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In many cases, public management researchers’ focus lies in phenomena, embedded in a hierarchical context. Conducting surveys and analyzing subsequent data require a way to identify which responses belong to the same entity. This might be, for example, members of the same team or data from different organizational levels. It can be very difficult to collect such data in environments marked by high concerns for anonymity and data privacy. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a procedure for matching survey data without compromising respondents’ anonymity.

The paper explains the need for data collection procedures, which preserve anonymity and lays out a process for conducting survey research that allows for responses to be clustered, while preserving participants’ anonymity.

Survey research, preserving participants’ anonymity while allowing for responses to be clustered in teams, is possible if researchers cooperate with a custodian, trusted by the participants. The custodian assigns random identifiers to survey entities but does not get access to the data. This way neither the researchers nor custodians are able to identify respondents. This process is described in detail and illustrated with a factious research project.

Many public management research questions require responses to be clustered in dyads, teams, departments, or organizations. The described procedure makes such research possible in environments with privacy concerns; this is the case with many public administrations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the specific contingencies of partnership risk in shared equity public-private partnerships (PPPs) with the contingencies of privately held, loose related PPPs.

Drawing on instrumental and relational accountability perspectives, the author formulates theoretical propositions on partnership risk.

The author conclude that loose related PPPs are characterized by high expertise and a higher risk of contract incompleteness by reason of opportunism. Shared ownership PPPs are characterized by lower opportunism but stronger goal ambiguities and role conflicts. These relationships are threatened by political micromanagement, agency capture and bailout problems.

The study offers an analytical frame of propositions and provides avenues for further research on partnership risk.

The author suggest risk mitigation strategies for tight and loose related PPPs.

Identifying crucial contingencies from both an instrumental and a relational perspective, the study makes a contribution to cooperation research in PPPs.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework investigating patterns of online health communities. In particular, the study draws on coordination theory to identify four community configurations. Their distinct features determine communities’ capacity to internalize and externalize knowledge, which ultimately determines their value creation in a service context.

The authors apply qualitative and quantitative techniques to detect similarities and differences in a sample of 50 online health communities. A categorical principal component analysis combined with cluster analysis reveals four distinct community configurations.

The analysis reveals differences in the degrees of cognitive and affective value creation, the types of community activities, the involved patients, professionals, and other stakeholders; and the levels of data disclosure by community members. Four community configurations emerge: basic information provider, advanced patient knowledge aggregator, systematic networked innovator, and uncomplicated idea sharer.

The findings show that communities can be categorized along two knowledge creation dimensions: knowledge externalization and knowledge internalization. While, previous research remained inconclusive regarding the synergistic or conflicting nature of cognitive and affective value creation, the findings demonstrate that cognitive value creation is an enabler for affective value creation. The emerging configurations offer a classification scheme for online communities and a basis for interpreting findings of future services research in the context of online health communities.

This research combines coordination theory with healthcare, service, and knowledge creation literature to provide a fine-grained picture of the components of online health communities. Thereby, inherent trade-offs and conflicts that characterize the components of coordination theory are investigated.

The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive literature review on the utilisation of intelligent agent technology in the library environment.

Research papers since 1990 on the use of various intelligent agent technologies in libraries are divided into two main application areas: digital library (DL), including agent‐based DL projects, multi‐agent architecture for DLs, intelligent agents for distributed heterogeneous information retrieval and agent support to information search process in DLs; and services in traditional libraries, including user interface for library information systems, automatic reference services and multi‐agent architecture for library services. For each paper on the topic, its new ideas or models, referred work, analyses, experiments, findings and conclusions are addressed.

The majority of the literature covers DLs and there have been fewer studies about services in traditional libraries. A variety of architecture, framework and models integrating agent technology in library systems or services are proposed, but only a few have been implemented in the practical environment. The application of agent technology is still at the research and experimentation stage. Agent technology has great potential in many areas in the library context; however it presents challenges to libraries that want to be involved in its adoption.

The survey has practical implications for libraries, librarians and computer professionals in developing projects that employ intelligent agent technology to meet end‐users' expectations as well as to improve information services within limited resources in library settings.

The paper provides a comprehensive survey on the development and research of intelligent agents in libraries in literature.