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A scholarly collaborative partnership is a capability that develops over time. Its quality is an outcome of the collaborative context, the alignment of purpose, development of work and learning processes, development of shared language and success stories. In this chapter, the authors engage in a metalogue where their shared reflection on the formation and development of their collaborative scholarship in the field of organization development and change is itself an instance of a process of shared scholarship. By adopting the format of a metalogue, they provide the voices of their individual thinking and their reflective conversation so as to offer an expression of the process of theorizing to scholars who wish to embark upon or study shared scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an existing collaborative research methodology process (Sabri, 2018), contextualise it for application in humanitarian supply chains and test it empirically.

Building on collaborative research methodology and humanitarian supply chain literature, the Sabri’s (2018) collaborative research methodology process is further developed to comprise eight phases of collaborative research contextualised for the humanitarian supply chain domain. The process is applied in a collaborative research case of academia–practitioner knowledge co-creation in a humanitarian supply chain setting, focussing on environmental sustainability improvement. The collaborative case analysis suggests a number of refinements to the elements of the process. This study undertook two cycles of academia–practitioner collaborative research.

In testing the process, a noticeable improvement in the collaboration among different humanitarian stakeholders was observed, leading to improved stakeholder management. The implementation improved the sustainability awareness and social inclusion of the affected population. Rurality, remoteness, security issues and resistance of field staff against change were among the main challenges for supply chain researchers to engage in collaborative research in the humanitarian domain.

The paper addresses the rigour‒relevance‒reflectiveness debate in the humanitarian supply chain domain. A collaborative research methodology process derived from action research is further developed using humanitarian literature, and then it is applied in a humanitarian logistics case focussed on environmental sustainability. The present collaborative research process facilitates engaged scholarship among the humanitarian stakeholders, as the researchers’ roles move from observatory to participatory knowledge broker.

Increasingly, competition is moving from inter-company rivalry to that between supply chains and networks. In the field of manufacturing, such collaboration between companies may develop into an Extended Manufacturing Enterprise (EME), a chain or network comprising all the relevant functions of the partners. EME competitiveness depends on how effective the partner companies are as innovative and knowledge creative players within dynamic, complex integrated networks. The CO-IMPROVE project explores this premise, focusing in particular, on the learning required to enhance collaborative improvement of the performance of EMEs and among researchers. The CO-IMPROVE project was undertaken in Europe through a collaborative research approach where the researchers were both managing the project and studying it at the same time. The company networks were comprised of the managers from the system integrators and their suppliers, while the researcher network was comprised of academic researchers and the system integrator managers working in outsider-insider researcher teams. This chapter identifies emergent challenges in collaboration in both settings and explores implications for such collaboration.

Engaging students in environmental citizenship to promote education for sustainability (EfS) as an explicit goal of academic courses is not common, notwithstanding wide consensus on its importance. Collaborative learning has rarely been investigated using action research methods in the context of environmental citizenship in higher education; the purpose of this study is to fill the gap.

Adopting Bandura's (2012) theory of self-efficacy and collective efficacy, this study explores how collaborative learning, used throughout an action research-based course, encouraged students’ efficacy to implement environmental citizenship in their communities. Data were collected through multiple sources: students’ written reflections, instructors’ reflective journals and continuous discussions, interviews with students and different documents (course syllabi, lesson plans and students' scientific posters).

The findings of this study indicate that the authors succeeded in creating an appropriate social academic setting for the students to become acquainted with each other and to share ideas, successes and challenges in an accepting atmosphere, which proved beneficial to developing their self-confidence to promote EfS in practice. Adopting collaborative learning in the context of environmental citizenship also increased students' self-efficacy and collective efficacy. Self-efficacy was strengthened in the four sources discussed by Bandura (2012): mastery experiences, social modeling, social persuasion and emotional states. Collective efficacy was developed both in the academic and practical domains.

The findings of this study suggest that collaborative learning could serve as a powerful way to promote EfS in higher education, especially in teacher education. This contribution was achieved through integrating academic and practical knowledge foundations, which are required to implement environmental citizenship successfully, supporting learners’ initial steps towards becoming change agents in the society.

The purpose of this article is to provide a design and implementation framework for ALAR (action learning action research) programme which aims to address collaborative improvement in the extended manufacturing enterprise.

This article demonstrates the design of a programme in which action learning and action research were used in combination (ALAR). The participants in the EME engaged in action learning on their work on collaborative improvement in the supply chain. The action learning was studied through action research cycles of action and reflection.

This implementation of the ALAR programme consolidated the design of ten meetings across three stages and adds to other design models within ALAR approach.

This is one particular research programme, from which learning may be extrapolated.

This article provides a practical design framework for ALAR programmes on collaborative improvement in the EME.

The article extends the application of an ALAR programme design into the inter‐organisational setting.

This paper is an account of collaborative action-based research that centered on a new NCAA Division I football program at a regional southeastern university, and the positive impacts the collaboration had on the multiple stakeholders involved in the research, which were the university’s sport management faculty, the athletic department, and sport management students. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

During the action research, these stakeholders moved through a cyclical process that involved reflection, planning, action, and evaluation. Through the action-based cyclical process that was utilized, each of these stakeholders were able to learn, adapt, participate, and make positive change.

Positive change occurred with the athletic department’s marketing efforts and game day operations, opportunities for sport management students to participate and learn, and development of relationships between two departments.

The cyclical nature of this research model often leads to original hypotheses and research foci to be highly altered during various stages. Another limitation within collaborative action research can be the breakdown in communication among the many parties involved in carrying out this type of research.

While the significance of this study was initially to capture fan information surrounding a new NCAA Division I football program, the stakeholders quickly realized that the action-based research study had more to offer than producing marketing reports for the university athletic department. Inclusion of the students as equal stakeholders in this project proved vital to student learning and involvement. Having the students play such an important role throughout each cycle of the project allowed for additional networking outside the classrooms with potential employers, as well as in-depth discussions and involvement in the classroom when synthesizing and disseminating the marketing information that had been gathered.

The collaboration between two separate departments within a higher education institution was vital to the overall success of the research project. The overall intent of this paper is to provide a practical approach to collaboration among individuals working in different departments of an organization, as the findings from this research project revealed the overall success of the project was only possible through the collaborative effort and joining resources, abilities, areas of expertise, and capabilities.

As the field of action-oriented research becomes increasingly diffuse and diverse, this paper seeks to identify common ground across the multiple modalities of action research and collaborative management research through articulating and exploring a general empirical method that is grounded in the recognizable structure of human knowing. This method is grounded in: attention to observable data (experience), envisaging possible explanations of that data (understanding), and preferring as probable or certain the explanations, which provide the best account for the data (judgment). Engaging this method requires the dispositions to perform the operations of attentiveness, intelligence, and reasonableness, to which responsibility is added when we seek to take action. This paper seeks to provide insight into the multiple modalities of action research and collaborative management research and to illustrate how each modality engages the recognizable operations of human knowing.

Health-care systems currently face great challenges, including an increasing elderly population. To respond to this problem, a hospital emergency department, three municipalities, and self-employed general practitioners in Denmark decided to collaborate with the aim of reorganizing treatment of elderly acute ill patients. By establishing a small-scale collaborative community and through an action research process, we show, how to jointly explore and develop a new organization design for in-home hospital treatment that enables the health professionals to collaborate in new ways, and at the same time to investigate and improve this cocreation process and codesign of knowledge among multiple different stakeholders.

The purpose of this action research study was to design, implement and evaluate interventions that enhanced the induction program for new teachers in a P-12 school district. At the outset, we hoped the study would provide new teacher support resulting in improved teaching practices, increased job satisfaction and/or increased teacher retention among the target population. With this in mind, our research question was: What structures and supports from a school-university partnership facilitate capacity-building among university teacher education faculty, school and district leaders, mentor teachers, and new teachers in the context of an induction program?

This study used an intervention-centered mode of action research methodology that aims to make systems-level change. This type of action research intends to solve real organizational problems with a focus on conducting “research in action” rather than “research about action” (Coghlan and Brannick, 2014, pp. 5–6). This approach necessitates that data collection and analysis are iterative processes, occurring throughout the research process, instead of solely at the end stages of the research process. Our action research process used Coghlan and Brannick’s (2014) action research cycle model. The cyclical four-step process includes constructing (verifying the problem in the local context), planning action, taking action and evaluating action. Facilitated by the interim director of a Professional development schools (PDS) partnership in the Southeastern United States, a team of co-researchers which included three university teacher education faculty and four school district administrators used action research methodology to create systemic change that enhanced the district’s induction program. We collected data through multiple qualitative methods, including surveys, focus groups, observations and interviews during the course of three action research cycles. These data and our theoretical framework (complex adaptive systems theory and social network theory) informed two major interventions that supported new teachers during the challenging first year of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

The interventions and the research process were mutually beneficial for both institutions and contributed to professional learning and growth at the individual, group and system levels. The three major findings described include: (1) engaging in collaborative action research is mutually beneficial for both schools and universities; (2) induction programs benefit from university resources; (3) learning communities build all educators’ professional capacity.

Our research recommendations are: (1) more research is needed on the benefits of school-university partnerships to induction programs; (2) school-university partnerships should leverage action research to improve systems; (3) within school-university partnerships, the connection between collaborative leadership and sustainability requires further research. One limitation was that this study was conducted in a single school-university partnership context involving a large public university and a mid-sized public school district that had a well-established partnership. More induction-centered research is needed in different types of school-university partnership contexts that have varying levels of longevity and partnership structures.

Our recommendations for practice include (1) school-university partnerships should leverage collaborative learning communities to catalyze individual, group and systems-level learning and change, and (2) school-university partnerships must prioritize induction support to strengthen the teaching profession.

Since Hunt’s (2014) literature review on induction support in PDS partnerships, very few empirical studies have been conducted in this research area. This study, which examined induction support in a PDS partnership over a two-year period, makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature on induction teacher support in school-university partnership contexts. Facilitated by the interim director of a PDS partnership, a team of co-researchers, which included three university teacher education faculty and four school district administrators, used action research methodology to create systems-level supports that enhanced the district’s induction program.

The purpose of this article is to investigate collaboration in project management research. Although the literature shows an increase in collaboration between scientists and social scientists for various reasons, it is unclear how and why such collaboration takes place in project management research. The literature does show that co-authorship of articles published in project management journals is on the rise due to increased collaboration between researchers in developed countries and emerging economies as well as developing countries. However, no detailed study has been conducted to investigate how such collaboration occurs in practice in project management research. This article addresses this gap.

We use a multi-method approach (action research as a meta-methodology and surveys) using qualitative data to reflect on a successful collaborative externally funded research project. At the end of the study, a survey was used to investigate how collaboration occurred among the 26 researchers involved, who were spread over nine countries to collect data on a sponsored research project led by the authors who were the principal investigators. We also compare our findings from the original project with findings from a second survey of a purposeful sample of ten project management researchers who have conducted or are conducting collaborative research in order to validate our findings.

Through this study, we were able to compare the reasons for increased collaboration in scientific research reported in the literature with what we learnt from our own experience in collaborating on a large-scale project across geographical boundaries and cultures around the world. We were also able to get some insights on enablers and barriers to collaboration from peers who have collaborated on project management research from the second survey. We found that, although some of the reasons explained in the literature were confirmed in our study (e.g. the reputation of lead researchers), some other reasons (e.g. the prestige of institutions) were not that important. The conclusions section of this article provides a more detailed comparison. We also found that using a project management approach would deliver better outcomes. The literature on scientific collaboration was divided on the value of a project management approach and preferred a combination of firmness and flexibility. We found that using action research as a meta-methodology to reflect on our research gave us further insights into why we did what we did at certain critical points in our research that moved us forward.

Our study used two surveys with a limited number of researchers to compare what was found in the literature on reasons for collaboration in scientific research and how research outcomes were measured using citation rates. Conducting interviews or focused groups could have provided more nuanced findings. However, our findings did show that collaboration is beneficial to both experienced and early career researchers and helps them to publish in higher-ranked journals resulting in better visibility for the research. This is an interesting observation and merits further investigation. Theoretical implications: Findings from this research contribute to the broad literature on collaborative research in science and social science with a focus on practice-based fields such as project management where collaboration between academics and practitioners is becoming important.

The study provides some insights into the reasons for processes used and benefits from collaboration in project management research. Our findings have also been validated with our peers. Thus, this study will be useful for setting up and managing collaborative research in project management.

Effective collaboration in research can provide social value through mentoring of early career researchers.

This is the first detailed study of collaborative research in project management. It also proposes an action research model that can be used to retrospectively analyse long-term research projects to reflect upon and improve.