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The purpose of this paper is to design a consortium-blockchain based framework for cross-organizational business process mining complying with privacy requirements.

Business process modeling in a cross-organizational setting is complicated due to privacy concerns. The process mining in this situation occurs through trusted third parties (TTPs). It uses a special class of Petri-nets called workflow nets (WF-nets) to represent the formal specifications of event logs in a blockchain-enabled cross-organization.

Using a smart contract algorithm, the proposed framework discovers the organization-specific business process models (BPM) without a TTP. The discovered BPMs are formally represented using WF-nets with a message factor to support the authors’ claim. Finally, the applicability and suitability of the proposed framework is demonstrated using a case study of multimodal transportation.

The proposed framework complies with privacy requirements. It shows how to represent the formal specifications of event logs in a blockchain using a special class of Petri-nets called WF-nets. It also presents a smart contract algorithm to discover organization-specific business process models (BPM) without a TTP.

Cross-organizational cultural intelligence (COCI) is conceptualized as an ability of individuals to interact effectively with persons from different organizational cultures. To deal with culture differences in cross-organizational context, organizations need to select employees with high COCI. This study aims to develop an instrument to measure employees’ COCI in a cross-organizational context.

The present study was conducted in three steps to develop a scale to measure COCI. First, 39 statements were identified based on a series of interviews. Then, via a survey of 275 part-time MBA students, 18 statements were categorized into four dimensions, namely, cognition, motivation, collaborative communication and behavioral adaptability. Finally, convergent, discriminant, predictive and incremental validity of the scale were tested.

This study extends the cultural intelligence to the cross-organizational context. The COCI concept provides theoretical support for cultural intelligence research in the cross-organizational context. Therefore, the present study broadens the research field of cultural intelligence. A four-dimensional scale was developed to measure COCI, which includes cognition, motivation, collaborative communication and behavioral adaptability. High COCI can enhance employee’s performance in a cross-organizational context.

This study still has several limitations. First, the self-report questionnaire indicated that the relationship between COCI and other constructs may be stronger because of single-source, self-reported data collection. Second, the new scale was developed in China. Although some respondents came from foreign companies, most surveyed employees belonged to Chinese enterprises. Based on the current results, COCI scale exhibits promise as a measurable criterion, but it requires more refinement and validation. Additional work in this area can explore factors that can influence or improve individual COCI. A theoretical network of COCI that includes predictors, consequences, mediators and moderators by theoretical research can be established.

The COCI scale can be used in organizational management. Also, the COCI scale can help organizations understand the meanings of the employees’ COCI and select employees with high COCI during the recruitment. It makes managers easier to choose qualified candidates for inter-organizational projects. Beyond that, organizations can develop employees’ COCI according to the proposed four dimensions.

The development of the valid COCI scale will facilitate future research on boundary spanning. The COCI scale can measure individual cultural intelligence in a cross-organizational context. The present study has verified that COCI is different from emotional intelligence and provided a new perspective to explore the importance of individual ability in boundary-spanning activities. The instrumental support can help researchers effectively understand COCI and explore its potentials in boundary-spanning activities.

This paper aims to explore the pattern and significance of cross‐organizational ties in an emergent professional field, web production in UK higher education.

The research is based on in‐depth interviews with 21 practitioners and analysis of activity in cross‐organizational spaces, such as an online community and a series of annual practitioner conferences on the web in HE (1997).

The cross‐organizational spaces have support and symbolic roles as well as informational ones. They have overlapping but different membership and agendas. Key factors that govern individual participation and so the shape of cross‐organizational spaces are differential involvement in technical innovation, degree of organizational embedding or marginality, differences in organizational position and role, orientation towards centralization or decentralization and orientation towards marketing or IT. There is some sense of occupational community among web managers, but within that also diversity and a significant fracture line between marketing and IT perspectives on the role. This may explain the lack of formal professionalization. As a more natural boundary practice between organizations than marketing, IT has more public visibility, possibly influencing the course jurisdictional struggles over who should control the web.

Most studies of knowledge sharing have focussed on the factors which influence it within an organization, yet cross‐organizational sharing is also of importance, even for established professions as the boundaries of organizations become more open. For new occupations cross‐organizational ties may be a critical resource, and not only for sharing information or support, but for making sense of what the job is about at the deepest level. The research is also original in analysing a relatively little researched occupational group, those producing web sites for a living. It will be relevant to those interested in online and people centered information seeking, in professionalization and occupational identity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the operating factors influencing a cross-organisational mentoring initiative created to support leadership development. The research provides insight on participants’ views and mentoring practices around planning and preparation of mentoring relationships, to inform future training of leaders.

The research is inductive in nature, using an exploratory approach via a two-stage qualitative analysis. The qualitative data were gathered via interviews with the initiative partners and questionnaires distributed to all mentors and mentees involved. Data were gathered at the outset of the initiative and one year later.

Emergent themes revealed that centrally driven criterion-based matching was deemed effective, with skills and experience of mentors perceived as more important than seniority. Support from senior management was of paramount importance at all stages. Clear personal and professional objective setting was vital at the outset of the mentoring relationship; however, a degree of fluidity in direction occurred over time. Planned periodic meetings to share experiences, aid reflection and gather feedback from individual mentors and mentees groups was requested. Finally, while the mentees should drive the process, it was recognised that mentors may be required to take the lead initially.

It is recognised that wider generalisations are limited; the initiative would require replication with a number of different participants to increase validity. However, as the research is exploratory in nature, there is value in the initial research findings with potential for replication within other organisations and for other cross-organisational mentoring initiatives.

The research provides a number of useful themes which practitioners could use to explore the creation of a cross-organisational mentoring scheme and provides benchmarking indicators for this.

This is an innovative approach to leadership training that can be seen in the limited literature and theory related to cross-organisational mentoring as a leadership training tool that the design team, a partnership of HR academics and HRD professionals, were able to access.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the particular information needs of external auditors performing information technology (IT) audits at service providers in cross-organizational settings and to promote a software-based approach towards their satisfaction. The approach is intended to supplement the manual approaches currently adopted by auditors to procure information in such settings.

The authors analyzed data collected by means of a series of 16 interviews and four think-aloud sessions with experienced professionals.

Information procurement is perceived as tedious by auditors and largely relies on repeat interviews and perusal of documents. Given the growing complexity of cross-organizational settings, manual approaches to information procurement are reaching their limits. A considerable portion of the information required is often stored by service providers using software that is inaccessible to auditors. The authors argue that a software-based approach providing an interface for auditors to access relevant information held by such software presents an avenue worth exploring.

The authors outline how the information stored by service providers using software can be made accessible with reasonable effort. Complementing manual approaches to information procurement with an audit interface would reduce workload and increase quality.

The concept of an audit interface represents a novel and promising approach to meeting the information needs of auditors performing IT audits in cross-organizational settings more effectively. Both auditors and service providers would benefit from its implementation.

This paper seeks to establish a design for cross‐organizational workflow based on logical channels of communication. A set of scenarios is established which can be used to test the effectiveness of future architectures.

Starting with scenarios based on cross‐organizational business transactions, designs a set of sequence diagrams, analyzes these diagrams, and then deduces the need for certain system capabilities.

Current approaches to web services focus on just one channel – that of invocation. In order to handle the full gamut of cross‐organizational workflow, channels devoted to flow, monitoring, negotiation, and interpersonal interaction are also necessary.

Extensions to this research might include designs for integrating these multiple channels. Such designs can be tested against the scenarios discussed in the paper. In particular, research related to the semantic web might extend the ideas raised here.

Companies implementing web services may want to augment the current technology with enhancement of their own in order to avoid inadvertently reducing their channels of communication with trading partners. A properly constructed monitoring channel has the potential to change the nature of complex workflow.

Those designing and implementing web service technology may find value in the articulation of a set of complex scenarios which can be used to test alternative designs and implementations. The discussion of cross‐organizational monitoring is new, and has broad implications for business.

The purpose of this article is to introduce an innovative methodology to support manufacturing changes in the foundation of flexibility measurements and evaluations and to integrate this in the companies' internal as well as companies' cross‐organisational processes of change management.

The approach consists of two phases: first, a consistent systematics for the production systems flexibility evaluation is presented; second, the change processes are analysed and quantified flexibility indicators are integrated to support the decision – making process.

The application of the methodology in manufacturing environments has demonstrated that consideration of flexibility in the production and its integration into the manufacturing change processes has a great potential.

The originality of this work is in the integrated approach to consider flexibility as support for the change management. In particular the integration of quantified flexibility measurements into the change processes comes out to be the real innovation of the project.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate boundary spanning tactics in a cross-organizational virtual alliance and discuss the analytical value of “digging” into technology for excavating boundaries and understanding their dynamic and emergent features.

Although boundaries, their role and implications have been extensively investigated across a variety of online settings, the results are inconclusive as to the features of technology that create, dissolve or re-locate boundaries. This is attributed to the fact that in most cases technology is addressed as a black box – a discrete artefact of practice – without seeking justification for the inscribed functions that enable or constrain use. The paper overcomes these shortcomings by analysing digital trace data compiled through a virtual ethnographic assessment of a cross-organizational tourism alliance. Data comprise electronic traces of online collaboration whose interpretive capacity is augmented using knowledge visualization techniques capable of revealing dynamic and emergent features of boundary spanning.

Boundary spanning in virtual settings entails micro-negotiations around several types of boundaries. Some of them are either enforced by or inscribed into technology, while others are enacted in practice. Knowledge visualization of digital trace data allows “excavation” of these boundaries, assessment of their implications on distributed organizing of online ensembles and discovery of “hidden” knowledge that drives boundary spanning tactics of collaborators.

In cross-organizational collaborative settings, boundary spanning represents an enacted capability stemming from the intertwining between material and social/collective agencies. Consequently, boundaries surface as first class design constructs, directing design attention not only to features inscribed in technology (i.e. user profiles, registration mechanisms, moderation policies) but also the way such features are appropriated to re-shape, re-locate or dissolve boundaries.

An empirical data pool compiled through virtual ethnographic assessment of online collaboration is revisited and augmented with knowledge visualization techniques that enhance the interpretive capacity of the data and reveal “hidden” aspects of the collaborators’ boundary spanning behaviour and tactics.

This paper aims to refine cross-organizational knowledge creation theory by exploring the knowledge conversion process of University-Industry (U-I) collaboration in Chinese aerospace industry. An ancient Chinese philosophy named I-Ching is also introduced to illustrate dynamics of knowledge creation to achieve enlightenment.

To describe the knowledge conversion tendency, a theoretical framework is developed by reference to Boisot’s (1995) Information Space. The application of the framework is described in the in-depth case study of micro-electrode manufacturing for aerospace vehicles. The dynamics of each stage in knowledge conversion is investigated with the implications from I-Ching.

Analysis of the results suggests that seven certain stages can be especially indicative of cross-organizational knowledge creation, namely: demand codification; knowledge gain; knowledge digestion; knowledge sharing; knowledge propagation; knowledge spillover and knowledge degeneration. A knowledge gain, digestion, sharing and propagation (GDSP) knowledge creation theory is developed accordingly. The form of knowledge in different stages is variable, the change among various forms is effectively explained by I-Ching.

There is clearly a strong requirement to test the framework further with other cases, such as sampling cases from different industries and of different firm scales. Besides, the knowledge creation processes on the organizational level and the individual level are quite different, which call for further study.

First, the theory helps firms to get a better understanding of the nature of U-I collaboration, that is to say, knowledge creation. That will, in turn, power the firm to take the initiative to participate in knowledge creation activities. Second, the illustration through I-Ching provides reasonable and easily understandable interpretations for Chinese corporate managers and executives. Traditional Chinese culture will be beneficial to make U-I collaborations more efficient and effective in China.

A new “GDSP knowledge creation theory” which enriches and advances the typical socialization, externalization, combination and internalization (SECI) knowledge creation theory in some aspects is proposed. The theory is deeply grounded in Chinese culture. Furthermore, the conversion of different knowledge forms in the theory is considered from a totally new perspective of ancient Chinese philosophy: I-Ching.

This paper aims to gather empirical evidence for what colleagues from different organizations reported they learned from informal professional learning conversations. Informal learning conversations with colleagues is a powerful yet understudied source of self-directed, professional development.

This study of mixed methods investigated the types of learning 79 leaders from 22 organizations reported they learned via post-conversation surveys from 44 peer-led discussions over a two-year period.

Survey data suggest empirical evidence of five learning outcomes – informational, conceptual, operational, reflective and social learning. The study describes these categories, the overall distribution of these types of learning in the community and how most conversations were “high-yielding” in a particular outcome.

To the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first to suggest empirical evidence of categories of learning that participants report from informal, cross-organizational learning conversations.