The Impact of Project Ambiguity on the Forms of Cooperation Developed: The Merging of Two Hospital Care Units

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study how ambiguity, defined as the inability to clearly interpret a phenomenon or set of events, can affect the forms of cooperation developed within a team and make a project succeed. First, we tried to prove that the structuring of a project could generate ambiguity, called internal ambiguity, in a team. Second, we examined how the level of internal ambiguity felt by a project team could impact the shift from one form of cooperation to another. In order to test these two assumptions, we studied the merging of two medical units within a hospital, following a longitudinal analysis and an abductive approach. Our study led to the following results: internal ambiguity is a dynamic component of the project, but it depends on the team’s ability to make it intelligible to themselves, in particular, by breaking away from the guidelines of the parent organisation. The level of ambiguity of the project does not systematically constitute a factor of evolution of the form of cooperation because other factors, such as the ability of the team to distance itself from the parent organisation and the will to support or stabilise change, play a role in outlining a form of cooperation.