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“Shared purpose,” understood as a widely shared commitment to the organization’s fundamental raison d’être, can be a powerful driver of organizational performance by providing both motivation and direction for members’ joint problem-solving efforts. So far, however, we understand little about the organization design that can support shared purpose in the context of large, complex business enterprises. Building on the work of Selznick and Weber, we argue that such contexts require a new organizational form, one that we call collaborative. The collaborative organizational form is grounded in Weber’s value-rational type of social action, but overcomes the scale limitations of the collegial form of organization that is conventionally associated with value-rational action. We identify four organizational principles that characterize this collaborative form and a range of managerial policies that can implement those principles.

While there is a growing body of research demonstrating that HR Shared Services can offer a value-creating structure for HRM within organizations, there remains considerable room for improving our understanding of it. The premise of this chapter is that the mixture of HR Shared Services outcomes leans on the diversity of the governance structures, which rest in turn on several contingency factors. This means that every HRM Shared Services Model (SSM) is unique in its structure, and thus the value proposition of every HRM SSM is unique. Therefore, instead of promoting a standard package of values expected from HR shared services, organizations should develop unique value propositions that are contingent on their unique governance structures.

This is a case study on the opportunities provided by Open Source library systems and the experience of delivering these systems through a shared service.

This chapter derives from desk research, interviews, and direct involvement in the project. The format is a case study, setting out a detailed timeline of events with information that can be applied in other settings.

This chapter presents reflections on the value and limitations of collaboration amongst libraries and librarians on an innovative approach to library systems and technologies. It also presents reflections on lessons learned from the processes and detailed discussion of the success factors for shared services and the reasons why such initiatives may not result in the outcomes predicted at the start.

Libraries and IT services considering Open Source and shared service approaches to provision will find material in this study useful when planning their projects.

The nature of collaboration and collaborative working is studied and observations made about the way that outcomes cannot always be predicted or controlled. In a genuine collaboration, the outcome is determined by the interactions between the partners and is unique to the specifics of that collaboration.

The case study derives from interviews, written material and direct observation not generally in the public domain, providing a strong insider’s view of the activity.

This is a case study on the implementation of shared services across back-office functions between the National Library of Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland in the period 2008 to early 2013. It describes the potential benefits of a Library doing business in a less conventional way, at a time when the public sector is facing challenges of high customer expectations and tight budgets. From 2004 the concept of building shared services in the cultural sector was promoted by the Scottish Government as a means of achieving improved performance and more cost-effective service delivery. The initial four attempts to create shared services in the cultural sector failed. This study looks at the first attempt that succeeded and draws out the factors contributing to that success. Key precursors to progress included finding common ground and developing trust between parties who were initially suspicious of each other, establishing an effective governance framework, obtaining ongoing commitment from senior management, and aligning everyone’s agendas to make them compatible. By 2013 the program had delivered a common Information Systems network, as well as two parallel finance systems sitting on the same server. In March 2013 the HR teams entered a phase of living together for six months to test their integrated operations prior to formally becoming a shared service, treating both the Galleries and the Library as a single client. Building a shared service with another cultural partner has been a useful, though demanding experience. Both organizations are better off for committing to sharing.

This chapter employs the shared leadership model in exploring how leaders of higher education institutions (HEIs) can partner with Public Policy Groups (PPGs) within the Global South, a region characterized by complex challenges such as underdeveloped economies, corrupt leadership, limited financial and human resources, and political instability in some cases. The driving forces for collaboration include interconnected national policies, shared goals, responsibility, and accountability for resources. The Zambian Higher Education Policy (HE policy) draws on national, regional, and global aspirations for education and skills development, making it a suitable tool for advancing a common agenda for social, economic, and environmental sustainability. HEIs can use their collective leadership competencies to understand the multidimensional context in which they must exercise their varied roles. HEIs require relational and dynamic processes, practices, and narratives to negotiate the ups and downs of the complex terrain for sustainable development and drive a more transformative and complementary agenda for change.

A full and adequate Systematic Quantitative Literature Research Analysis of the academic literature and research on creating shared value (CSV) is long overdue. This chapter commences this process by introducing some of the academic literature currently on CSV and examining the strengths and weaknesses of this literature, while identifying gaps for future research. The chapter builds on current academic literature to include writing and research from the business community in an attempt to make this chapter both topical and accessible to anyone interested in CSV, including practitioners interested in implementing these types of projects as direct CSV projects or as part of already existing CSR strategy. It is expected that the inclusion of this type of business literature will add value to academic research going forward. The Appendix brings the chapter together by presenting examples of a variety of CSV case studies to provide ideas for future project implementation and opportunities for future research in both implementation and measurement.

The purpose of this study is to offer an integrated literature review of shared services’ organizational structures by specifically focusing on centralization, specialization, control, and formalization mechanisms.

A sample consisting of 103 empirical and conceptual articles, identified in a structured literature search in Science Direct and Scopus, was analyzed. The focus was on exploring the structural dimensions of shared services in various fields: Supply Chains, Finance, Human Resource Management, and Information Technologies. Findings from the selected articles were codified alongside the structural dimensions drawn from contingency theory.

Most of the papers identified were concerned with the Human Resource function or with Accounting and Finance in the private sector. Purchasing was only mentioned in a few general articles and Marketing not represented at all, even though the literature suggests that shared services do exist in this field. This uneven distribution across fields, as well as the reality that many articles fail to make clear divisions between disciplines, is hardly conducive to identifying trends for individual disciplines, and only general trends for each dimension could be identified. Although centralization was one of the most discussed dimensions, there was no consensus as to whether shared services should be centralized or decentralized. Standardization and formalization were both found to be highly important, although a need for customization was also emphasized.

Future research should be oriented toward the structural dimensions of shared services in a broader range of fields as current findings are dominated by the Human Resource function. Another implication of our findings is that scholars could usefully test empirically the dimensions, especially those where opinions differed the most: centralization and specialization.

Earlier conceptualizations noted that the mixed shared service outcomes stem from the diversity in governance and several contingency factors. This work continues the exploration of the contingency factors and mechanisms that, through integration, allow shared services to respond to the environmental uncertainty. The value of this chapter is in examining the structures of different functional types of shared services that are reported as successful in the literature, thus offering an overview of best practices in organizing shared services.

Issues, which have negatively impacted a diversity of business stakeholders, suggest that business thinking and leadership behaviors surrounding a desired strategic business focus appear increasingly inadequate. For example, that integration strategies and differentiation strategies are mutually exclusive. Three issues appear to contribute to such circumstances.

First, Western strategic business frameworks are largely based on quantitative foci, and remain largely unchallenged. Second, balance between key leadership team agendas and external stakeholder expectations is usually absent. Third, there is minimal connection between what organizational cultures reward, and how human resource management prescriptions provide support.

To address such concerns and implant a renewed strategic business focus, Porter and Kramer (2006, 2011) have identified the notion of shared value, which seems an appealing means to redress business problems represented by negative multistakeholder relations; moreover, an absence of any contemporary acknowledgment of the social contract. Nevertheless, a number of elements appear to be missing from the how shared value is portrayed by Porter and Kramer (2006, 2011).

Based on Maslow’s notion of Eupsychia, and employing an Ideation approach, a renewed strategic business focus supporting the notion of shared value is presented. The renewed focus seeks to enhance Porter and Kramer’s (2011) framework, by including key features to enhance shared value, including elements of Eastern and Western philosophy, and Western organization theory.

Problematic examples, identifying the absence of shared value, and including research propositions are identified.

Leadership is a crucial driver of project performance. While traditionally, the project leader was considered as the exclusive source of leadership behavior, recent research indicates that particularly dispersed projects may profit from joint leadership efforts by all project members. However, leadership functions in dispersed projects are likely to differ from those in a face-to-face context. In this chapter, we specify shared leadership functions for the domain of geographically dispersed project teams with high levels of task uncertainty. Arguing that shared leadership in dispersed teams occurs through interrelation of individual and team actions, we specify a dispersed screening function as well as self-, other-, and team-directed interrelation functions and develop propositions on how these functions are related to project performance. Furthermore, we point to motivational aspects of shared leadership and discuss the role of the vertical leader in developing and facilitating shared leadership.