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Societies depend on interconnected infrastructures that are becoming more complex over the years. Multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills are essential to develop modern infrastructures, requiring close collaboration of various infrastructure owners. To effectively manage and improve inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) in infrastructure construction projects, collaboration status should be assessed continually. This study identifies the assessment criteria, forming the foundation of a tool for assessing the status of IOC in interconnected infrastructure projects.

A systematic literature study and in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners in interconnected infrastructure construction projects in the Netherlands are performed to identify the criteria for assessing the status of IOC in infrastructure construction projects, based on which an assessment tool is developed.

The identified assessment criteria through the literature and the practitioner’s perspectives results in the designing and development of a collaboration assessment tool. The assessment tool consists of 12 criteria and 36 sub-criteria from three different categories of collaborative capacity: individual, relational, and organizational.

The assessment tool enables practitioners to monitor the status of IOC between infrastructure owners and assists them in making informed decisions to enhance collaboration. The assessment tool provides the opportunity to assess and analyze the status of collaboration based on three categories (i.e., individual, relational, and organizational).

The purpose is to identify and explore barriers to overcome for developing collaborative innovation between a global service supplier and two of its industrial customers in Sweden.

The research had an action-based research approach in which the researchers were interacting and collaborating with the practitioners in the companies. The empirical part includes primary data from multiple interviews, and two workshops with dialogues with participants from the involved companies. The use of complementary data collection methods gave rich input to understanding the context for collaborative innovation, and to uncovering barriers, to develop solutions for collaborative innovation. The empirical barriers were analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The analysis generated four broad themes of barriers which were discussed and led to conclusions and theoretical and practical implications on: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation in supply chains.

The thematic analysis generated four broad themes: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation. These themes where analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The industrial context, the understanding of innovation and its management created barriers.

The unique access to the service supplier and its two independent industrial customers adds a rich contextual framing to the process of identifying and exploring the barriers to collaborative innovation. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of an industrial business context, the business logic in terms of business models and for the understanding and management of collaborative innovation.

The research problem in this study is how a client (as a project owner) should organise early stakeholder involvement and integration in the front-end phase of a project. This study aims to create normative managerial statements as propositions from the client's perspective and to combine them into a set of activities enabling efficient organisation in the front-end phase of a hospital construction project.

Action design research (ADR) was carried out in a large hospital construction project where the first author acted as an “involved researcher” and the other authors acted as “outside researchers”.

The authors created seven normative managerial propositions that were verified by the case project stakeholders and developed a managerial framework describing the client's essential stakeholder involvement and integration activities in the front-end phase of a hospital construction project based on these propositions. The authors have also depicted the subphases of the front-end phase: value definition phase in the client permanent organisation, value proposition phase in the client Programme Management Office (PMO) and finally development phase in the alliance organisation ending on the final investment decision.

The collaborative contract delivery model enables the early involvement and integration of stakeholders. It has been somewhat surprising to note the extent to which collaborative contracts change the client role in the project front-end. The results offer practical activities for how clients can manage front-end activities in collaborative contracts.

The case project offered a platform to analyse how the collaborative contract delivery model changes the emphasis of activities in the front-end of a project. One of the key benefits of collaborative contracts is that development, design and delivery occur partially in parallel, thereby enabling contributions from production to be included in the design and development. The benefit of having a real-life case under study provides the possibility to triangulate and analyse rich data, however limited by the qualitative case method.

There is a significant pressure on consulting businesses to produce innovative solutions and to assist their clients in producing innovative solutions for their organizational problems as well. In addition to that challenging need to innovate for survival and competition, as other contemporary firms, consultancies must face the global changes brought by the outbreak of the coronavirus infection since 2019. This qualitative pilot study aimed at exploring the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the approaches to innovation in the consulting industry.

Triggered from the literature gap on approaches to innovation in consultancies during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, a grounded theory approach was used to generate a theoretical explanation of how the COVID-19 is affecting the strategies and approaches of businesses in harnessing innovation opportunities from the perspectives of four professionals from an information technology (IT) consultancy in the USA.

The findings of this pilot study showed that organizational leaders' increased responsiveness, a Job-To-Be-Done strategy, organizational support and team adaption are the keys to harvesting dynamic capabilities for better competition, even during global environmental changes.

This implies that managers remain the main actors in a firm's efforts to harvest dynamic capabilities. Innovation strategists, business leaders and policymakers can confidently work together to implement novel and flexible work settings that integrate both social and economic advancements.

Theoretical implications support the sustainable innovation strategy concepts and the Job-To-Be-Done theory. Finally, the substantive theory from this pilot study lays the ground for future research on approaches to innovation in the consulting industry.

Relational contracting is increasingly being applied to complex and uncertain construction projects. However, it has proved hard to achieve stable performance and industry-level learning in this field. This paper employs an institutional perspective to analyze how legitimacy for relational contracting has been produced and challenged in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, including implications for dissemination and learning.

A collaborative case study design is used, where longitudinal accounts of the developments in relational contracting over more than 25 years in four Nordic countries were developed by scholars based in each country. The descriptions are underpinned by literature sources from research, practice and policy.

The countries share similar problem perceptions that have triggered the de-institutionalization of traditional contracting practices. Models and policies developed elsewhere are important sources of knowledge and legitimacy. Most countries have seen pendulum movements, where dissemination of relational contracting is followed by backlashes when projects fail to meet projected outcomes. Before long, however, relational contracting tends to re-emerge under new labels and in slightly new forms. Such a proliferation of concepts presents further obstacles to learning. Successful institutionalization is found to rely on realistic goals in combination with broad competence development at the organizational and industry levels.

In seeking inspiration from other countries, policymakers should go beyond contract models to also consider strategies to manage industry-level learning.

The paper provides a unique longitudinal cross-country perspective on the field of relational contracting. As such, it contributes to the small stream of literature on long-term institutional change in the construction sector.

This article aims to examine how users' involvement in value co-creation influences the development and orchestration of well-being ecosystems to help tackle complex societal challenges. This research contributes to the public management literature and answers recent calls to investigate novel public service governances by discussing users' involvement and value co-creation for novel well-being solutions.

The authors empirically explore this phenomenon through a case study of a complex ecosystem addressing increased well-being, focussing on the formative evaluation stage of a longitudinal evaluation of Sweden's first support centre for people affected by cancer. Following an abductive reasoning and action research approach, the authors critically discuss the potential of user involvement for the development of well-being ecosystems and outline preconditions for the success of such approaches.

The empirical results indicate that resource reconfiguration of multi-actor collaborations provides a platform for value co-creation, innovative health services and availability of resources. Common themes include the need for multi-actor collaborations to reconfigure heterogeneous resources; actors' adaptive change capabilities; the role of governance mechanisms to align the diverse well-being ecosystem components, and the engagement of essential actors.

Although using a longitudinal case study approach has revealed stimulating insights, additional data collection, multiple cases and quantitative studies are prompted. Also, the authors focus on one country but the characteristics of users' involvement for value co-creation in innovative well-being ecosystems might vary between countries.

The findings of this study demonstrate the value of cancer-affected individuals, with “lived experiences”, acting as sources for social innovation, and drivers of well-being ecosystem development. The findings also suggest that participating actors in the ecosystem should utilise wider knowledge and experience to tackle complex societal challenges associated with well-being.

Policymakers should encourage the formation of well-being ecosystems with diverse actors and resources that can help patients navigate health challenges. The findings especially show the potential of starting from the user's needs and life situation when the ambition is to integrate and innovate in fragmented systems.

The proposed model proposes that having a user-led focus on innovating new solutions can play an important role in the development of well-being ecosystems.

The study seeks to understand the possible opportunities that Industry 5.0 might offer for various aspects of inclusive sustainability. The study aims to discuss existing perspectives on the classification of Industry 5.0 technologies and their underlying role in materializing the sustainability values of this agenda.

The study systematically reviewed Industry 5.0 literature based on the PRISMA protocol. The study further employed a detailed content-centric review of eligible documents and conducted evidence mapping to fulfill the research objectives.

The advancement of Industry 5.0 is currently underway, with noteworthy initial contributions enriching its knowledge base. Although a unanimous definition remains lacking, diverse viewpoints emerge concerning the recognition of fundamental technologies and the potential for yielding sustainable outcomes. The expected contribution of Industry 5.0 to sustainability varies significantly depending on the context and the nature of underlying technologies.

Industry 5.0 holds the potential for advancing sustainability at both the firm and supply chain levels. It is envisioned to contribute proportionately to the three sustainability dimensions. However, the current discourse primarily dwells in theoretical and conceptual domains, lacking empirical exploration of its practical implications.

This study comprehensively explores diverse perspectives on Industry 5.0 technologies and their potential contributions to economic, environmental and social sustainability. Despite its promise, the practical evidence supporting the effectiveness of Industry 5.0 remains limited. Certain conditions are necessary to realize the benefits of Industry 5.0 fully, yet the mechanisms behind these conditions require further investigation. In this regard, the study suggests several potential areas for future research.

Drawing on information processing theory, the linkage between buffering and bridging and the ability on the part of procurement to resolve demand–supply imbalances is investigated, as well as contexts in which these strategies may be particularly useful or detrimental. Buffering may be achieved through demand change or redundancy, while bridging may be achieved by the means of collaboration or monitoring.

This study employs a hierarchical regression analysis of a survey of 150 Finnish and Swedish procurement and sales and operations planning professionals, each responding from the perspective of their own area of supply responsibility.

Both the demand change and redundancy varieties of buffering are associated with procurement's ability to resolve demand–supply imbalances without delivery disruptions, but not with cost-efficient resolution. Bridging is associated with the cost-efficient resolution of imbalances: while collaboration offers benefits, monitoring seems to make things worse. Dynamism diminishes, while the co-management of procurement in S&OP improves procurement's ability to resolve demand–supply imbalances. The most potent strategy for tackling problematic contexts appears to be buffering via demand change.

The results highlight the importance of procurement in the S&OP process and suggest tactical measures that can be taken to resolve and reduce the effects of supply and demand imbalances.

The results contribute to the procurement and S&OP literature by increasing knowledge regarding the role and integration of procurement to the crucial process of balancing demand and supply operations.

Eco-innovation is emerging as one of the most important constructs that improve environmental sustainability of firms. However, it has been shown that companies alone cannot adequately develop eco-innovation activities, which is why they require the implementation of external collaboration activities with intermediaries, suppliers and stakeholders to achieve a higher level of eco-innovation activities and improve business performance of manufacturing firms. Therefore, this research fills this gap by exploring the importance of the relationship between collaboration and eco-innovation.

The research is conducted through an extensive literature review with a research model consisting of 5 measurement scales, 24 items and 4 hypotheses. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 460 firms in Mexico, analyzing the data set through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models.

The results obtained from this study suggest that collaboration has significant positive effects both on the eco-innovation of products, processes and management, as well as on the business performance of companies in the automotive industry.

The findings of this study have important implications both for the public administration (e.g. development of policies to support companies and financing programs) and for the managers of companies in the automotive industry (e.g. training program for employees and collaboration with other firms).

This paper fills a research gap by expanding the limited body of knowledge that relates collaboration eco-innovation and business performance, which is why this research aims to fill this existing gap in the literature and explore the relationship between collaboration, eco-innovation and business performance.

The construction industry shows an increased interest in how to manage logistics within construction projects. Often construction logistics is outsourced to a logistics service provider (LSP). However, construction logistics is normally approached either as a strategic decision or as an operational issue and rarely as a tactical concern. The purpose of this study is to explore how to organize the logistics outsourcing decision at strategic, tactical and operational levels.

This study is performed as a single-case study within a construction corporation, containing (amongst others) a building contractor (BC) and a construction equipment rental company (CERC) offering logistics services.

The study shows that to procure construction logistics service successfully, BCs need logistics capabilities at strategic and tactical levels to maintain an alignment between the use of logistics services and operational characteristics. Simultaneously, CERC’s need to design their service offerings to correspond to the needs of the BC.

This study builds on a single-case study of a Swedish construction corporation. Further research is needed to better understand current logistics outsourcing and development practices and how these can be improved to foster better logistics management at the project level.

BCs find suggestions of different logistics organization structures and suitable outsourcing arrangements. CERCs and LSPs can use the findings to understand their customers’ needs and adapt service offerings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first studies of how two companies within a corporation can work together to develop construction logistics service offerings.