Are Design Networks shaped by their own outcomes? Coordination processes between actors and artefacts

This paper sets the basis for a research project focused on collaborative social network’s genesis and dynamics. It introduces a research framework for the empirical investigation of a network focused on the design of a shared artefact, the so-called "Web services Architecture". Our hypothesis is that network artefact’s characteristics, seen as the final outcome of a collaborative process, influence and drive the genesis and the structure of the social network that is designing it. We embraced this view in order to avoid a limitation of the traditional perspectives that consider the network structure as exogenous and stable. We consider the reciprocal influence between the artefact and the social network structure, with a phase in which the desired artefact may shape the network genesis and a phase in which the emergent network’s structure may drive the artefact design.