Change comes at a cost: balancing alliance partners’ mission and efficiency goals in Chicago’s Back Office Cooperative

case study of the challenges encountered by a multilateral non-profit alliance and particular emphasis on the cultural barriers to realizing collaborative synergies

Strategic alliance structures: an organization design perspective

While strategic alliances have emerged in recent years as common and important structural vehicles for business development, surprisingly little is known about how collaborative activities are organized and administered within these governance structures. We see classic organizational scholarship as useful insofar as it both provides clear classifications that distinguish alternative intraorganizational designs and explicates how they affect the inner workings of organizations. Existing alliance classification schemes based on type of collaborative activity, partner characteristics, or legal structure, on the other hand, rarely delineate important differences of how collaborative work is organized among partners. We seek to redress this shortcoming by developing a framework of alliance structural parameters based on classic organizational design considerations. Specifically we identify and discuss five key design parameters for alliances: the structural interface between partners, the structural “intraface” within partners, and the specialization, formalization, and centralization of the alliance organization. We show how consideration of these five parameters provides a deeper understanding of alliance governance and suggest how partner organizations can achieve differential levels of connectivity and steering for their collaborative ventures

Supplier Engagement in Sustainability Programs: A Field Experiment of Enabling Versus Coercive Formalization

Formal, compliance-focused governance for supply chain sustainability initiatives has a mixed empirical track record. We build on classic research on bureaucracy to examine how “enabling” and “coercive” formalization at the buyer–supplier interface affect attitudes, an important precursor to behavioral engagement. We conduct a randomized field experiment with the supplier community of a South African insurance company to directly compare treatment effects of enabling and coercive interventions. We report and discuss the enabling intervention’s positive attitudinal effects and the moderation of these effects by supplier characteristics. Our findings also reveal some notable null effects, especially from the coercive intervention. We believe this work contributes to a more nuanced understanding of formal governance choices in supply chains and their impact on supplier engagement

Rich language for poor firms: the symbolic management of bankruptcy

This study theorizes and tests the notion that firms that engage in symbolic can generate positive bankruptcy outcomes. We test our hypothesis with data on 250 bankruptcy cases spanning three years, employing a content analysis of these companies’ rich language surrounding the bankruptcy filing

Management Scholarships Contribution to Climate Change Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

As climate change pervades natural and social systems, the integration of social sciences in interdisciplinary climate change research is crucial but often lacking. In this study, we use bibliometric analyses of management research on climate change to understand how management scholars have navigated interdisciplinarity, and what impact their efforts had on top-tier climate change research. We find that management scholarship (1) features substantial engagement with an interdisciplinary knowledge base through backward references, and (2) fails to attract the attention of climate change research in top-tier interdisciplinary journals, as evidenced in very low and stagnant forward citations.

Rapid Design and Delivery of an Experience-Based Co-designed Mobile App to Support the Mental Health Needs of Health Care Workers Affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impact Evaluation Protocol

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of health care workers' mental health and well-being for the successful function of the health care system. Few targeted digital tools exist to support the mental health of hospital-based health care workers, and none of them appear to have been led and co-designed by health care workers. OBJECTIVE: RMHive is being led and developed by health care workers using experience-based co-design (EBCD) processes as a mobile app to support the mental health challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic to health care workers. We present a protocol for the impact evaluation for the rapid design and delivery of the RMHive mobile app. METHODS: The impact evaluation will adopt a mixed methods design. Qualitative data from photo interviews undertaken with up to 30 health care workers and semistructured interviews conducted with up to 30 governance stakeholders will be integrated with qualitative and quantitative user analytics data and user-generated demographic and mental health data entered into the app. Analyses will address three evaluation questions related to engagement with the mobile app, implementation and integration of the app, and the impact of the app on individual mental health outcomes. The design and development will be described using the Mobile Health Evidence Reporting and Assessment guidelines. Implementation of the app will be evaluated using normalization process theory to analyze qualitative data from interviews combined with text and video analysis from the semistructured interviews. Mental health impacts will be assessed using the total score of the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ4) and subscale scores for the 2-item Patient Health Questionnaire for depression and the 2-item Generalized Anxiety Scale for anxiety. The PHQ4 will be completed at baseline and at 14 and 28 days. RESULTS: The anticipated average use period of the app is 30 days. The rapid design will occur over four months using EBCD to collect qualitative data and develop app content. The impact evaluation will monitor outcome data for up to 12 weeks following hospital-wide release of the minimal viable product release. The study received funding and ethics approvals in June 2020. Outcome data is expected to be available in March 2021, and the impact evaluation is expected to be published mid-2021. CONCLUSIONS: The impact evaluation will examine the rapid design, development, and implementation of the RMHive app and its impact on mental health outcomes for health care workers. Findings from the impact evaluation will provide guidance for the integration of EBCD in rapid design and implementation processes. The evaluation will also inform future development and rollout of the app to support the mental health needs of hospital-based health care workers more widely. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/26168

Rapid Design and Delivery of an Experience-Based Co-designed Mobile App to Support the Mental Health Needs of Health Care Workers Affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impact Evaluation Protocol (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of health care workers’ mental health and well-being for the successful function of the health care system. Few targeted digital tools exist to support the mental health of hospital-based health care workers, and none of them appear to have been led and co-designed by health care workers. OBJECTIVE RMHive is being led and developed by health care workers using experience-based co-design (EBCD) processes as a mobile app to support the mental health challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic to health care workers. We present a protocol for the impact evaluation for the rapid design and delivery of the RMHive mobile app. METHODS The impact evaluation will adopt a mixed methods design. Qualitative data from photo interviews undertaken with up to 30 health care workers and semistructured interviews conducted with up to 30 governance stakeholders will be integrated with qualitative and quantitative user analytics data and user-generated demographic and mental health data entered into the app. Analyses will address three evaluation questions related to engagement with the mobile app, implementation and integration of the app, and the impact of the app on individual mental health outcomes. The design and development will be described using the Mobile Health Evidence Reporting and Assessment guidelines. Implementation of the app will be evaluated using normalization process theory to analyze qualitative data from interviews combined with text and video analysis from the semistructured interviews. Mental health impacts will be assessed using the total score of the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ4) and subscale scores for the 2-item Patient Health Questionnaire for depression and the 2-item Generalized Anxiety Scale for anxiety. The PHQ4 will be completed at baseline and at 14 and 28 days. RESULTS The anticipated average use period of the app is 30 days. The rapid design will occur over four months using EBCD to collect qualitative data and develop app content. The impact evaluation will monitor outcome data for up to 12 weeks following hospital-wide release of the minimal viable product release. The study received funding and ethics approvals in June 2020. Outcome data is expected to be available in March 2021, and the impact evaluation is expected to be published mid-2021. CONCLUSIONS The impact evaluation will examine the rapid design, development, and implementation of the RMHive app and its impact on mental health outcomes for health care workers. Findings from the impact evaluation will provide guidance for the integration of EBCD in rapid design and implementation processes. The evaluation will also inform future development and rollout of the app to support the mental health needs of hospital-based health care workers more widely. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT DERR1-10.2196/26168 </sec