Inter-organizational Collaboration Research Articles

HR innovation through inter-organizational HR collaboration

PurposeStudies of inter-organizational relationships have traditionally overlooked the human resource management (HRM) field, with most research focusing on collaborations in the technical domain. This study endeavors to explore the impact of organizational human resources (HR) collaborations on HR innovativeness, drawing on theories about organizational learning capabilities to explain this connection. By analyzing the synergies arising from inter-organizational HR collaborations, this study aims to seek to shed light on the potential for HRM to contribute to organizational performance and foster innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a quantitative survey conducted among 326 Dutch companies. The survey aims to find out whether these companies collaborate with other organizations on HR-related issues, the extent to which they renew their HRM function, and whether they apply organizational learning practices. The data collected for the survey are analyzed using Hayes PROCESS macro to investigate mediation effects.FindingsAs per the study, HR collaboration results in innovation. The research suggests that collaborating with HR across different organizations significantly contributes to HR innovation. This relationship can be explained by the inter-organizational learning practices that organizations adopt. Therefore, when organizations collaborate with each other, they learn from each other, which enhances their learning capabilities and ultimately leads to HR innovation.Originality/valueThis study delves into the extent to which organizations collaborate on HR-related issues, which is a relatively new field. Moreover, it contributes to the research on the connection between inter-organizational relationships and innovation by showing how much of it is explained by organizational learning.

Developing a framework for integrating blockchain technology into earthquake risk mitigation and disaster management strategies of smart cities

PurposeEarthquakes pose a significant challenge to human safety and the durability of infrastructure, highlighting the urgent need for innovative disaster management strategies. This study addresses the gap in current earthquake disaster management approaches, which are often related to issues of transparency, centralization and sluggish response times. By exploring the integration of blockchain technology into seismic hazard management, the purpose of the research is to overcome these limitations by offering a novel framework for integrating blockchain technology into earthquake risk mitigation and disaster management strategies of smart cities.Design/methodology/approachThis study develops an innovative approach to address these issues by introducing a blockchain-based seismic monitoring and automated decision support system for earthquake disaster management in smart cities. This research aims to capitalize on the benefits of blockchain technology, specifically its real-time data accessibility, decentralization and automation capabilities, to enhance earthquake disaster management. The methodology employed integrates seismic monitoring data into a blockchain framework, ensuring accurate, reliable and comprehensive information. Additionally, smart contracts are utilized to handle decision-making and enable rapid responses during earthquake disasters, offering an effective alternative to traditional approaches.FindingsThe study results highlight the system’s potential to foster reliability, decentralization and efficiency in earthquake disaster management, promoting enhanced collaboration among stakeholders and facilitating swift actions to minimize human and capital loss. This research lays the foundation for further exploration of blockchain technology’s practical applications in other disaster management contexts and its potential to transform traditional practices.Originality/valueCurrent methodologies, while contributing to the reduction of earthquake-related impacts, are often hindered by limitations such as lack of transparency, centralization and slow response times. In contrast, the adoption of blockchain technology can address these challenges and offer benefits over various aspects, including decentralized control, improved security, real-time data accessibility and enhanced inter-organizational collaboration.

“The perfect storm”: community worker perspectives on the impact of COVID-19 on New York City immigrants and migrant-serving organizations

BackgroundImmigrants in New York City (NYC) have higher COVID-19 mortality than the general population. While migrant-serving organizations (MSOs) provide access to a breadth of services, they are disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic due to staffing limitations, funding cuts, and resource limitations of communities served.MethodsSix focus-group discussions were conducted to explore the experiences of MSOs in NYC during the COVID-19 pandemic from November 2021 to March 2022. Study participants csomprised a subsample of survey respondents from a larger study identified via lists of MSOs.ResultsTwenty-seven organizational representatives from 11 MSOs across NYC participated in the discussions. In addition to providing information on communities served, services offered, and organizational characteristics, the following themes emerged from the convenings: mental health challenges and resources needed for immigrants; immigration-related challenges; factors exacerbating hardships for immigrants during COVID-19; interorganizational collaborations and partnerships; policy change; and needs/requests of MSOs. MSOs provide a wide range of services as non-profit organizations and use interorganizational collaboration to improve service delivery. The proximity of MSOs to immigrant communities helps providers understand the needs of immigrants relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and factors that shape telehealth services.ConclusionMSOs are important providers and advocates for immigration policy in the US given their relationship with the populations they serve. These findings have implications for how to support MSOs that serve immigrants in NYC. Strategies to achieve this include timelier availability and exchange of information, policies, and research as well as strengthening the experience-based advocacy of these groups.

Loosely Defined Partnerships: A Case Study of Three Refugee-Serving Nonprofit Organizations

This article uses a case study approach to explore how U.S.-based nonprofit organizations collaborate to serve immigrants and refugees and identifies characteristics that are essential to successful partnerships. While other studies have documented the challenges immigrants and refugees face in relocating to a new community and the ways community-based organizations help them through the integration process, this project brings together migration studies and nonprofit management studies to interrogate the concept of partnerships based on the lived experiences of organization staff. Partnerships are essential to providing programs and services, and this project seeks to explore the tension inherent in partnering with other organizations that have similar missions and goals. This project captures the stories of three refugee-serving nonprofit organizations in a midsouth city. Utilizing in-depth interviews to analyze the interorganizational collaborations that the three organizations have formed to provide holistic support to immigrants and refugees, the findings here suggest that partnerships are essential but often fraught. These organizations, like many nonprofits, face limited capacity and form community partnerships to alleviate these limitations. As defined by improving an organization’s ability to fulfill its core missions, successful partnerships rely on relational embeddedness and a shared mission. Findings demonstrate the necessity and benefit of a network of partnerships to meet the needs of this unique population.

Supply chain collaboration, agility and firm performance: a case of manufacturing SMEs in India

PurposeThe dynamic business environment and intense competition have mandated agility in operations for manufacturing firms. Effective inter-organizational collaboration can make operations more agile. This paper develops an interpretive model to explore the effect of supply chain collaboration (SCC) on supply chain agility (SCA) and, subsequently, on business performance.Design/methodology/approachA hierarchical model that illustrates the relationship between SCC, SCA and firm performance components is developed using total interpretative structural modeling (TISM). Also, statistical validation of the model has been performed.FindingsThe results indicate that the vision and alertness of the firm on the strategic front promote collaboration between supply chain partners. This creates operational agility, helping the firm to absorb fluctuations in demand, thereby enhancing business performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe opinion of most respondents was considered to develop the TISM framework over the fuzzy one, which necessitates a significantly more extensive data set. However, multiple discussions with participants can eliminate the prejudice of the majority approach. Also, the paper's development and validation were restricted to Indian manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The model can potentially be evaluated in large organizations to provide further insights.Originality/valueThe study blends the factors of SCC and SCA in a novel way to explain their combined impact on business performance. The TISM model addresses the “why” of theory development in addition to the “what” and “how” of it. Using triangulation in combination with the interpretative tool, this study additionally offers methodological value.

Comparison of two audit and feedback approaches: descriptive analysis of personal and contextual dynamics

ABSTRACT Introduction: Audit and feedback (A&F) is a systematic intervention that can be used to improve the quality of health care. The EASY-NET Network Project proposes an innovative A&F model. Aim: This study aimed to describe the newly proposed A&F model. An analysis was conducted, examining the participants’ attitudes and their individual and interpersonal mechanisms to understand how they influence the work context and vice versa. Methods: Two A&F models were compared, involving emergency and rehabilitation health workers, who were divided into two groups. The classic A&F model was compared with a new model, using a desk audit followed by interactive feedback. Communication training was provided to the audit team by psychologists before commencement of the project. The experimental group underwent psychological screening using two standardized tools (COPE-NVI and ProQoL) to evaluate personal and relational dynamics using the context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) paradigm. Results: The exchange of ideas among health professionals is more effective when using face-to-face feedback than written feedback. The COPE-NVI and ProQoL questionnaires highlighted the difficulties experienced by health care professionals in implementing effective coping strategies to deal with stressful events. Conclusions: Identifying signs of stress in health care workers is essential for improvement strategies to be implemented and for establishing new, optimal conditions. Remote feedback makes it possible to overcome logistical barriers and, in the future, this method can be used for inter-organizational collaboration. Spanish abstract: http://links.lww.com/IJEBH/A203

Japanese primary care physicians' postpartum mental health care: A cross‐sectional study

AbstractBackgroundPostpartum mental health care is a public health priority requiring interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration. Primary care physicians (PCPs) have the potential to play an essential role in facilitating access to health care and providing comprehensive and coordinated care for postpartum mental health problems. In Japan, however, there are no previous studies on the extent to which PCPs are involved in postpartum mental health care. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the practices and experiences of Japanese PCPs in providing such care.MethodsThis study presents a subset of the findings from a cross‐sectional study using an online questionnaire on postpartum care among Japanese PCPs. We employed descriptive analysis to examine their practices and experiences in providing general and postpartum mental health care.ResultsWe received 339 valid responses from 5811 PCPs. The median proportion of the outpatients with mental health problems that PCPs regularly saw was 15%. Approximately two out of three PCPs (68.7%) reported routinely performing screening for depression and anxiety. Seventy‐six percent of PCPs had the opportunity to provide care for postpartum women. Approximately one in two PCPs (47.8%) had managed cases of postpartum mental health problems and collaborated with various professionals and resources to provide care.ConclusionsThe majority of Japanese PCP participants in the study provide mental health care and have managed cases of postpartum mental health problems, collaborating with various health professionals.

IoT applications in asset management: A review of accounting and tracking techniques

In the digital age, the confluence of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies with asset management practices heralds a transformative era, promising unprecedented efficiency and strategic advantage. This paper delves into the intricacies of this integration, exploring the evolution, challenges, and potential of IoT in reshaping asset management paradigms. With a keen aim to elucidate the transformative impact of IoT and navigate the complexities of its integration into asset management systems, the study adopts a qualitative research methodology, underpinned by a systematic literature review. This approach enables a comprehensive exploration of the subject matter, ensuring a nuanced understanding of the IoT's potential and pitfalls within the asset management domain. The findings illuminate a landscape where IoT applications significantly enhance asset utilization rates, underscored by empirical success stories and quantifiable improvements in operational efficiency. However, the journey reveals barriers—technical, organizational, and cultural—that impede seamless IoT adoption. Addressing these challenges, the paper offers strategic recommendations, emphasizing the need for strategic alignment, inter-organisational collaboration, and robust data management strategies to overcome integration hurdles. Conclusively, the study not only achieves its aim of highlighting the potential of IoT in asset management but also charts a course for future endeavors in this field. It posits that the strategic integration of IoT technologies stands as a cornerstone for the next generation of asset management practices, promising a future marked by enhanced efficiency, economic viability, and strategic agility. The recommendations provided serve as a compass for organizations embarking on the IoT integration journey, guiding them towards a horizon of transformative potential.

A Data-Driven Approach to Discovering Process Choreography

Implementing approaches based on process mining in inter-organizational collaboration environments presents challenges related to the granularity of event logs, the privacy and autonomy of business processes, and the alignment of event data generated in inter-organizational business process (IOBP) execution. Therefore, this paper proposes a complete and modular data-driven approach that implements natural language processing techniques, text similarity, and process mining techniques (discovery and conformance checking) through a set of methods and formal rules that enable analysis of the data contained in the event logs and the intra-organizational process models of the participants in the collaboration, to identify patterns that allow the discovery of the process choreography. The approach enables merging the event logs of the inter-organizational collaboration participants from the identified message interactions, enabling the automatic construction of an IOBP model. The proposed approach was evaluated using four real-life and two artificial event logs. In discovering the choreography process, average values of 0.86, 0.89, and 0.86 were obtained for relationship precision, relation recall, and relationship F-score metrics. In evaluating the quality of the built IOBP models, values of 0.95 and 1.00 were achieved for the precision and recall metrics, respectively. The performance obtained in the different scenarios is encouraging, demonstrating the ability of the approach to discover the process choreography and the construction of business process models in inter-organizational environments.

Is Project ECHO the transformational silver lining for interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration?

ABSTRACT The globally disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both healthcare systems and health profession education has created an opportunity for a reassessment of methods for delivering interprofessional practice education (IPE). A good candidate for consideration is Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes). Its unique combination of structural design in connecting specialist and community-based clinical sites, foundational education theories, and didactic and case-based learning methods present an innovative and promising new method of promoting both interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration. This paper first provides a description of Project ECHO, its major features, recent expansion during the pandemic, and IPE-related research history. Second, the educational concepts and theories underlying its use and their implications for interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration are reviewed. These include community of practice and single and double-loop learning. Third, the expression of these concepts in how key elements of ECHO are utilized – including the didactic presentation; the case study presentation, discussion, and tele-mentoring; and the power of community and tele-networking – will be explored. Finally, implications and applications for the expansion of ECHO into promoting competency-based education and innovative interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration will be presented.

Constraints on achieving strong horizontal accountability in a public sector context—A case study of refugee resettlement in New Zealand

IMPACT An examination of the cross-governmental agency and non-government agencies’ (NGOs) programme for the delivery of refugee resettlement services in New Zealand identified little evidence of the horizontal accountability relationships that had been expected. The reasons for this problem were investigated. Recommendations to promote horizontal accountability, which apply beyond New Zealand, include rethinking legislation, establishing explicit rules and processes and fostering joint ventures. Practitioners in public management and NGOs working with the public sector, especially those involved in refugee resettlement and inter-organizational collaboration, will find this article valuable. The authors offer insights into enhancing horizontal accountability, promoting effective governance and, ultimately, significantly improving service delivery in complex public service environments.

Concept of Operations as Epistemic Object: The Sociotechnical Design Roles of a Systems Engineering Document

When large, complex interorganizational collaborations create new systems, they must discover how the system should work and how it should integrate into the overall organizational milieu. These collaborations must also draw upon and accommodate a host of processes and resources. In this paper, we present results from a qualitative case study of a key policy and process document for a large design project for a civic traffic management system that must serve multiple organizations and government agencies. The document is one common to systems engineering, but less familiar to CSCW: the Concept of Operations (ConOps). We describe the sociotechnical design functions of the ConOps. We also analyze the document and its developmental process using Ewenstein and Whyte's concept of epistemic objects," which has been useful for CSCW and design research scholars to understand the roles artifacts play in the messy processes of design and cooperative work. We find that the ConOps exhibits many qualities of an epistemic object and supports the deeply integrated work of "designing" both the system and the interorganizational collaboration itself. We then explore avenues for future research in similarly complex infrastructural design settings.

Managerial challenges in the conditions of digitalisation. A review of the book “Management for digital transformation” (Springer, 2024)

The active processes of digitalisation of socio-economic systems require modifications of managerial activities which should be facilitated by relevant scientific developments. This article is a review of the monograph devoted to peculiarities of management in the conditions of digital transformation and written by the international team of specialists. The work includes 9 main chapters which address very different aspects of the problem and particularly control during digitalisation, technology transfer, talent management, interaction with customers, marketing tools, e-commerce, functioning of virtual teams, inter-organisational collaboration, management of digital waste. Generally, it is found that despite the fact that digitalisation opens new perspectives for managerial activities, it also forms significant difficulties, and its effects are ambivalent or can often be negative. The considered research field seems to be rather poorly studied, and the monograph successfully poses new questions for the subsequent investigations. The reviewed work demonstrates the mosaic composition; nonetheless, it is informative and offers an original view of the problem. It contains a lot of interesting conceptual constructs and is rich in factual materials. Also, the edition is distinguished by a substantial number of terms, and the available subject index facilitates better orientation in the latter. The style is purely academic, but the potential readership seems to be wide. Despite a few minor deficiencies, the monograph, undoubtedly, will be interesting to Russian specialists.

School Health Services' Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Interorganizational Collaboration Regarding Students With Mental Illness: A Scoping Review.

School health services (SHSs) and school nurses play a crucial role in identifying and supporting students with mental illness. The integration of information and communication technology (ICT) can facilitate interorganizational collaboration in this context. Due to the limited research in this area, a scoping review was conducted to explore SHSs' use of ICT in interorganization collaboration regarding students with mental illness. Six articles were reviewed, revealing three key themes: "types of ICT employed by SHSs in interorganizational collaboration," "constellation of SHSs in interorganizational collaboration," and "opportunities and challenges for SHSs using ICT in interorganizational collaboration." Notably, two of the six articles highlighted the absence of school nurses in interorganizational collaboration. Even though ICT plays a crucial role in interorganizational collaboration, no comprehensive solution was found. This scoping review confirms that there are challenges with operability and regulations that govern the exchange of private information between organizations.

Evidence in Practice: How Structural and Programmatic Scaffolds Enable Collaboration in International Development

This inductive study of eight international development interventions analyzes mechanisms that enable integration of evidence in practice, a perennial challenge of learning and collaboration across occupational and organizational boundaries. We demonstrate how structural and programmatic scaffolding practices enabled actors from an array of organizations and communities of practice to collaborate and learn despite the uncertainty and complexity inherent in the international development context. These modular scaffolding practices offered temporary stabilization and support that fostered the counter-normative behaviors and mindsets required for continuous learning and adaptive coordination. Through 226 in-depth interviews with international development experts, including practitioners in eight matched interventions in India, Mexico, South Africa, and Ghana, we identified and analyzed mechanisms that explain the varying effectiveness with which evidence was integrated in each case. Our findings have implications for interorganizational innovation and collaboration under conditions of complexity and uncertainty and for dynamic interactions among individuals, their organizations, and their communities of practice when they are attempting to bring about systemic change.

How perceived risks in interorganizational collaboration shape disaster response strategies

AbstractInterorganizational collaboration is a means, through which governments to effectively respond to disasters. However, the extent to which collaboration risks embedded in interorganizational relationships shape such collaborative arrangements largely remains unanswered. This study examined the impact of collaboration risks as perceived by organizational representatives with regard to emergency management (EM). To this end, we conducted an EM survey in Seoul in 2015 and analyzed the data using a quadratic assignment procedure logistic regression. The dyadic network analytic results demonstrated that the aggregate risks as perceived by paired organizations are negatively associated with the establishment of collaboration ties. In contrast, a significant disparity in the perceived risk levels between paired organizations promotes collaborative network arrangements; when one party perceives substantially lower collaboration risks relative to the other, it can create a favorable condition for both parties to initiate interorganizational collaboration.

Evolution of Project-Based Collaborative Networks for Implementing Prefabricated Construction Technology: Case Study in Shanghai

Prefabricated construction (PC) is considered to be a low-carbon construction method. Implementing prefabricated construction projects (PCPs) requires multiple industry organizations to participate and collaborate. As different PCPs are initiated and implemented, industry organizations will gradually gather into a complex and evolving collaborative network at the industry level based on specific collaboration relationships with different project backgrounds. The evolution of the collaborative network is related to how industry organizations interact with each other, and how PC-related knowledge and innovation has spread among organizations in the long term. However, the laws of network evolution and the micro effects that drive network evolution are still unknown. This study analyzes 236 prefabricated construction projects (PCPs) in Shanghai during 2015–2023, using the stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) method to explore how the macro structure of project-based inter-organizational collaborative networks for prefabricated construction (PC) technology implementation evolves over time, and how micro effects jointly support the evolution of the networks. The macro-level descriptive analysis of the network indicates that the collaborative network has become increasingly dense over time and continues to show a core–peripheral structure, with a small number of super-connected organizations. The micro-level SAOM analysis further reveals that the evolution of the collaborative network structure is driven by structure-based preferential attachment and geographic proximity effects, as well as attribute-based ownership similarity effect. This exploratory effort applies a network dynamics model to investigate the micro mechanism of the evolution of inter-organizational collaboration. The research results provide theoretical guidance and decision-making references for PC industry organizations to develop efficient network action strategies. In addition, it can help industry managers to formulate appropriate network management strategies.

Governing collaborative networks in mega transport projects development: Integrative findings from 34 cases worldwide

To enhance the development of transport infrastructure, various networks characterised by cross-sector, interorganisational collaborations have been designed, structured and deployed to tackle project complexities and achieve predefined objectives. However, these endeavours have received limited scrutiny in prior studies. To address this gap and gain novel insights, we conduct a multi-case review of 34 mega transport projects (MTPs) across 14 countries and regions from the perspective of network-based collaboration governance. Three communal complexities that trigger the governance demand for collaborative networks are first identified, followed by an evaluation of their relationships with network structures and governance mechanisms. The findings reveal a multi-level structure within collaborative networks encompassing collaborative governance, financial governance and interorganisational governance, each of which involves distinct governance structures, processes and orchestrators. Following the above-mentioned analysis, we propose an integrative framework to underpin the typology for collaborative network governance, which enables MTPs to improve cross-sector, interorganisational collaboration. Furthermore, these findings consolidate the knowledge base for MTP development, providing a cross-disciplinary platform to guide developed, developing and undeveloped topics and the related discourse in this important field of academic endeavour.

Interorganizational Knowledge Transfer in Mass Gatherings: Exploring the Health and Safety Stakeholders' Perceptions Participating in the Athens Marathon.

Mass gatherings (MGs) usually represent significant challenges for the public health and safety sector of the host cities. Organizing a safe and successful mass event highly depends on the effective collaboration among different public and private organizations. It is necessary to establish successful coordination to ensure that all the key stakeholders understand their respective roles and responsibilities. The inconsistency between the variety of participating agencies because of their different culture can result in delays in decision making. Interorganizational knowledge transfer can improve the success of the event; however, knowledge transfer among professionals and agencies in MGs is not well-documented. This study used the 2018 Athens Marathon as the empirical setting to examine how interorganizational knowledge transfer was perceived among the multiple public health and safety professionals during the planning stage of the event. Data comprised 18 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with key informants, direct observations of meetings, and documentary analysis. Open coding and thematic analysis were used to analyze the data. Findings indicated that sharing the acquired knowledge was a necessary and challenging step to create an enabling collaborative environment among interacting organizations. Experiential learning was identified as a significant factor, which helped promote joint understanding and partnership work. Informal interpersonal exchanges and formal knowledge transfer activities facilitated knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries, helping to break down silos. Interorganizational knowledge transfer is a necessary step to achieve joint understanding and create an environment where interaction among agencies can be more effective. The study findings can be beneficial for organizers of marathons and other mass sporting events to support valuable interorganizational collaboration and conduct a safe event.

Managing Chinese suppliers' sustainability performance: The double-edged role of guanxi governance

Despite the critical role of interorganizational governance in business-to-business (B2B) relationships, research on how different types of interorganizational governance influence sustainable supply chain collaboration (SSCC) is limited. Drawing on transaction cost economics and social exchange theory, this study investigates the role of Chinese informal relational governance (guanxi governance) in SSCC in channel relationships. With a three-wave survey data collected from 205 Chinese manufacturers, the proposed theoretical model is tested through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that both formal contractual governance and informal guanxi governance have a positive effect on SSCC. However, guanxi weakens the positive effect of contractual governance. In addition, SSCC exhibits a favorable impact on firms' social, environmental, and economic performance. These findings reveal the double-edged role of guanxi governance and contribute to current knowledge of relationship management in sustainable supply chains.