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Leading health care institutions have recommended greater alignment among health care and social services organizations as a strategy to improve population health. Deepening our understanding of how interorganizational relationships among health care and social service organizations influence care for people with complex needs could improve the design of interventions aimed at aligning these organizations to achieve health goals. Accordingly, we used qualitative methods to (1) elucidate the functions performed by health care and social service organizations caring for older adults and (2) investigate corresponding relationship forms. In-depth interviews with 175 representatives of health care and social service organizations in 10 communities were analyzed. Three distinct interorganizational relationships functions emerged: First, interorganizational relationships gave organizations a deeper and more accurate understanding of how their work was interdependent with the work of other organizations in the community. This function was achieved through coalitions that loosely tied large numbers of organizations and allowed information to flow among them. Second, interorganizational relationships allowed organizations to take joint action toward a shared goal, a function achieved in the form of pairs or small groups of organizations working closely together. Third, interorganizational relationships fostered accountability, with one organization advocating for the needs of clients or patients with another organization. Our results suggest that initiatives to promote regional alignment among health care and social services organizations may benefit from flexible models that anticipate a narrowing of partners to achieve tangible outcomes. Initiatives also need to accommodate low-level conflict that routinely exists among organizations in these sectors.

Developments in Information Technology (IT) are perceived to be a major driver of interorganizational cooperation, both within and across industry boundaries. These developments have challenged the creation of interorganizational competitive advantages, as conceptualized in the Relational View (e.g. Dyer & Singh, 1998). The relationship between IT and effectuated interorganizational competitive advantage, however, is still unclear. This chapter is a first attempt to shed light on this unexplored area in the literature. We focus our analysis on developing a conceptual framework of the relationship between IT and interorganizational resource complementarity, which is an important determinant of interorganizational competitive advantage. Our framework suggests that cooperating organizations need to develop three distinctive but interrelated capabilities in order to effectuate interorganizational resource complementarity by means of IT. It is proposed that these capabilities give rise to interorganizational competence building, forming a pre-condition for achieving interorganizational competitive advantage. Preliminary support for our framework and proposition is provided by a brief case study of an interorganizational relationship between a large European financial services firm and a major European telecommunication firm.

The interorganizational environment faced by business organizations presents unique challenges for management accounting and control. Past management accounting research has shown interest in such collaborations because despite their benefits, such relationships pose significant issues of coordination and control. As information and communication systems supplement management control systems in their support of decision facilitation and decision influencing, examining the design of management accounting systems (MASs) in the management of interorganizational relationships and assessing how it affects the attainment of interorganizational exchange partner performance objectives is important. In this chapter, I extend past accounting research to examine the complementary nature of decision-facilitation and decision-influencing objectives of MAS design as enabled by the use of integrated information systems in interorganizational settings. The economic theory of complementarity is employed to examine synergistic effects of complementary MAS objectives. A field survey is used to examine hypothesized relationships, and data were obtained from 116 organizations involved in strategic alliance activity. This chapter reports findings that support the view that the degree of complementarity in decision-facilitation and decision-influencing objectives assists in the development of capabilities that enhance performance in the interorganizational relationship. The study blends theory in the areas of strategy, information systems, and management accounting and extends management accounting research in the context of IT-enabled interorganizational relationships.

Sharing services increasingly extends beyond intraorganizational concentration of service delivery. Organizations have started to promote cooperation across their boundaries to deal with strategic tensions in their value ecosystem, moving beyond traditional outsourcing. This chapter addresses two research questions geared to the challenge of interorganizational shared services (ISS): why would organizations want to get and remain involved in ISS? And: what are the implications of ISS for (inter)organizational value creation?

The conceptual chapter reviews literature pertaining to ISS from public, commercial, and nongovernmental sectors. ISS is understood as a multistakeholder organizational innovation. In order to analyze ISS and conduct empirical research, we developed a taxonomy and research framework.

The chapter shows how ISS can be positioned in value chains, distinguishing vertical, horizontal, and hybrid ISS. It outlines ISS implications for developing business models, structures, and relationships. Success factors and barriers are presented that epitomize the dynamic interplay of organizational autonomy and interorganizational dependence.

The research framework offers conceptual ideas for theoretical and empirical work. Researchers involved in ISS studies may adopt strategic, strategic innovation, and organizational innovation perspectives.

ISS phases are distinguished to focus innovation management — initiation, enactment, and evaluation. Furthermore, insights are provided into processes and interventions aimed at making ISS a success for participating organizations.

Cross-sectoral perspective on ISS; taxonomy of ISS; research framework built on organization and strategic management literature.

Twenty-first century concerns are explored given today's high levels of accountability, transparency, and social media. Ideas from Crow and Dabars (2015), Rhodes (2001), and Saul (2011, 2012) are expounded. This chapter discusses the pros and cons with the higher education engagement with the business and corporate world. Best practices, benefits, and perils are elaborated as tools for practitioners in both types of organizations. This chapter includes an open discussion of the pros, cons, heroes, villains, and various challenges with these complicated interorganizational relationships including preparation for ethical behavior.

This interorganizational discussion covers Astley and van de Ven's (1983) Organizational Analysis Matrix and key information to understand a broader, macro discussion including the purpose of organizations in society as well as overview the interorganizational relationships between the for-profit sector (i.e., businesses and corporations) and the specific sector of higher education. A consideration of motives, return on investment expectations, and interorganizational behavior is explored. This chapter highlights the complex nature of higher education and the for-profit realm, including inconsistent third-party support and intermingling from the government. Highlights from Sethi's (1975) seminal article serves as the basis for measurement and future expectations in a three-state schema for classifying corporate behavior.

Research involving interorganizational relationships (IORs) has grown at an impressive rate. Several datasets have been used to understand the nature and performance implications of these relationships. Given the importance of such relationships, we describe a relatively new dataset, Bloomberg SPLC, which contains data regarding the percentage of costs and revenues attributed to suppliers and customers, as well as allows researchers to construct a comprehensive dataset of IORs of buyer–supplier networks. Because of this, Bloomberg SPLC data can be used to uncover new and exciting theoretical and empirical implications. This chapter provides background information about this dataset, guidance on how it can be leveraged, and new theoretical terrain that can be charted to better understand IORs.

This chapter considers how higher education has enticed and interacted with corporations. This chapter explores how higher education behaves, in the aggregate, with a set of external partners, including businesses. It concludes with a discussion of how higher education should behave, given its external partners, in the modern context in which it finds itself. Discussion topics in this chapter include expectations of external partners; tactics to attract and retain business engagement and support; and internal organization by higher education to address corporate relations, ethics, and effective strategic planning. The Network of Academic Corporate Relations Officers' (NACRO) ideas and models are discussed. A set of guiding principles focused on Strategic Corporate Alliances by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is highlighted.

Building on prior research linking stakeholder relationship quality with financial performance, we explore interorganizational engagement from a bilateral perspective, more fully representing the dynamics within an alliance. Interorganizational relationship quality and stakeholder management theory in healthcare and in accounting research provide the foundation for these insights.

While the study's findings demonstrate consistent views regarding the importance of relationship management and patient care, the two stakeholder groups hold divergent perspectives on how to accomplish these goals. Insurance executives take a population perspective, whereas physician practices focus their decision making at the patient level. The relative power and size between stakeholders was instrumental in how insurers chose to develop relationships with individual physician practices. These findings provide the nucleus for understanding reported frictions.

This commentary addresses the problem of interfirm network formation from the perspective of multiple types of relationship content and of network structure. The approach builds on Burt’s (1980) typology of network structures and on a range of empirical studies on interorganizational networks. The chapter by Moldoveneau, Baum and Rowley on network evolution from an information-sharing perspective captures part of this research domain. The challenges posed by network evolution research are discussed in the broader light of multilevel analysis.