Enhancing co-design reliability by inter-organizational learning and loose coupling concepts

The aim of this article is to enable actors of different organizations to self-adapt, to self-organize and, in fine, to make functional and structural improvements together. We examine formal cooperative processes and informal cooperative practices which are expressions of tight and loose couplings within a complex socio-technical system. We use a systemic approach to understand close relations between loose couplings and their potential outcomes (in terms of organizational learning, cooperative effect and consequences). We propose a co-design reliability model which enables us to better understand intra- and inter-organizational learning during cooperative actions. Our findings confirm that loose couplings are crucial in complex organizations. Loose couplings enhance the reliability of co-design operations by enabling informal cooperative practices which often underlie the success of formal cooperative processes. Our future work will be to test the impact of enhancements to co-design operations through the application of newly developed material and process artefacts informed by the holistic understanding of cooperative actions.