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1 – 10 of over 14000Marcella Soares Piccoli, Carlos Alberto Diehl and Alan Junior do Nascimento
Business consortiums for temporary projects have limited time and less attention from individual organisations concerning leadership alignment. Recognising the need to study…
Abstract
Purpose
Business consortiums for temporary projects have limited time and less attention from individual organisations concerning leadership alignment. Recognising the need to study relationships in alliances, this study aims to identify the fundamental organisational beliefs perceived by the leaders in a construction business consortium and relate them to the companies’ belief system as conceptualised by Simons.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopts a positivist qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews, literature review and document analysis through a case study in a temporary business consortium formed by three large construction companies.
Findings
It was possible to verify alignment between the beliefs of the consortium and its leadership and infer that the flow of beliefs can be affected by the duration of the project. The research underlines the importance of the belief system within an organisation and how differences can cause internal conflicts, whilst alignment can improve competitiveness. The authors concluded that conflicts emerge due to a lack of alignment regarding the business’ core beliefs and the presence of different cultures and the duration of the project. Also, it was possible to create two different propositions for future studies regarding the project timeframe and improve competitiveness with the alignment of beliefs.
Social implications
Whilst there is academic literature that identifies challenges in successful project execution attributed to the misalignment of teams at a cultural level, organisations today still largely neglect the importance of team alignment. A better understanding of beliefs across organisations could have significant impact on social aspects resulting in improvements concerning projects timescales and quality of deliverables.
Originality/value
The main contribution is to explain how beliefs flow from individual parties to a temporary business consortium. This research addresses the lack of empirical studies relating to the alignment of temporary projects whilst providing recommendations to inform future research.
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John Motloch, Pedro Pacheco and John Vann
To build awareness of an emergent global network of sustainability consortia, the network's Sustainability for the Americas (SFTA) regional cluster, its pilot US‐Brazil…
Abstract
Purpose
To build awareness of an emergent global network of sustainability consortia, the network's Sustainability for the Americas (SFTA) regional cluster, its pilot US‐Brazil Sustainability Consortium (USBSC), its subsequent North American Sustainability, Housing and Community Consortium (NASHCC), the process through which these consortia are emerging and evolving to sustained implementation, planned parallel academic and project funding tracks, and models, tools and techniques used for knowledge transfer. To build awareness of an emergent global sustainability network of multi‐national consortia of universities and non‐institutional partners created to promote sustainability and innovation that connects people, ideas, and resources for a sustainable future; and to invite people interested in multi‐national partnering to enter into a dialogue that can lead to emergence of a multi‐national consortium.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper establishes the need for key universities to lead society to a sustainable future. It builds understanding of the role of international partnering, global networking, global media networking, multi‐sector partnering, and sustainability consortia in this leadership. It identifies efforts of the Land Design Institute (LDI) at Ball State University and key partners to facilitate emergence of a global network of sustainability consortia. It reviews the model through which these consortia are emerging and evolving to sustained implementation, including the model's parallel academic and project funding streams. It focuses on the SFTA initiative, including its pilot consortium, as a case‐study in phased emergence and evolution to sustained implementation of these consortia. It presents the consortia model for integrating internal and external knowledge networks; and processes, tools, and techniques used by consortia to lead society to a sustainable future. It reviews the model's nested curricula and international collaborative partnership approach to building sustainability leadership. It builds on experiences to date in this pilot consortium to make suggestions for future consortia.
Findings
Paper findings include the relative ease of consortium emergence, seeding, implementation start‐up, and acquiring academic funding; relative difficulty of achieving sustained implementation and project funding; increased awareness of the need for project seeding; and a new understanding of the catalytic benefits of consortia, including increased faculty interaction, development, and productivity including professional papers, journal articles, and proposals for external funding.
Originality/value
The paper fulfills the need for effective models, processes, tools and techniques for international partnering to lead society to a sustainable future.
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Hilary Bradbury-Huang, Benyamin Lichtenstein, John S. Carroll and Peter M. Senge
Corporations are now collaborating to meet complex global sustainability challenges, which, until recently, were considered beyond the mandate of business leaders…
Abstract
Corporations are now collaborating to meet complex global sustainability challenges, which, until recently, were considered beyond the mandate of business leaders. Multi-organizational consortia have formed, not as philanthropic efforts, but to find competitive advantage. To examine the dynamics of an early collaboration of this sort, with a view to suggesting how future inter-organizational projects might be fostered, we pursued an in-depth multi-method case study of “The Sustainability Consortium.” The Consortium has convened Fortune 50 senior managers since 1998. Our analysis uncovers the primacy of “Relational Space” – a rich context for aspirational trust and reflective learning across organizational boundaries, which is enabled by, and in turn gives rise to, collaborative projects. Within this space, an ecology of organizational leaders committed to sustainability can accomplish together what would be impossible in their individual organizations. We explain the viability of this collaboration.
Angeliki Maria Toli, Niamh Murtagh and Hedley Smyth
Smart city projects typically operate in consortia of actors that lead to the co-creation of jointly owned intellectual property (IP) and data. While IP and data are significant…
Abstract
Purpose
Smart city projects typically operate in consortia of actors that lead to the co-creation of jointly owned intellectual property (IP) and data. While IP and data are significant for economic development, there are very limited studies on their co-ownership regimes especially on co-ownership of open data and open intellectual property. This study address this gap.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is qualitative. In total, 62 in-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out, with predominantly senior members of organisations actively involved in smart city projects. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.
Findings
There are three models of co-ownership of IP and data: contractual joint ownership, undetermined or not-yet-determined ownership and open ownership. Each ownership model impacts differently the value-in-use. The relationships between actors in the consortia affect the way in which they co-create IP and data.
Originality/value
This study demonstrates how projects that operate in new models of innovation-led consortia produce new types of resources that are not simply co-created but co-owned. Co-owned resources have different value-in-use for each one of the different actors, independently of the fact that they jointly own them. This is influenced by the type of ownership model and predisposition of the actors to initially share resources and be flexible. Co-owned resources may generate future value propositions, act as interconnected operant resources and lead to the creation of new business models.
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Christopher Sweet and Elizabeth C. Clarage
The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) consists of 128 libraries. This paper aims to present an analysis of collection and open educational…
Abstract
Purpose
The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) consists of 128 libraries. This paper aims to present an analysis of collection and open educational resources (OER) initiatives undertaken by CARLI over the past decade that contribute to improving college affordability.
Design/methodology/approach
After reviewing important literature pertaining to library consortia and college affordability, this paper presents a detailed case study of CARLI’s collection and OER initiatives.
Findings
Owing to their economies of scale, library consortia have the potential to make substantial contributions to improving college affordability.
Originality/value
Compared to the efforts of individual libraries to improve college affordability, library consortium efforts have received far less attention in the professional literature. The work of the CARLI consortium documented here can provide a template for other library consortia that are working to improve college affordability.
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Purpose – To describe the social process of building of an inter-organizational network and analyse the control practices implemented by its members.Methodology/approach – The…
Abstract
Purpose – To describe the social process of building of an inter-organizational network and analyse the control practices implemented by its members.
Methodology/approach – The paper offers a holistic approach considering the institutional dynamics and management control practices in the network as a whole. This makes it possible to trace the development of practice variation, which is one of the most recent but up to now poorly studied problems in the field of institutional theory (Lounsbury, 2008). The paper draws on a case study of a newly established network of supply companies related to a petroleum project in North-West Russia.
Findings – Organizational arrangements in the network as well as corresponding controls are constructed as a result of interplay between several institutional logics such as Western network experience, international rules related to petroleum projects, the Soviet industrial background of the members, and their local community values. The controls demarcate organizationally members’ behaviour, and thereby define the conditions for practice variations. On the other hand, use of such controls over time leads to unintended consequences and control dilemmas. Facing these dilemmas, the network members address them differently, and therefore more practice variations are being created continually.
Originality/value of paper – The paper gives insight into an emerging business network, a setting normally neglected in the inter-organizational control literature, and establishes a dyadic view of management control, arguing that it both defines and creates conditions for practice variation.
Practical implications – Local supply chains play an important role in global petroleum projects. Decision-makers involved in petroleum projects will benefit from better understanding the cooperation processes prevalent in local industries.
Most academic work on sustainability has been focused on the organizational level, reflecting the popular “business case for sustainability” idea. However, organizations are…
Abstract
Most academic work on sustainability has been focused on the organizational level, reflecting the popular “business case for sustainability” idea. However, organizations are certainly not the only locus of entrepreneurial action for sustainability, nor are they the most ideal. This chapter reports on a six-year study of the Sustainability Consortium, a collaboration started in 1999 between large companies that were seeking to lead their industry through innovative initiatives for sustainability. The findings, based on 60 interviews and many other sources of data, identify eight “ecologies of entrepreneurial action,” all of which were critical for driving change. These ecologies are: Individual Aspiration; Network Affiliation; Process Optimization; Entrepreneurial Innovation; Value Chain Collaboration; Industry/Sector Coordination; System-Wide Integration; and Social Transformation. As shown by complexity theory, the interdependent and interconnected nature of these ecologies means that only by expanding beyond organizationally focused endeavors can we help generate the social transformation that will lead to a sustainable world.
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Rosemary Kennedy and Anthony Charles Sidwell
The recently constructed Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville is reviewed as a case study in research into re‐engineering the construction delivery process. The project…
Abstract
The recently constructed Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville is reviewed as a case study in research into re‐engineering the construction delivery process. The project involved an innovative approach to the procurement of a public building and resulted in a highly successful outcome. Several key areas which were identified as contributing to the success of this project need to be investigated further to establish their role in contributing to the success of other construction industry projects.
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Gabriela Fernandes, David O' Sullivan, Eduardo B. Pinto, Madalena Araújo and Ricardo J. Machado
University–industry projects provide special challenges in understanding and expressing the values required of project management (PM) in delivering stakeholder benefits. This…
Abstract
Purpose
University–industry projects provide special challenges in understanding and expressing the values required of project management (PM) in delivering stakeholder benefits. This paper presents a framework for understanding, identifying and managing the values of PM in major university–industry R&D projects.
Design/methodology/approach
The value framework identifies for each of the key stakeholders, the key PM values that may require to be managed and are largely derived from research literature. Empirical research then explores, prioritises and selects key PM values that need to be managed for a specific project. A large case study is used involving one university and one industry collaborating on a multi-million Euro initiative over six years. Empirical research was conducted by researchers who observed at close quarters, the challenges and successes of managing the competing values of key stakeholders.
Findings
The value framework takes a stakeholders' perspective by identifying the respective PM values for each of six stakeholders: university–industry consortium, university, industry, R&D external entities, funding entity and society.
Research limitations/implications
The research was performed using only one case study which limits the generalisability of its findings; however, the findings are presented as a decision support aid for project consortia in developing values for their own collaboration.
Practical implications
Guidance and decision support are provided to multi-stakeholder research consortia when selecting values that need to be managed for achieving tangible and intangible project benefits.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates a proposed framework for designing and managing the value of PM in large multi-stakeholder university–industry R&D projects.
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