examine these questions further, the aim of the thesis has been to investigate meaning making in action as this can increase an understanding of how actors may continuously align their actions, collective and/or individual, with a common goal – this process here being called Joint Directed Action (JDA). Studying the relational aspects in the twoway process of meaning making and action is claimed to be a neglected area in the research of how actors make sense of their realities. As such much could be gained in terms of understanding how actions unfold by focusing upon these issues.