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Sharing services increasingly extends beyond intraorganizational concentration of service delivery. Organizations have started to promote cooperation across their boundaries to deal with strategic tensions in their value ecosystem, moving beyond traditional outsourcing. This chapter addresses two research questions geared to the challenge of interorganizational shared services (ISS): why would organizations want to get and remain involved in ISS? And: what are the implications of ISS for (inter)organizational value creation?

The conceptual chapter reviews literature pertaining to ISS from public, commercial, and nongovernmental sectors. ISS is understood as a multistakeholder organizational innovation. In order to analyze ISS and conduct empirical research, we developed a taxonomy and research framework.

The chapter shows how ISS can be positioned in value chains, distinguishing vertical, horizontal, and hybrid ISS. It outlines ISS implications for developing business models, structures, and relationships. Success factors and barriers are presented that epitomize the dynamic interplay of organizational autonomy and interorganizational dependence.

The research framework offers conceptual ideas for theoretical and empirical work. Researchers involved in ISS studies may adopt strategic, strategic innovation, and organizational innovation perspectives.

ISS phases are distinguished to focus innovation management — initiation, enactment, and evaluation. Furthermore, insights are provided into processes and interventions aimed at making ISS a success for participating organizations.

Cross-sectoral perspective on ISS; taxonomy of ISS; research framework built on organization and strategic management literature.

This study aims to investigate the role of management devices in transformation processes. This was done by analysing how devices persuaded people into actions, resulting in drifts that both led to the creation of a Shared Service Centre (SSC) and transformed it into a cost centre, something resembling an internal joint venture, followed by a profit centre and, finally, a centre of expertise.

A longitudinal case-based approach inspired by Latour’s (2005) ideas on attachments. The aim was to show how links between humans and non-humans in the form of management devices brought about drifts leading to the formation and transformation of a SSC.

Attachments between devices and humans fuelled the formation and transformation of the SSC. Such innovations were revealed to be a series of drifts, which demonstrates that an SSC is not a static object but rather an ever-evolving innovation.

On the basis of Latour (2005), the study reveals how socio–technical constellations are involved in organisational transformation, resulting in a SSC taking on new and unanticipated roles.

The findings facilitate a deeper understanding of the factors that initiate organisational development and transformation in SSCs. In addition, the study identifies the role different devices play in such transformation processes.

This paper contributes to the literature by analysing how a SSC is created and then transformed over time.

The purpose of the study is to diagnose recurrent logistics problems in a public organization’s network of logistics entities, determining the maturity level of each supply chain (SC) function, and trying to link problems within the SC functions to the maturity level by using the case study method.

Extant research on supply chain management (SCM) maturity is combined with notions of SC flows and disciplines. The resulting SCM Disciplines Maturity model comprises multiple diagnostic steps. It is illustrated by means of a developmental case study at a large public organization facing recurrent logistics problems in routine processes.

The model is shown to be a useful instrument to obtain insight into linkages between recurrent logistics problems and the way an SCM organization harbors multiple SCM disciplines.

The paper examines recurrent logistics problems in relation to SCM maturity, a relatively unknown research subject. It shows how SCM maturity thinking can support the diagnosis of recurrent problems. In a rapidly changing world, it enables further research on diagnosis as a dynamic capability.

This paper aims to focus on knowledge sharing process in an interorganizational setting. For this purpose, the context examined is the Orange Line metro train project in Pakistan, in which multiple organizations are involved.

This paper adopts a single case study approach. The empirical data comprises semi-structured interviews and archival documents. Thematic analysis is used for analyzing the data.

The findings present distinct mechanisms of knowledge sharing, which include knowledge sharing tools, both formal and informal; types of knowledge, i.e. tacit and explicit knowledge; and levels of units such as individuals, teams, organizations (internal knowledge sources) and the interorganizational level (external knowledge sources). Based on the findings, the authors propose an integrative model of the interplay between knowledge sharing tools, types of knowledge and levels of units. Furthermore, the findings depict that the knowledge sharing tools and types of knowledge are important at different levels of units, but their importance may vary depending on whether they are primary or supporting for different levels of units.

This paper contributes to the literature on knowledge-based theory by examining knowledge sharing in an interorganizational project. The proposed model deepens our understanding of the practices and processes of interorganizational knowledge sharing.

To develop a process model of interorganizational systems (IOS) collaboration and systematic framework for understanding and classifying IOS technologies for interorganizational collaboration.

This paper synthesizes relevant concepts and findings in the IOS, economics, and management literature. It also presents empirical examples to illustrate key issues, practices, and solutions involved in IOS collaboration.

An integrative model of IOS collaboration is introduced and knowledge sharing, participative decision making, and conflict governance identified as three behavioral process elements underlying effective interorganizational collaboration. Extending Kumar and van Dissel's IOS framework to directly recognize these elements, a more complete collaboration‐oriented framework for characterizing key elements of interorganizational collaboration and classifying IOS technologies is developed.

This paper brings together diverse ideas into a systematic view of collaboration via interorganizational systems. It contributes to a deeper, fuller understanding of issues involved in achieving collaborative advantage with IOS technologies. The paper also identifies factors and relationships that researchers should consider in designing empirical studies, posing hypotheses about collaboration via IOS, and analyzing results.

The model and framework can serve as a check‐list of considerations that need to be dealt with by leaders of collaboration‐oriented IOS initiatives. The IOS framework and technology classification may also suggest ways in which IT vendors might provide better technological solutions, services, and software for interorganizational collaboration.

This new IOS collaboration model and framework provide more complete and useful guidance for researchers, educators, and practitioners.

Leading health care institutions have recommended greater alignment among health care and social services organizations as a strategy to improve population health. Deepening our understanding of how interorganizational relationships among health care and social service organizations influence care for people with complex needs could improve the design of interventions aimed at aligning these organizations to achieve health goals. Accordingly, we used qualitative methods to (1) elucidate the functions performed by health care and social service organizations caring for older adults and (2) investigate corresponding relationship forms. In-depth interviews with 175 representatives of health care and social service organizations in 10 communities were analyzed. Three distinct interorganizational relationships functions emerged: First, interorganizational relationships gave organizations a deeper and more accurate understanding of how their work was interdependent with the work of other organizations in the community. This function was achieved through coalitions that loosely tied large numbers of organizations and allowed information to flow among them. Second, interorganizational relationships allowed organizations to take joint action toward a shared goal, a function achieved in the form of pairs or small groups of organizations working closely together. Third, interorganizational relationships fostered accountability, with one organization advocating for the needs of clients or patients with another organization. Our results suggest that initiatives to promote regional alignment among health care and social services organizations may benefit from flexible models that anticipate a narrowing of partners to achieve tangible outcomes. Initiatives also need to accommodate low-level conflict that routinely exists among organizations in these sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the link between the organizing of service networks and interorganizational learning strategies.

By deepening the conceptual understanding of service networks and their central properties, an overview of the learning challenges for improved performance is provided. The implications of learning are then discussed using four conceptual types to advance our understanding of learning in various service networks. Two different frameworks are combined, one designed to analyze the properties of service delivery and the other to understand their interorganizational learning implications for different types of service networks.

This paper examines the central properties of service network delivery and explains their implications for interorganizational learning strategy operationalized in a service network typology.

The proposed framework deepens the understanding of the concept of service networks and brings attention to properties that have implication for interorganizational learning. Knowing the central properties in detail and their major organizing challenges allows for learning strategies to improve service network performance.

The value lies in the deepening the understanding of interorganizational learning in service networks, which is much needed in the growing body of literature on both concepts.

Drawing on the experience of the Observatories, a set of interconnected research centers in Italy, this chapter explains why academics are in one of the best positions to orchestrate interorganizational initiatives of change and development, and highlights two prerequisites that appear necessary to render salient this orchestrator role of academics: (i) the extensive use of multiple approaches of collaborative research and (ii) the creation and maintenance of a platform allowing the management and diffusion of the network-based learning mechanisms underlying each change and development effort. The contributions extend existing knowledge on organization development and collaborative research.

Trust, as one of the core components of a relationship, has attracted research attention from many disciplines. From the perspective of IT outsourcing, this paper aims to divide trust into two levels, interpersonal trust and interorganizational trust, and explore the effects of these two levels of trust on knowledge sharing and IT outsourcing success.

Based on social exchange theory and the theory of organization boundary systems, a theoretical model was developed and tested empirically with the responses to a cross‐sectional survey. Data were collected from key informants of 143 firms that had outsourced at least part of their IT functions.

The data analysis results showed that interpersonal trust plays a more dominant role than does interorganizational trust in making IT outsourcing successful and the extent of knowledge sharing has a significant mediating effect between interpersonal trust and IT outsourcing success.

From the managerial perspective, findings from this study once again emphasize the importance of relationship management (trust and knowledge sharing) on overall IT outsourcing success. Paying attention to interpersonal trust is an effective way for an organization to build and maintain a successful IT outsourcing relationship with its service provider.

The paper aims at identifying knowledge sharing barriers and enablers in an interorganizational setting at different levels of units. For this purpose, the interorganizational setting of Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit project in Pakistan is examined.

This study adopts an exploratory single case study approach. The empirical data comprise semi-structured interviews and archival documents. Thematic analysis is used for analyzing the data.

The findings identify distinct knowledge sharing barriers and enablers at different level of units (individual, team, organizational and interorganizational). Based on the findings, an integrative framework of knowledge sharing barriers, enablers, and levels of units is proposed. Furthermore, the findings provide guidance to managers as the findings show how different knowledge sharing barriers and enablers are important at different levels of units.

This study novelty lies in determining separate sets of knowledge sharing barriers and enablers at different level of units in an interorganizational project. This study contributes to the literature on knowledge sharing by studying an interorganizational project.