Effective Information Infrastructures for Collaborative Organizing: The Case of Maasai Mara.

This study investigates how collaborative organizing is achieved in a natural-resource commons managed as an actor-oriented structure, focusing on Maasai livestock owners in Kenya. Through a framed field experiment using a computer-supported board game, the research compares two types of information infrastructures: one enabling learning about the ecosystem and another enabling shared situational awareness, which includes predictive knowledge of others’ actions. Findings indicate that shared situational awareness significantly improves teams’ ability to coordinate livestock allocation, leading to more sustainable usage and better preservation of grazing commons than ecosystem learning alone. The study highlights the importance of designing information infrastructures that address actors’ task and knowledge interdependencies to facilitate effective coordination in natural resource commons and similar nonhierarchical collaborative settings.