Fellow travelers: an ethnographic study of the dynamics of inter-organizational collaboration

The research is a 13-months ethnographic field work on the early operations of a Multi-party alliance active in the global field of indoor positioning. The study aims to understand and investigate empirically the challenges that at the individual and group level influence the organizing principle guiding the alliance operations and evolution. Its contribution rests on the dynamics affecting ecosystems of innovation and collaborative spaces of value co-creation in inter-organizational projects.

Safeguarding against new privacy threats in inter-enterprise collaboration environments

Inter-enterprise collaboration has become essential for the success of enterprises. As competition increasingly takes place between supply chains and networks of enterprises, there is a strategic business need to participate in multiple collaborations simultaneously. Collaborations based on an open market of autonomous actors set special requirements for computing facilities supporting the setup and management of these business networks of enterprises. Currently, the safeguards against privacy threats in collaborations crossing organizational borders are both insufficient and incompatible to the open market. A broader understanding is needed of the architecture of defense structures, and privacy threats must be detected not only on the level of a private person or enterprise, but on the community and ecosystem levels as well. Control measures must be automated wherever possible in order to keep the cost and effort of collaboration management reasonable. This article contributes to the understanding of the modern inter-enterprise collaboration environment and privacy threats in it, and presents the automated control measures required to ensure that actors in inter-enterprise collaborations behave correctly to preserve privacy.

Social Capital in Inter-Organizational Partnership Research

This chapter focuses on the use of social capital as a construct to examine and explain the formation and operation of inter-organizational partnerships. In particular it shows how social capital contributes to the sustainability of a public sector partnership. In this research context social capital is defined as the networks, trust, norms and values that enable individuals and organizations to achieve mutual goals through collaboration. This definition draws upon the author’s empirical research on partnerships and partnership working in the field of post-compulsory education and her practical experience of establishing, managing and leading international partnerships for teaching and research in teacher education. The emphasis is on the practical application of social capital to qualitative data and on identifying sources of evidence, including research literature from different disciplines in the social sciences to interpret and theorize primary data. The first section of the chapter considers the complexities of defining social capital in the context of rival theoretical and political perspectives and leads to a discussion of the dimensions of social capital that are found in effective and sustained partnerships.

The nature and prevalence of inter-organizational project ventures : evidence from a large scale field study in the Netherlands 2006-2009

There has recently been noted a rapid increase in research attention to projects that involve outside partners. Our knowledge of such inter-organizational projects, however, is limited. This paper reports large scale data from a repeated trend survey amongst 2000 SMEs in 2006 and 2009 that focused on inter-organizational project ventures. Our major findings indicate that the overall prevalence of inter-organizational project ventures remained significant and stable over time, even despite the economic crisis. Moreover, we find that these ventures predominantly solve repetitive rather than unique tasks and are embedded in prior relations between the partnering organizations. These findings provide empirical support for the recent claims that project management should pay more attention to inter-organizational forms of project organization, and suggest that the archetypical view of projects as being unique in every respect should be reconsidered. Both have important implications for project management, especially in the area of project-based learning.

Alternative modes of entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation : the case on inter-organizational project

While entrepreneurship research has taken firm formation to be the predominant mode of opportunity exploitation, entrepreneurship can take place through many other types of organizational arrangements. In the present article, we consider one such alternative arrangement, namely the formation of inter-organizational projects (IOPs). We propose a multi-level contingency model that suggests that uncertainty both at the level of the firm and at the level of the environment makes the exploitation of opportunities through IOPs more likely. The model is tested by telephone survey data collected amongst a panel of 1725 SMEs and longitudinal industry data. Our findings provide strong support for the industry-level part of the model, but interestingly, only partial support for the firm level part of the model. This indicates that the effects of uncertainty need to be dissected into different levels of analysis to understand the conditions under which alternative modes of opportunity exploitation can be a prominent entrepreneurial alternative to new firm formation.

How emergent roles and structures create trust In hastily formed inter-organizational teams

Many activities, from disaster response to project management, require cooperation among people from multiple organizations who initially lack interpersonal relationships and trust. Upon entering inter-organizational settings, pre-existing identities and expectations, along with emergent social roles and structures, may all influence trust between colleagues. To sort out these effects, we collected time-lagged data from three cohorts of military MBA students, representing 2,224 directed dyads, shortly after they entered graduate school. Dyads that shared organizational identity, boundary-spanning roles, and similar network positions (structural equivalence) were likely to have stronger professional ties and greater trust.

Managing Project Business Development: an Inter-Organizational and Intra-Organizational Perspective (summary section only)

The driving force behind this study is the gap between the reality of the firms engaged in project business and the available studies covering project management and business process development. Previous studies show that project-based organizations were ‘immature’ in terms of the project-management ‘maturity model’, as few firms were found to be optimizing processes. Even within those, very little attention was paid to combine inter-organizational and intra-organizational perspectives. In this study an effort is made to elaborate some thoughts and views on project management, which interrelate firms’ external and internal activities. In line with the integration, the dissertation uses an approach to the management of project-business interdependencies in the networks of actors, activities and resources. Firstly, the study develops an understanding for inter-organizational perspectives by exploring the complementarities of process activities in the basic development of project business. It presents a framework that is elaborated on the basis of the reciprocal interactions of activities within and outside the organization—thus providing a coherent basis for continuous business-process improvement. In addition, the study presents new tools that can be used to develop project-business processes in each of its functional areas. The research demonstrates how project-business activities can be optimized using the right resources at the right time with the right actors and the right actions. The selected five articles included in this dissertation explain the basic framework for the development of project business. Each paper covers various aspects of inter-organizational and intra-organizational perspectives for project management. The study develops a valuable and procedural model for business-process improvement using the Delphi method that can be used not only in academia but also as a guide for practitioners that takes them through a series of well-defined steps when making informed, consistent and efficient changes to their business processes.

Beyond words: Testing alignment among inter-organizational performance measures

Purpose: This paper seeks to measure in a quantitative way the degree of alignment among a set of performance measures between two organizations. Design/methodology/approach: This paper extends Venkatraman's test of coalignment to assess the alignment of a set of performance measures governing a contractual inter-organizational relationship. The authors applied the test and present coefficients of misalignment across three sets of measures: those used by a service provider involved in the research, those used by customers contracting the services, and those documented in 11 contracts studied. Findings: Results confirmed a high degree of alignment between target and actual operational performance in the contracts. The alignment of customers' financial objectives and contracts' operational metrics was low. Calculations show poor alignment between the objectives of the provider and the contribution received from the contracts. Research limitations/implications: Some limitations of the conclusions include the small sample of contracts used in the calculations. Further research should include not only actual contracts, but also failed ones. Practical implications: It is possible that misaligned goals, represented in misaligned performance measures, lead to tensions in intra-firm relationships. If these tensions are not addressed properly the relationship could be unstable or terminated prematurely. This method of measuring alignment could detect early potential dangers in intra-firm relationships. Originality/value: This paper extends Venkatraman's test of coalignment to assess the alignment of a set of performance measures governing a contractual inter-organizational relationship. Management researchers and business professionals may use this methodology when exploring degrees of alignment of performance measures in intra-functional and inter-firm relationships. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Représentation et identité collective dans la collaboration interorganisationnelle : le cas de la Table québécoise de la sécurité routière

Les collaborations interorganisationnelles apparaissent de plus en plus incontournables pour s’attaquer concrètement, et avec quelques chances de résultats, à nos problèmes et défis collectifs les plus importants, que ce soit dans les domaines de l’environnement, de la santé ou de la sécurité publique. Ces initiatives de gouvernance collaborative surpassent chacune des organisations individuelles pour décider et intervenir collectivement. Dans cette visée, cette recherche contribue à mieux comprendre le processus de concertation et les interactions entre les acteurs et les organisations qui participent à des initiatives de collaboration interorganisationnelle où de nombreuses parties prenantes sont interpellées. Plus précisément, cette étude porte sur la problématique des réseaux d’acteurs et de la gouvernance en sécurité routière au Québec. Nous nous sommes penchés sur l’expérience de la Table québécoise de la sécurité routière (TQSR) afin de comprendre les enjeux actuels de représentation et de concertation en matière d’action gouvernementale. Cette recherche examine le rôle de l’identité des acteurs et de leurs interactions dans les processus de construction de consensus et de prise de décision, de même que les divers enjeux de communication inhérents à ce genre d’exercice collectif. Nous démontrons également qu’un facteur de succès d’une collaboration interorganisationnelle repose sur la capacité des acteurs à construire une identité collective malgré leurs intérêts divergents et parfois opposés. Cette thèse améliore donc notre compréhension des mécanismes et des processus à la base des collaborations interorganisationnelles comme pratique de gouvernance collaborative, un mode de gestion de plus en plus utilisé dans l’administration de nos sociétés contemporaines. Cette thèse contribue également à montrer la manière dont les organisations se construisent et se maintiennent localement par l’entremise de la communication et de ses modalités.

La gestión de redes inter-organizativas desde el sector público: el caso de los servicios sociales de Barcelona

In the scope of network management there is, on the one hand, a broad dispersion between the different research trends, and, on the other, lack of knowledge on the dynamics of the networks. More empirical and inter-disciplinary research on inter-organizational collaboration is still needed. This article, starting from Kickert, Klijn and Koppenjan’s fields of the policy network (1997), and Huxham’s Collaborative Advantage Theory (2000), analyzes the case of Barcelona’s City Council’s social services network’s home delivery”.

Technology sourcing, knowledge management and governance in international inter-organizational innovation networks

This conceptual paper aims to improve our understanding of how internationalised firms use outsourcing and offshoring strategies to manage knowledge and information through the life-cycle of integrated product-service solutions. More precisely, we identify the appropriate theoretical framework for this analysis and investigate through in-depth case studies how UK engineering firms organise, coordinate, and incentivise work that is executed in globally distributed teams. Our research focuses on their UK and India offices to study the organisation and governance of distributed teams. The research has several theoretical dimensions - organization; geography; time and knowledge - that it addresses as boundary challenges.