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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.

Collaborative systems are particular cases of multi-team systems in which several groups representing various interests meet to debate and generate solutions on complex societal issues. Stakeholder diversity in such systems often triggers power differences and disparity and the study explores the dual role of power disparity in collaborative settings. The purpose of this paper is to extend the power approach-inhibition model (Keltner et al., 2003) to the group level of analysis and argue that, on the positive side, power disparity increases the cognitive activity of the interacting groups (i.e. task-related debates), while on the other hand it generates a negative affective climate.

The authors collected data at two time points across nine behavioral simulations (54 teams, 239 participants) designed to explore the cognitive and affective dynamics between six parties interacting in a collaborative decision task.

The results show that power disparity increases cognitive activity in collaborative multi-party systems, while it hinders the affective climate, by increasing relationship conflict and decreasing psychological safety among the stakeholders.

This study provides important theoretical and practical contributions mostly for the consultation processes, as interventions might be directed at fostering the positive effects of power disparity in collaborative setting, while mitigating its drawbacks.

By extending the approach-inhibition model to the group level, this is one of the first empirical studies to examine the dual nature of the impact that power disparity has on the cognitive (i.e. positive effect) and affective (i.e. negative effect) dynamics of multi-party collaborative systems (i.e. multi-team systems).

Multi-party systems (MPS) comprise interdependent stakeholders (teams, organizations) that engage in complex interactions and negotiations. Building on the approach/inhibition theory of power, the self-enhancement strategy and on social interdependence theory, this study aims to understand the mediating role of attributions (i.e. perception of who/what is responsible for a certain outcome) in the relation between perceptions of the stakeholders’ power (i.e. self-perceptions of power, power ascribed to others and others’ perception of one’s own power) and their perceptions of intergroup climate and future collaborative intentions.

Data were collected from 30 groups (113 participants) that took part in five multi-party simulations concerning the negotiation of funds allocation among six stakeholders. The authors have evaluated attributions, intergroup climate and future collaborative intentions using questionnaires and different facets of systemic power were derived from a round-robin procedure.

Mixed models and multi-level mediation analyses were carried out, and the results show that self-attributed power and power attributed by others predict internal attributions, while power attributed to others predicts external attributions. Moreover, attributions mediate the relationship between perceived power and future collaborative intention, as well as between power and perceptions of intergroup climate.

Managing the multi-party systems is a complex endeavor, and the results point toward ways in which power dynamics in multi-party systems can be addressed.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first empirical attempts to explore the association between the perceptions of power and attributions in multi-party systems engaged in negotiation tasks.

The purpose of this paper is to address the role of intermediaries in open innovation networks in achieving ICT-enabled innovations. The ultimate goal of open innovation networks is to create value for endusers and providers, and to share the risks and rewards. The aim of this paper is to analyse the competences that intermediaries in open innovation networks need to master and exploit during the exploration and exploitation phases of an innovation process.

Based on 14 cases, all of which are examples of collaborative multi-party projects with a focus on ICT-enabled innovations, the paper inductively develops a competence model for intermediaries that can be applied at different stages in the innovation.

The research shows that intermediaries can play an effective role in open innovation, provided they have the right set of competences. It can be concluded that the role of innovation intermediary is most relevant in the creation and development phases.

This study certainly has its limitations. The researchers were involved in several cases, which may have biased their views, even though an external expert who was familiar with the case and the work of the intermediary was involved to minimize the risk. Most importantly, the cases all involved of a single intermediary, albeit with many different private and public partners. The cases were primarily located in the Netherlands. It would be interesting to complement this study with results from other innovation intermediaries.

The paper identified which competences of organizations in innovation are required, and how to balance the competences between the different partners, including the innovation intermediary. The study allows to link the type of goal of the collaboration to a number of best practices, including the competences and roles that are required at different stages.

The paper combines the core innovation competences with the innovation value chain concept developed, and evaluate the resulting model in 14 different cases. The model is new and relevant in practice.

Product development becomes more complex when co-development involves multiple parties crossing boundaries of functions, companies, countries and even competitors. An interdisciplinary framework is needed to understand the challenges of structuring collaborative work within global product teams – especially in the research arenas of strategic partnerships, product development teams, collaboration, distributed work, organizational learning and new metaphors. The multi-party partnership of the Joint Strike Fighter Program at Lockheed Martin, the largest aerospace program in history, provides an illustration of the complex information-sharing and problem-solving challenges in aligning a large, distributed, global integrated product team in an environment where even connectivity is a challenge. It sets the stage for the innovative management approaches needed to build collaborative climates as well as research directions for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyse how building information modelling (BIM) transforms complex infrastructure settings (i.e. airports) around digital technologies by enhancing connectivity and collaboration between major stakeholders and construction technology solutions. The objectives include understanding each project party's perspective for BIM implementation to align their motivations and connectivity along project's supply chain network and how BIM drives construction technology ecosystem uses for a more integrative and collaborative project delivery.

The study adopts qualitative data collection and analysis methods comprising semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis and an explanatory case study of a large-hub airport project.

The study findings show that enabling BIM implementation leads to streamlining construction technology ecosystem uses that increase connectivity within project parties' processes. Airports – as hosting high-value assets – can fast realize value of synergistic activities throughout project delivery by harnessing significant amount of siloed data created by each major party.

The study provides a structured analysis of how complex project settings leverage construction technology uses through their core BIM processes by highlighting multi-party approaches from an ecosystem perspective. This study also contributes to the body of knowledge and practice by presenting a transferrable and scalable approach for leveraging connected construction technology in a large-scale project involving fragmented processes managed by a large number of stakeholders.

What if we were to take an explicit relational perspective on organizing? What if we put our organizational conversations and interactive practices right in the middle of our scholarly focus on organizations? In this contribution, I wish to document how the concept of “relational practices” can be formulated as a generative approach to organizing in emergent and multiplex organizational contexts. Starting from the main concern of developing “actionable knowledge” about organizing, I will compare and contrast a relational constructionist approach with a mere instrumental approach to organizing. Beyond the purposive coordination of the means to attain intended goals, organizing will be considered as an essentially relational activity. Actors acknowledge mutually meaningful contributions and, at the same time, mutually enact organizational membership through joint engagement in “relational practices.” Relational organizing is as much a goal in itself as a means to an end.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role played by turbulent environments in the evolution of hybrid (i.e. multi-party, cross-sector) partnerships for regional innovation. Although extant research suggests that organizations decide to participate in such partnerships to cope with their turbulent environments, little is known about how actual perceptions of turbulent environments influence the setup and evolution of a partnership.

The qualitative study adopts a longitudinal design to investigate the evolution of a cross-sector regional innovation partnership between ten very different organizations. With the help of the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) model proposed by Bennett and Lemoine (2014a), the authors study the relation between partners’ initial perceptions of environmental turbulence and the models adopted for the partnership throughout its lifecycle (emergent, brokering and platform).

The authors show that partners’ intentions to solve perceived environmental turbulence through collaboration can have the unexpected consequence of triggering perceived turbulence inside the collaboration itself. Specifically, the authors show that perceived partnership VUCA at each stage is a result of partners’ attempts to cope with the perceived VUCA in the previous stage.

The study highlights a set of common traps that both public and private organizations engaged in hybrid partnerships might fall into precisely as they try to lower VUCA threats in their environments.

The work accounts for the relationship between external and internal perceptions of VUCA in hybrid partnerships for regional innovation, and, in particular, provides a better understanding of what happens when organizations choose to enter hybrid partnerships in order to deal with perceived threats in their environments.

We assessed attempts by federal and state agencies to utilize a Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving (COPPS) approach to address endangered species and natural resource protection issues in two watersheds in Washington State involving listed species of salmon, steelhead and bull trout. In the wake of the listing of these species, NOAA Fisheries and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) joined to implement a multi-party collaboration to enforcement termed Resource-Oriented Enforcement (ROE). We sought to determine if federal and state resource agencies can collaborate effectively and if collaborative approaches can achieve short- and long-term resource protection goals. A citizen mail survey (n=800+ in each location) and extensive personal interviews with key actors were conducted to assemble evidence on the degree of success achieved in implementing ROE. Observed results suggest that collaboration can

Prior to conducting business via the Web, business partners agree on the business processes they are able to support. In ebXML, the choreography of these business processes is described as an instance of the so‐called business process specification schema (BPSS). For execution purposes the BPSS must be defined in the exact business context of the partnership. Reference models for B2B processes developed by standard organizations usually span over multiple business contexts to avoid a multitude of similar processes. In this paper we present how business collaboration models following the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology (UMM) are expressed in ebXML BPSS. To allow a mapping from multi‐context business collaboration models to a context‐specific choreography in ebXML BPSS we extend UMM to capture constraints for different business contexts