Robust Collective Action in Healthcare: Mobilizing to Address a Grand Challenge

Abstract

This research analyzes how a healthcare social enterprise convened other stakeholders to create a health information exchange. Three robust action mechanisms- participatory architecture, multivocal inscription, and distributed experimentation- undergird efforts to address grand challenges such as the cost and quality of healthcare. This research extends extant organizational scholarship on grand challenges by illuminating how an organization applied these mechanisms as a convener of collective action. In addition, this research conceptualizes the role of effectuation in enabling robust action and effectuation’s broader relevance to a convener’s efforts in mobilizing stakeholders to address grand challenges.