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With the advent of the resource-based and dynamic capabilities views of the firm, researchers of collaborative relationships have raised the question as to whether superior management of such relationships does indeed explain observed differences in collaborative performance of individual firms. While most research to-date has concentrated on antecedents and development of such management capabilities, in this chapter we propose a comprehensive construct aimed at capturing what constitutes collaborative capability. Results of an exploratory field study of vertical relationships in the software service sector suggest that collaborative capability consists of structural, cognitive, and affective dimensions. Based on our findings, we believe that the three dimensions of collaborative capability act as complements rather than substitutes, and that superior collaborative performance depends on a proper balance of the three dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how research teams serve as building blocks for collaboration at a field level, and how these building blocks are assembled by a network of interacting organizations. The field setting is a medical sciences consortium in Australia established to encourage collaborative and entrepreneurial research among government, industry, research centers and university units. This consortium is examined as a case study. The analysis demonstrates how collaboration evolved at three interacting levels: research team, organization and interorganizational field.

The main findings are: (1) Intellectual property (IP) acts as the key orienting agent in this field to align the behavior of various stakeholders and leverage collaborative and entrepreneurial activity. (2) Tensions between the different ways that the commercial and public sector actors value IP serve to structure the interfaces among the consortium, the member organizations and the research teams. (3) The consortium is a key infrastructural element in the creation of collaborative capital in the Australian biotechnology field studied. The main contribution of the study is to highlight the nature of collaborative capital at a field level and begin to explore its implications.

This chapter examines the case studies in this volume with a focus on concepts and methods used in the study of multi-organization networks and partnerships, motivations to join in multi-party collaboration, how multi-organization collaborations organized and managed, what kinds of value are created by collaborations, and the role of leadership therein.

A comparative look at four vertical networks (in health care and education); two “issue” networks/partnerships (sustainable seafood and water use); and the roles of government in collaboration in horizontal, vertical, and issue-based arrangements.

The chapter describes “lessons” learned about building both sustainability and collaborative capabilities in and across partnering organizations and about improving partnership structures, processes, and results.

The chapter sums and synthesizes the volume’s contributions.

This qualitative study was carried out in Candangolaˆndia, in Brasilia’s surroundings, Brazil. It comprised procedures that aimed to test the use of participatory research and action (PRA) in interactive and multidirectional communication amongst community members, in order to enable them to work together in the identification, access and use of information to solve social problems. The assumption behind this proposal was that as doing so, citizens develop abilities of information literacy and capabilities of collaborative work. The research tested the efficacy of PRA specifically in information science, using principles of critical thinking and participatory techniques within an epistemological interpretative approach in the identification of community information needs, access and use. Specific techniques such as oral presentation, people introduction, cards, games, brainstorm, workgroups, discussion, and question and answer were applied in 24 activities performed during six meetings with an intentionally selected group of citizens. The set of activities in each meeting was related to the meeting objective. Data analysis was based on grounded theory principles, particularly the coding process. Findings confirmed that PRA is a suitable methodology to explore abilities of information literacy and attitudes of collaborative work as a result of an interactive and multidirectional communication. In fact, community participants were able to identify, classify and prioritise information needs, as well as use information solutions for a selected social problem. Ultimately, these actions have proved to be helpful for participants to develop a heightened sense of citizenship.

Development of intellectual capital, in conjunction with collaborative capabilities, is particularly important to continuously generating innovation. In the literature to date, the link between collaborative and intellectual capital, although key assets in knowledge-intensive industries, has rarely been investigated. This chapter introduces a model illustrating the interaction between human, intellectual, and structural capital, and their interplay. Several propositions are also derived in view of the need for companies to harness these three types of capital which are integral to implicit knowledge generation and leveraging the dynamic capabilities of the organization. As a consequence, team-based organizational forms are considered to be the most appropriate collaborative pattern for knowledge-intensive industries. This suggests that companies must increasingly focus on building valuable collaborative capital using flexible forms of organization in order to perpetuate successful product innovations.

Chapter 6 focuses on cultures of collaboration and explains how collaborative cultures are essential to developing networked intelligence in any organization. The authors explain how collaborative cultures relate to three critical business processes: trust, risk, and critical thinking. The chapter addresses how important collaborative cultures are to developing these capabilities in knowledge organizations and the knowledge economy. How collaborative cultures help organizations to become more resilient and adaptable to the hyperdynamic change at the core of the knowledge economy is also explained. And how collaborative cultures help organizations to maintain and sustain their business performance in chaotic environments is also addressed.

Drawing on the experience of the Observatories, a set of interconnected research centers in Italy, this chapter explains why academics are in one of the best positions to orchestrate interorganizational initiatives of change and development, and highlights two prerequisites that appear necessary to render salient this orchestrator role of academics: (i) the extensive use of multiple approaches of collaborative research and (ii) the creation and maintenance of a platform allowing the management and diffusion of the network-based learning mechanisms underlying each change and development effort. The contributions extend existing knowledge on organization development and collaborative research.

Through collective management at Cisco Systems in the United States, practitioners at all levels of management, rather than just a select few, overcame various contradictions through “strategic collaborations” across divisions within the company to respond to the challenge of new business innovation. Moreover, through skillful management of leadership at the formal organization layer, the informal organization layer, and the psychological boundary layer (the boundary layer between the two aforementioned layers), all practitioners of the company demonstrated holistic leadership, which enabled creative dialogue, cooperation, and understanding as well as rapid decision-making and action. Strategic collaboration based on holistic leadership enables outstanding ideas to be readily incorporated into the organization and to be examined and acted on by a single team. This chapter discusses processes whereby collective management based on Cisco System’s holistic leadership changed staff behavior and the corporate culture to achieve business innovation.

The remarkable achievements being promoted through inclusive education practices make the deficiencies associated with educational exclusion all the more noticeable. Despite many schools adopting the philosophy of inclusion, avoidable educational exclusion of students with special needs still persists in educational systems worldwide. This is because the preparation of competent teachers to respond to variations in student populations in schools is very difficult to achieve. A major reason for this difficulty is that most student education programs fail to nurture collaborative instructional practice culture in student teachers, which can enable them to work well with others to teach all students. Utilizing the status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF) model developed by David Rock, this chapter contributes to existing knowledge on student teacher development by theorizing and offering practical ways to enact collaborative instructional practices in inclusive education. The chapter addresses this issue by reporting student teachers' experiences in a course unit on inclusive education in one Australian university that adopted a collaborative instructional practice, deepening their understanding and practice of inclusion.