Communication across functions: a shared document is not enough
In Basel, the interfaces between pharmaceuticals, life sciences, Rhine logistics and international R&D bring communication into contact with different professional constraints. The management question is specific: how can a shared working document help teams address these differences rather than simply conceal them?
What the literature establishes
Paul R. Carlile (2002, Organization Science) examines how knowledge moves across functions in a field study of product development. His work demonstrates the value of “boundary objects”: artefacts, such as drawings or models, through which specialists can represent their knowledge and work through their interdependencies. Their usefulness lies not only in the information they contain, but also in their capacity to make differences visible and allow their consequences to be examined.
Transferring, translating or transforming
Paul R. Carlile (2004, Organization Science) proposes a framework distinguishing three processes: transferring, translating and transforming knowledge. A shared vocabulary may suffice when the problem concerns transfer; when meanings diverge, translation becomes necessary. When interests and practical consequences also differ, clarifying words is no longer enough: participants must be able to negotiate trade-offs and change their knowledge or practices.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that a single document template resolves communication difficulties across functions. These studies instead suggest that the artefact must make it possible to expose differences, including those that premature standardisation would erase. A field labelled “availability” might refer to technical readiness, quality release or readiness for shipment: this example illustrates a problem to investigate, not an established finding about Basel companies. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these studies cannot promise
The field study and conceptual framework do not constitute a controlled trial demonstrating that a document format reduces delays. Nor do they justify assuming that the same artefacts will suit R&D, quality and logistics. In practice, a better-designed document will remain insufficient if nobody has the authority to resolve the competing constraints it reveals.
A practical check in Basel
As part of SHR’s “Communication” programme, a Basel team could test a working sheet at an interface between international R&D, quality and logistics, separating definitions of sensitive terms, each function’s constraints and trade-offs still requiring a decision. Across two consecutive four-week periods, before and during the trial, the team would measure the proportion of cases requiring rework explicitly linked to a difference in definitions or constraints, retaining a dated record of the reason for each case and applying the same classification rule. This monitoring would provide a locally verifiable indicator without automatically attributing any improvement to the sheet: the mix and complexity of cases would also need to be examined. To go further: explore the Communication training in Basel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Communication in Basel
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