COORDINATION NEGLECT: HOW LAYTHEORIES OF ORGANIZINGCOMPLICATE COORDINATION INORGANIZATIONSChip Heath and Nancy StaudenmayerABSTRACTWe argue that organizations often fail to organize effectively becauseindividuals have lay theories about organizing that lead tocoordinationneglect. We unpack the notion of coordination neglect and describespecific cognitive phenomena that underlie it. To solve the coordinationproblem, organizations must divide a task and then integrate thecomponents. Individuals display shortcomings that may create problemsat both stages. First, lay theories often focus more on division of laborthan on integration. We discuss evidence that individuals displaypartitionfocus(i.e. they focus on partitioning the task more than on integration)andcomponent focus(i.e. they tend to focus on single components of atightly interrelated set of capabilities, particularly by investing to createhighly specialized components). Second, when individuals attempt tointegrate components of a task, they often fail to use a key mechanism forintegration: ongoing communication. Individuals exhibitinadequatecommunicationbecause the ‘curse of knowledge’ makes it difficult to takethe perspective of another and communicate effectively. More importantly,because specialists find it especially difficult to communicate withspecialists in other areas, the general problem of communication willoften be compounded by insufficient translation.Research in Organizational Behaviour, Volume 22, pages 153–191.2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.ISBN: 0–7623–0641–6153