Multi-organisational Collaboration: Practices and Processes of Knowledge Work

Abstract

Over the last two decades, new forms of collaboration involving a network of a larger variety of actors across institutional settings have become more prevalent. These more fluid forms of collaboration as ecosystems and platforms allow organisations to collaborate at arm’s length with organisations and individuals searching for knowledge, developing complementary products, and services in project patterns. In this paper, we provide an exploratory understanding of the process of knowledge-work in such a new multi-actor organising platform (CLOSER) in Sweden. Taking a process perspective, we explore how the actors in the transport sector and forest industry, find difficulties to search for and transform the program network-related knowledge in a coopetitive context. Building on an in-depth longitudinal case study, we do that by shedding light on the High-Capacity Transport (HCT) program organizing and its (dis-) embeddedness in the platform. Based on the longitudinal analysis, the paper sets forth context features linking the search for and knowledge transformation activities within the multi-organisational network and among the participant organisation based on the interplay between industrial settings and the underlying conditions suggesting implications for practice in such new forms of collaboration and beyond.