Working with Bounded Collaboration: A Qualitative Study on how Collaboration is Co-constructed around Collaborative Robots in Industry

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We investigate how collaboration is understood and configured in industrial workplaces with collaborative robots (cobots). Through a qualitative analysis of 115 case studies of companies using cobots and 14 semi-structured interviews with cobot manufacturers and users, we examine the usages of cobots in the manufacturing industry over the entire temporal spectrum from pre-introduction to completed implementation. By synthesizing diverse stakeholders' perspectives, we present a set of main findings; key roles of a few supportive production workers during the adoption of cobots; a fragmentation of work tasks and the resulting loss of job identity among workers; the disunified meaning of ``collaboration'' which is under constant development; and the collaborative space and the working rhythms between production workers and cobots. By reconsidering what collaboration means in the workplace with cobots, we propose the concept of \textit{bounded collaboration}, which means that the anticipated collaboration is manifested in a partial and limited manner within a collaborative technology. Finally, we provide practical suggestions for examining and supporting organizations and users in their adoption of cobots.