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The purpose of the current research seeks to understand what role supply chain (SC) collaboration plays in effectively managing customers of a firm. The research also investigates what role industry competitive intensity plays on SC collaboration formation.

The current research utilizes empirical survey data from professionals whose companies collaborate within a SC. Structural equations modeling is employed to assess the relationship of collaborative process competence on SC collaboration as well as the moderating impact of industry competitive intensity. A further boundary condition is examined with the partner interdependence SC collaboration relationship. Additionally the SC collaboration account management relationship is also investigated.

The paper provides empirical insights on how SC collaboration contributes to focal firm customer account management. Additionally, results suggest that collaborative process competence and its relationship with SC collaboration works differently in the presence of partner interdependence and the moderator of industry competitive intensity.

While the findings help to promote the generalizability of the new research, future research could seek to understand how firms could develop specific account management value propositions through SC collaboration in specific contexts.

The main contributions of the work include empirical analysis of a proposed theoretical model, a better understanding of the role collaborative process competence plays on SC collaboration formation and the discussion of customer account management as an outcome of SC collaboration.

This study explores the yet understudied productive aspects of uncertainty in the organization of creative collaboration and scrutinizes the practices that allow participants to fruitfully use it as a resource for the creation of novelty. In contrast to former conceptualizations of uncertainty as a quantity to be reduced through organizing, we apply a qualitative heuristic where uncertainty may shift different dimensions regarding participation (who?), procedure (how?) and content (what?). Based on eight creativity biographies in two creative fields, music production and pharmaceutical development, encompassing 36 semi-structured qualitative interviews, we identify embracing, ignoring, and fixing uncertainty as three distinct, yet interrelated practices to engage with uncertainty and thereby enable the emergence of valuable novelty in interaction. We further discover that the participants shift these practices between the different dimensions of uncertainty during the process of creative collaboration. Moreover, we argue that these shifts are necessary to maintain creativity in collaborative processes. Thereupon, we contribute insights to the so far enigmatic notion of organizing for collaborative creativity.

The purpose of this research is to reveal the specific features of the behaviour of market players in the collaboration of universities and business structures in the context of the digital economy's development. The traditional processes of collaboration of science and business are compared to the partnership under the conditions of open science.

This research is based on the totality of concepts and theories, founded on the theory of non-linearity of innovations, which allows defining them as a bilateral process that is open to other players. The list of market players, which participate in the process of collaboration, and the character of their interaction are considered from the position of the triple innovation spiral. The specifics of the collaboration of scientific and business structures are considered from the position of knowledge exchange, and the means of their organisation – from the position of the theory of university-industry collaboration. This methodology allows determining the key aspects of collaboration as a process of knowledge exchange and systematising the range of tools and channels of innovation transfer. The evolutionary game theory is used for the empirical evaluation of the specifics of the market players' behaviour in the process of collaboration. The context of the support of the digital economy is considered within the concepts of open innovations, organisation of scientific digital networks and Open Science. The methods used allow for the systemic reflection of the processes related to the behaviour of market players in the collaboration of universities and business structures and the determination of the key advantages that are achieved by them for the support of the digital economy.

It is determined that the digital economy is a result of innovative development and its trigger at the same time. Based on this, the behaviour of market players uses digital potential, on the one hand, and creates conditions for its support, on the other hand. Collaboration is one of the formal tools of the transfer of innovations, which partially covers the interaction with such tools and channels as intellectual property, academic spin-offs, research mobility and labour mobility. Based on the theory of the triple spiral of innovative development, it is stated that business structures and universities are the key elements of innovations. Their interaction is increased by the influence of the government policy and allows creating effective forms of collaboration, which facilitate the knowledge exchange within the system. At this, the business performs the functions of investing and provision of collaboration, universities implement the key processes connected to fundamental research, and government expands the innovative capabilities, stimulating the growth of competitiveness and resolution of social problems. The important problems of the market players' behaviour in the process of scientific and research collaboration are the organisation of the process of knowledge exchange, which is related to intellectual rights, and the difference between the goals of market players at the initial stages of cooperation. Resolution of the above problems allows raising the level of mutual trust and facilitates the processes of knowledge exchange.

We systematise the tools and channels of collaboration of universities and business structures, substantiate the principles and terms of the market players' behaviour in the process of knowledge exchange, and determine the role of each player. In the context of modern tendencies of the digital economy's development, we determine the specifics of the market players' behaviour in the context of using digital technologies and providing a high level of openness of the scientific and production partnership.

This paper proposes an integrative framework for supply chain collaboration which is based on the reciprocal approach.

A reciprocal approach is adopted to capture the interaction phenomenon of different features of collaboration in attaining overall supply chain performance.

A collaborative supply chain framework is composed of five connecting features of collaboration, namely collaborative performance system, information sharing, decision synchronization, incentive alignment, and integrated supply chain processes.

Further research could be carried out to capitalize the framework for diagnosing and improving supply chain collaboration.

The proposed framework enables the chain members to scrutinize key features of supply chain collaboration before and during collaborative initiatives.

Previous research on supply chain collaboration mainly assume the unilateral phenomenon of collaboration that focuses on a single feature such as information sharing or co‐managed inventory. The proposed framework for the first time explicitly addresses the interaction of different connecting features of collaboration.

The literature has shown great interest in open innovation (OI), and also discussed its degree of openness based on, for example, the number of parties involved. Less is known, however, about what makes OI processes work. The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the importance of trust in OI, and the paper specifically focusses on a start-up company’s OI processes with collaboration parties. The paper points out how a lack of trust antecedents may disable such OI processes.

The empirical part of the paper consists of a case study on a medicine technology start-up. Interviews and analyses of secondary sources made up the main data capturing methods. Each collaboration between the start-up and another party is analysed through three trust antecedents: contractual, competence based, and goodwill.

The paper shows how either party may have chosen to discontinue the collaboration, based on the lack of competence or goodwill antecedents to trust. Specifically, the case indicates how the start-up discontinues the collaboration based on a perceived lack of goodwill, while the collaboration party bases its decision on competence deficits by the start-up.

The paper contributes to previous research through describing OI related to start-ups, and introducing trust antecedents as prerequisites for OI. To the literature on trust, trust mutuality makes a research contribution.

Advanced information technologies, and particularly big data, provide new affordances to facilitate inter-organizational collaboration. Rich flows of real-time data provide transparency across organizational boundaries and enable greater automation of inter-organizational routines. Taking stock of the literature and building on observations from the research in an industrial setting, the authors introduce the concept of technological embeddedness as an important characteristic of inter-organizational relationships, denoting the degree of monitoring, control, and optimization of intra- and inter-organizational tasks accomplished through technology at the interface of the inter-organizational relationship. The authors theorize how increasing technological embeddedness created by big data technologies affects the development of inter-organizational trust, mutual adaptation, and temporal structuring of collaboration. The propositions elaborate how greater technological embeddedness enables collaboration, and warn about the potential limiting effects of technological embeddedness on the development of interpersonal trust, strategic learning, and long-term orientation.

The study aims to test the success of university-industry (U-I) collaboration in terms of innovation process efficiency. Then, this study explores the moderating role of a set of organizational routines in the U-I relationship, which can help in overcoming the issues undermining the collaboration success.

The study is based on an international Open Innovation (OI) survey. The survey investigated the items to build the main variables of the conceptual framework, measured through seven-point Likert scales. Steps to ensure the reliability and validity of the variables were conducted. Then, hypotheses were tested with an ordinary least squares regression.

Results show that the higher the collaboration intensity (depth) with universities, the higher the innovation process efficiency. Furthermore, organizational routines aimed at improving firms' assimilation absorptive capacity further strengthen the positive effects of intensive collaboration on innovation process efficiency.

Findings indicate that R&D managers should strive to build deep collaborations with universities to enhance process efficiency and invest in the quality of these relationships. Managers should create and maintain an internal environment that further enhances the positive effects of intensive collaboration on innovation process efficiency.

The OI literature has not reached a shared view on the positive contribution of universities toward industrial firms' innovation performance. The study adopts a process-efficiency view, rarely used by other OI studies usually focused on output indicators; this study unpacks, respectively, the role of the intensity of collaboration and the organizational routines, thus disclosing the benefit of U-I collaboration on innovation efficiency.

This paper aims to evaluate the collaboration quality performance of sugar company Z and its stakeholders (farmers and distributors) by considering the sustainability aspects. This assessment shall be able to integrate qualitative and quantitative factors in the model, which is critical in sugar supply chains involving multi-stakeholders.

Integration of quality function deployment (QFD), the fuzzy analytical network process (FANP) and the data envelopment analysis (DEA) is administered to assess the efficiency score of each stakeholder involved. The evaluation encompasses collaboration behaviour factors since the input of collaboration activities will result in sustainability aspects such as revenue, green house gas (GHG) emissions and social impact. The analysis has been conducted in two scenarios, those are the basic scenario by utilising original data and the extended scenario by using projection data.

The result clarifies that the most influential behaviour factor in the collaboration activities is commitment (0.116), while the least important behaviour factors are power (0.008) and adaptation (0.008). Furthermore, by using the extended scenario, the overall efficiency for each benchmarking is higher compared to the condition before the improvement (basic scenario).

The result of this study is only relevant to the particular sugar supply chain and involving limited sustainability variables. Therefore, in a further study, more variables such as technical and financial aspects could be explored further in the assessment process.

The result of this study is available for each stakeholder and can be fundamental for the constant improvement in sustainable supply chain (SSC) practices. It shows that an improvement of one stakeholder will positively impact the entire system.

Smallholders and sugarcane farmers will recognise the significance of collaboration behaviour. Thus, they can enhance their mutual benefits by using the existing resources.

This paper arranges for a practical contribution by implementing advanced assessment methods in the sugar supply chain by taking into account the economic, environmental and social aspects. This comprehensive assessment process in the sugar supply chain is the novelty of this paper.