Collaborative Capability Design: Redundancy of Potentialities

In this study we extend the socio-ecological concept of two contrasting design principles applicable to all work systems. Reframing those design principles as strategic as well as operational choices leads us to propose a third design principle, Design Principle 3 (DP3), which has remained undeveloped in social ecology. We call this design principle Redundancy of Potentialities and demonstrate its application in transorganizational work systems. We argue that DP3 is at the core of socio-ecological practice and is therefore appropriate for coping with the highly turbulent environments now experienced in many industries and fields. We offer several illustrations of DP3 in practice and draw implications for enhancing capabilities for creative collaboration in inter-organizational fields through deliberate attention to design

Maintenance of cross-sector partnerships: the role of frames in sustained collaboration

We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership (XSP) that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first eight years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphorus, a nutrient that is critical to crop growth but whose natural reserves have dwindled significantly. Drawing on 27 interviews and over 3,000 internal documents, we study the evolution of different frames used by diverse actors in an XSP. We demonstrate the role of framing in helping actors to avoid some of the common pitfalls for an XSP, such as debilitating conflict, and in creating sufficient common ground to sustain collaboration. As opposed to a commonly held assumption in the XSP literature, we find that collaboration in a partnership does not have to result in a unanimous agreement around a single or convergent frame regarding a contentious issue. Rather, successful collaboration between diverse partners can also be achieved by maintaining a productive tension between different frames through ‘optimal’ frame plurality – not excessive frame variety that may prevent agreements from emerging, but the retention of a select few frames and the deletion of others towards achieving a narrowing frame bandwidth. One managerial implication is that resources need not be focussed on reaching a unanimous agreement among all partners on a single mega-frame vis-à-vis a contentious issue, but can instead be used to kindle a sense of unity in diversity that allows sufficient common ground to emerge, despite the variety of actors and their positions

Contrasting perspectives of strategy making: applications in 'Hyper' environments

We revisit the original meaning of turbulence in the socioecological tradition of organization studies and outline a perspective on strategy making grounded in that tradition. This entails a contrast of the socioecological perspective with the more well-known neoclassical perspective on strategy, based on their core decision premises and their different understandings of environmental turbulence. We argue that while some mainstream strategy approaches have taken important strides toward addressing advanced turbulence, many others remain tethered to the neoclassical origins of the strategy discipline and are insufficiently responsive to the new landscape of strategy that now characterizes many industries. This new landscape is construed as the ‘hyper environment’, in which positive feedback processes and emergent field effects produce high volatility. We use two case illustrations from the US healthcare sector to examine how neoclassical and socioecological perspectives contribute to strategizing in hyper environments. Implications for strategic management theory and practice flow from this analysis

'Totally Un-Australian!': Discursive and Institutional Interplay in the Melbourne Port Dispute of 1997-98

We examine how discourses are mobilized and deployed by actors in an inter-organizational domain during a critical industrial relations event. We identify the ways that business interests and union interests in the Melbourne Port industrial dispute of 1997-98 related to each other. We weave concepts from domain theory and organizational discourse theory in deriving the concept of the "discursively ordered domain". This suggests that the main processes that occur in a domain are actors''mapping' texts onto discourses and discourses onto interpretive schemes which make certain courses of action rational and sensible. Methodologically, we join an institutional-historical analysis and a text-based discourse analysis to gain a well-rounded understanding of the situation. We extract several discursive frameworks which the major actors mobilized to make sense of the situation, and draw linkages to the actions that those positions made possible. The main findings are that actors in the two networks performed complex mapping in different ways, the material and symbolic outcomes of the dispute are products of those mapping processes, and the material and discursive aspects of the domain interweave. We discuss the value of the concept of discursively ordered domain for mutually enriching domain theory and discourse analysis and for understanding critical events such as major industrial disputes in new ways. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..

Even we are sheeps': cultural displacement in management education

An increasing number of university lecturers and students are engaged in classroom activity in national-cultural contexts which are "foreign." The foreign context confronts these culturally-displaced people with distinctive yet unfamiliar cultural practices and norms related to management education. These contexts are fraught with misunderstandings and with unintended consequences, both comic and tragic, as both the indigenous and the culturally displaced people struggle to make sense of their shared experiences. I recount a novel classroom experience which emerged while I, an American university lecturer, was on sabbatical in Turkey. After test cheating was recognised as an important issue for both students and myself, the rules about cheating were re-negotiated. This enabled the students to take a "collective midterm" test, which proved to be a peak experience for many of them - and for myself. The experience is framed as a critical incident in a wider case of cultural displacement. The case is used as a lever to raise and reflect on a number of issues in cross-cultural management education that can be expected to become more salient in the future. These include the social construction of cheating; power and control dynamics in university classrooms; and the management of cultural displacement. Thus the case may be usefully interpreted not merely as a technical problem of the control of cheating, or even as an adaptation problem of culturally displaced lecturers and students, but also as a systems problem concerning the effective design of learning contexts

An open-systems perspective on urban ports: an exploratory comparative analysis

Emery and Trist's Open-Systems Thinking (OST) school is identified as an important but underutilised approach in systems theory. The main features of OST are described, and the concepts are then demonstrated through application to a case concerning the complex social dynamics of urban port domains in New Zealand. An exploratory comparative exercise is then undertaken, in which the case is re-framed in terms of three other systems schools: system dynamics, soft systems methodology, and critical systems thinking. This exploration reveals some fundamental differences in their ontological underpinnings. It also illuminates some lacunae in the previous representation of the port domain case. The exercise helps us to begin to articulate a framework to aid in cross-referencing the four systems schools, and to situate OST concepts in relation to other systems approaches

The commons as a framework for collaboration research and practice

During the 1990s research on collaboration has been driven by several frameworks (Gray 1999), including institutional theory, resource dependency theory, transaction cost approaches, strategic management approaches, and political and critical perspectives. A distinct body of interdisciplinary research and literature has grown up outside these approaches, where a "commons" framework underpins the study of the sustainable management of resources in communities (see Ostrom, 1990; Bromley, 1992; Memon & Selsky, 1998). The resources are usually natural, and the management occurs usually by the members of a local (rather than regional or global) community. In a related development, Lohmann (1992) has used commons principles to articulate a theory about the nature of the nonprofit sector. Nevertheless, the growing body of interdisciplinary research on the nature and management of the commons has not been absorbed into the study of collaboration in the organizational sciences. We need a commons perspective because it is important that holistic rather than segmental perspectives be used in collaboration research. In a holistic perspective the unit of analysis is the whole social system with an interest in, or affected by, the issue in which collaboration is being attempted. This is in contrast to perspectives that focus on a particular element (often a powerful organizational "actor" or a key set of relations) of a social system. I will show that the inherent holism of the commons perspective provides advantages for understanding and managing collaborative action. Having trialed a commons framework in research on urban port domains in New Zealand, in this paper I comment on the broader applicability of this framework for understanding processes of collaboration in other kinds of domains. I draw together themes in recent research by others as well as myself.1 Specifically, the purposes of this paper are (1) to describe a "commons" framework for collaboration research and to situate it in relation to socio-ecological theory and institutional theory; (2) to highlight the potential uses of such a framework in research and practice; and (3) to illustrate two diverse applications of this framework

Digging deeper: re-framing cultural mismatches in strategic partnerships

The intercultural dynamics between two organisations in a strategic partnership are examined, focusing on the experienced world of boundary spanning personnel. Diagnoses of cultural mismatches are re-framed in terms of underlying dynamics of trust. Three possible intercultural states are identified and implications for managing cultural interfaces are noted