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The purpose of this paper is to advance understanding about the facilitation process used in complex implementation projects, by describing the function of novice clinician facilitators, and the barriers and enablers they experience, while implementing a new model of care for managing hospital malnutrition.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with local facilitators (n=7) involved in implementing The SIMPLE Approach (Systematised Interdisciplinary Malnutrition Pathway Implementation and Evaluation) in six hospitals in Queensland, Australia. Facilitator networks and training supported the clinicians acting as novice facilitators.

Key functions of the facilitator role were building relationships and trust; understanding the problem and stimulating change through data; negotiating and implementing the change; and measuring, sharing and reflecting on success. “Dedicated role, time and support” was identified as a theme encompassing the key barriers and enablers to successful facilitation.

When implementing complex interventions within short project timelines, it is critical that novice clinician facilitators are given adequate and protected time within their role, and have access to regular support from peers and experienced facilitators. With these structures in place, facilitators can support iterative improvements through building trust and relationships, co-designing strategies with champions and teams and developing internal capacity for change.

This case study extends the knowledge about how facilitation works in action, the barriers faced by clinicians new to working in facilitator roles, and highlights the need for an adapt-to-fit approach for the facilitation process, as well as the innovation itself.

Effective inter-organisational relationships are key to engendering innovation and ensuring the successful delivery of infrastructure projects. Relationship-based contracts are thus widely used to stimulate best-for-project ideals and attenuate the otherwise adversarial relationship that often exists between clients and contractors. This study examines the effectiveness and limitations of a project facilitation model as coaching tool for developing conducive inter-organisational relationships for construction project delivery.

The study adopts a case-study approach using evidence from triangulated data sources of focus group workshops, semi-structured interviews and document analysis.

(1) The facilitation model enabled an environment for psychological safety to be developed, which engendered a platform for effective cooperation for problem-solving and achieving quasi best-for-project ideals. (2) The model provides the mechanism to develop team behaviours that support enhanced performance and create an environment less adversarial and more collaborative than traditional contracting.

The novelty of this research is that relationship-based principles have been utilised as part of a traditional design-bid-build contract with lump-sum payment arrangements.

Critical knowledge and lessons learnt from the delivery of infrastructure projects have often remained untapped mainly due to the transient and fragmented nature of construction delivery. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of a project facilitator in attenuating disruptions in knowledge flows during the delivery of an infrastructure project.

An inductive case-study method is employed in examining the mediating role of the facilitator in an infrastructure project. Content analysis was undertaken by coding the data derived from eight focus group interactions, 23 semi-structured interviews and 24 documentary sources from workshops using NVivo 12 plus.

(1) The project facilitator provided a coherent context to re-invent the narratives (i.e. behaviours and events) by creating a forum for understanding critical problems and stimulating constructive dialogue and intervention. (2) The project facilitator leveraged on both explicit and tacit knowledge within the team, leading to improvement in the proactive management of emergent technical, operational and behavioural challenges, and (3) The project facilitator sustained a valuable intervention in attenuating disruptions in knowledge flows for problem-solving, relationship-management, best-practice strategies, coaching and leadership, as well as reflexive practice.

The novelty of this research is that a facilitator is used as the “knowledge-broker” in a multi-party infrastructure delivery team assembled using a traditional lump-sum contract framework. Facilitators have only previously been used in collaborative contract environments like alliancing and partnering.

The purpose of this paper is to present insights into operations strategy (OS) in practice. It outlines a conceptualization and model of OS processes and, based on findings from an in‐depth and longitudinal case study, contributes to further development of extant OS models and methods which presently mainly focus on OS content, as distinct from process issues.

The methodology combines action research and a longitudinal single site case study of OS processes in practice.

The paper conceptualises an OS process as: events of dialogue and action; taking place in five dimensions of change – technical‐rational, cultural, political, project management, and facilitation; and typically unfolding as a sequential and parallel, ordered and disordered, planned and emergent as well as top‐down and bottom‐up process. The proposed OS conceptualization provides a useful tool for describing and analyzing real‐time OS processes unfolding in practice.

The research is based on a single case, which limits the generalizability of the findings.

The findings suggest that, in order to obtain successful outcomes for an OS process in practice, change agents may need to moderate their outcome ambitions, manage process dimensions and agendas in a situational manner, balance inherent process paradoxes, strive at bridging both language and reality, as well as mobilizing key stakeholders, especially middle managers, throughout the process.

The paper proposes a novel conceptualization of the OS process derived from the literature in relevant areas and findings obtained through longitudinal action research of an OS formulation and implementation process.

The purpose of the paper is to consider how facilitation can be used specifically in teams when consensus is required.

The paper discusses how facilitation can be used in teams.

Finds that teams which mine for the collective intelligence of all members engage people and come to decisions that team members own.

Suggests that hurried or imposed decisions will fail to get the support of the team. In this way, management is contributing to its own failure. Points out that facilitators need both a set of generic skills and specific techniques which they can apply to group decision‐making.

Argues that the skills of facilitation in ensuring that people are heard and valued equally are essential to such decision‐making.

Concept of “organisational learning” has been widely advocated as one of the solutions for organisational development, especially for those companies requiring high level of technology and knowledge. While being applied to the entire organisation, the concept of organisational learning can also be applied to specific function or project teams, which can be named as “project” based organisations. This paper presents a new approach of learning for the project‐based teams, which integrates learning and project in one, towards organisational learning ideals. Performance evaluation mechanism is also developed. With the developed evaluation, three dimensions of team performance, within the scope of project action‐learning framework would be measured. It would tell the team where it stands at a particular point of time. In order to track the critical variables required to reach the goals, the developed measurement system framework will be adopted in the implementation phase.

This paper aims to investigate the contribution of brokers to business non-profit collaborations, in the context of employee volunteering. It investigates the roles brokers play and ways they contribute to value creation within social alliances.

This research focusses on a case study of a UK employee volunteering broker programme run by a local volunteer centre. A combined qualitative methodology involved document analysis and interviews, with brokers and business, community and government partners involved in employee volunteering collaborations.

Brokers play three key roles in business non-profit collaboration as connectors, facilitators/co-designers and learning catalysts. These roles help stimulate manifestations of associational value, transferred resource value, interaction value and synergistic value.

Results indicate brokers play an important part in nurturing conditions underpinning innovation and value co-creation, key characteristics of transformational forms of business non-profit collaboration. This study was based on a single case study. Future research could explore broker contributions within a variety of business non-profit settings.

For managers implementing business non-profit collaborations, this paper provides a framework depicting key broker roles and ways brokers enable collaborative value that may be useful when assessing whether to use the services of a broker.

This paper enriches the understanding of business non-profit collaboration and the role of individual actors in affecting value creation, an under-researched area in the social alliance literature. It provides a framework for assessing broker contributions in business non-profit collaborations.

This paper presents a set of instrumental case studies for the context-based learning of BIM in the milieu of knowledge-based practice in the AEC industry. The study aimed to examine students' actions and perspectives in a simulated learning environment for real-world BIM processes. The core intent was to provide an in-depth understanding of strategic and functional BIM implementation by synthesizing a suggestive pedagogical framework based on context-based learning approaches.

Derived from context-based approaches and experiential learning methods such as role-play, problem-based and active learning, the study involved a set of doctoral-level case studies. In a qualitative research study, these cases were devised and organized around industry-focused simulations on various levels of BIM implementation strategies.

Results from the case studies and the student responses suggest that the comprehensive evaluation of real-world BIM implementation simulations facilitates a solid understanding of the value of BIM. The participation of industry professionals catalyzes the development of strategic and functional BIM competencies.

The study proposes a well-structured and replicable BIM learning framework based on context-based learning approaches. The novel framework is adaptive and flexible for BIM education. It can provide students with the necessary skills, strategic vision and professional competencies for innovative practices in the 21st-century AEC Industry. The simulative learning settings, including the evaluation rubrics and connected instructional methods, can be implemented and further developed for similar education efforts.

Scientists are known for their good ideas, but packaging those ideas into a commercial format requires skills, funding, and processes for which many scientists and their research institutions are all too often not equipped. The Victorian Government of Australia has developed a successful initiative designed to facilitate and commercialise scientific innovations. The purpose of this paper is to document the processes and the lessons drawn from the establishment of the Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Initiative.

This case study describes the Australian state of Victoria's STI Initiative over a four year period from its inception. The program was designed to enhance the ability to compete globally through commercialisation of Victoria's science capability and to facilitate greater industry innovation through collaboration with the science community.

The STI case demonstrates how the program has exceeded expectations with proven return on investment in less than four years. The case describes the STI's history, structure, strategies, processes, and methods of monitoring and evaluation. It also describes problems and difficulties that have occurred and how these were overcome. One of the major findings of the STI Initiative concerns the development of governance structures for each project. Rather than introducing rigidity and decision speed‐bumps, the introduction of well‐designed governance structures provides rapid and useful feedback and favourable control measures.

A large part of managing STI projects involves the establishment of funded grants and the development and management of commercial objectives and cooperation between the science and commercial sectors. It is argued that this successful format for commercialising science and facilitating innovation can be templated and therefore duplicated by governments almost anywhere in the world.

The lessons from this case study support the argument that there is a need for structure to formalise a successful relationship between industry, science, government, and investors. The paper provides a format for such a structure based on the experiences of the STI Initiative based in Victoria, Australia.