Search results

Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have been argued to play an important role in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the mechanisms through which CCIs contribute to the attainment of SDGs remain underexplored. In this study, the authors adopt a network perspective to examine how the structure of a local CCI network relates to its local sustainability performance. By examining a database of 210,182 networked firms out of 1.34 million CCI firms across 294 cities in China, the authors conclude that both the scale and the density of a local CCI network improve the city’s performance in terms of attaining SDGs 8–12. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and propose future research avenues in international business.

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.

Increasingly, competition is moving from inter-company rivalry to that between supply chains and networks. In the field of manufacturing, such collaboration between companies may develop into an Extended Manufacturing Enterprise (EME), a chain or network comprising all the relevant functions of the partners. EME competitiveness depends on how effective the partner companies are as innovative and knowledge creative players within dynamic, complex integrated networks. The CO-IMPROVE project explores this premise, focusing in particular, on the learning required to enhance collaborative improvement of the performance of EMEs and among researchers. The CO-IMPROVE project was undertaken in Europe through a collaborative research approach where the researchers were both managing the project and studying it at the same time. The company networks were comprised of the managers from the system integrators and their suppliers, while the researcher network was comprised of academic researchers and the system integrator managers working in outsider-insider researcher teams. This chapter identifies emergent challenges in collaboration in both settings and explores implications for such collaboration.

Governance network managers are charged with triggering and sustaining collaborative dynamics, but often struggle to do so because they come from and interact with hierarchical and competitive organizations and systems. Thus, an important step toward effectively managing governance networks is to clarify collaborative dynamics. While the recently proposed collaborative governance regime (CGR) model provides a good start, it lacks both the conceptual clarity and parsimony needed in a useful analytical tool. This theoretical chapter uses the logic model framework to assess and reorganize the CGR model and then amends it using Follett’s theory of integrative process to provide a parsimonious understanding of collaborative dynamics, as opposed to authoritative coordination or negotiated cooperation. Uniquely, Follett draws from political and organizational theory practically grounded in the study of civic and business groups to frame the manner in which integrative process permeates collaboration. We argue that the disposition, style of relating, and mode of association in her integrative method foster collaborative dynamics while avoiding the counterproductive characteristics of hierarchy and competition. We develop an alternative logic model for studying collaborative dynamics that clarifies and defines these dynamics for future operationalization and empirical study.

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 provides an overview of the value and management of collaborative innovation in the development of library services. Open or collaborative innovation is innovation that bridges organizational boundaries. It discusses key aspects of interorganizational innovation and its application in libraries, namely the essence of innovation, the imperative for collaborative innovation, choosing partners and innovation networks, successful management of collaborative innovation, and the barriers to collaborative innovation and their management. It is argued that innovation is pivotal to survival and success in dynamic and complex organizational environments. Increasingly organizations are seeking to pool resources and enter into collaborative alliances in order to achieve large-scale, radical, paradigm innovations. However, the success of such alliances is not guaranteed, and is dependent not only on choosing the right partners but also on the leadership and management of innovation teams, having an understanding of the challenges of collaborative knowledge creation, and negotiating organizational and interorganizational barriers to innovation. While library and information literature has seen much discussion of innovations in terms of the outputs of innovation processes, there has been little discussion of the innovation processes needed to achieve new service developments, and other innovations. This chapter encourages information professionals to think strategically about innovation activities, specifically the management of the performance of collaborative or open innovation.

This chapter describes how conversational computer agents have been used in collaborative problem-solving environments. These agent-based systems are designed to (a) assess the students’ knowledge, skills, actions, and various other psychological states on the basis of the students’ actions and the conversational interactions, (b) generate discourse moves that are sensitive to the psychological states and the problem states, and (c) advance a solution to the problem. We describe how this was accomplished in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) in 2015. In the PISA CPS 2015 assessment, a single human test taker (15-year-old student) interacts with one, two, or three agents that stage a series of assessment episodes. This chapter proposes that this PISA framework could be extended to accommodate more open-ended natural language interaction for those languages that have developed technologies for automated computational linguistics and discourse. Two examples support this suggestion, with associated relevant empirical support. First, there is AutoTutor, an agent that collaboratively helps the student answer difficult questions and solve problems. Second, there is CPS in the context of a multi-party simulation called Land Science in which the system tracks progress and knowledge states of small groups of 3–4 students. Human mentors or computer agents prompt them to perform actions and exchange open-ended chat in a collaborative learning and problem-solving environment.

The purpose of this chapter is to develop the idea of enhancing collaboration within a public context. It does so by exploring the challenge of working with others across organisational boundaries, when addressing complex issues. It discusses research findings from a Scotland based public service study concerned with collaborative practice and presents an empirical analysis of what it means to work in a relational way. The existing literature is reviewed alongside the study findings, connecting with contemporary theories and debates in the fields of collaboration, leadership and public administration.

The empirical work detailed in this chapter drew from collective and relational leadership theories which influenced the study design and methodological approach. The data collection method took the form of semi-structured interviews and data were analysed using thematic analysis supported by data mapping exercises. Data were obtained through interviews of 20 participants from multiple public service roles and organisations who were involved in similar activities linked to collaboration.

This chapter promotes an approach where disrupting traditional collaborative practice offers new insights in terms of (1) understanding the group process and (2) recognising what processual and behavioural adjustments can be made to enrich collaborative work. This approach was found to offer a number of benefits linked to building trust, promoting meaningful dialogue and altered the conversations that people chose to have.

The reconceptualisation of collaboration specifically illustrates what it means to ‘work in a more relational way’ and how it is understood by those attempting to build collaborative capacity, sustain public services and improve outcomes for citizens and communities. As such, it is this focus on relationships that is considered innovative and important to creating the open collaborative culture required for addressing complex issues and working across organisational boundaries.