Collaborating across Organizational Boundaries: Co-Creating a more Just and Thriving Society

Abstract

The aim of this panel symposium is to explore how organizations, collaborating across organizational boundaries, can create a more just, resilient, and thriving society. We believe that there are examples that have come from the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and that management sciences can inform what role inter-organizational collaboration can play to help bring forth a more sustainable future. Five panelists consisting of Barbara Gray, Chris Worley, Ron Fry, Matt Mayer, and Francisco Valenzuela will address historical theories of collaboration, challenge organizational scholars to go beyond corporation-centric models to models of collaboration that join multiple corporations with other diverse societal actors to tackle complex problems, and provide a current example of social innovation labs that cross sectors to provide for “energy futures” in a Canadian province. We will also explore the concept of resilience in collaborating in a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has given us a unique opportunity to experience what Emery & Trist (1965) labeled a “turbulent field” and learn more about inter-organizational collaboration and how it can reshape organizing—as well as organizations themselves—to create a new and better normal. Where the “new normal” is in itself an empty concept, it can be filled by higher aspirations when socially constructed as an opportunity to create a more flourishing world (Cooperrider & Fry, 2020). How to do so collaboratively, is an important question that will be explored during the symposium. There will be time for participation and discussion from attendees