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This paper investigates a less-than-truckload carrier collaboration decision-making problem in the e-commerce logistics network. E-commerce less-than-truckload carrier collaboration problem considers multiple logistics service providers (LSPs) forming a collaborative alliance in an e-commerce logistics network. They share their transportation requests and vehicle capabilities to maximise the total profit of the entire alliance, improve their vehicle utilisation and cope with fluctuations in demand. An e-commerce logistics trading system with collaborative decisions is designed. A collaborative transportation planning model is introduced to maximise the total profit without reducing the individual profit of the carriers with information sharing. A stochastic plant-pollinator algorithm is proposed for the problem and extensive computational experiments are conducted. The results show that the proposed plant-pollinated algorithm performs better than the genetic algorithm. Furthermore, the results illustrate that the higher degree of cooperation, the more benefits for carriers. Last but not least, since the increasing gasoline price leads to the decreasing margins for the small- and medium-sized LSPs. The results also show that it is critical for them to join in the alliance to survive in the competition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Trust is frequently investigated as an indicator of a mutual relationship. Trust is especially important for globally distributed collaboration in light of the lack of face-to-face interactions. As the perception of trust is a dynamic process, however, little research is conducted measuring trust development. Whether facilitation intervention is beneficial for trust development is also unknown. In order to fill the research gaps, we followed a design science approach and incorporated collaboration engineering into the design of the treatment. Data were collected in a series of experiments with Chinese and U.S. mixed teams, including a longitudinal survey, interviews, and documentation. Through the comparison of the treatment group with the control group, we found that trust was significantly improved in the treatment group. In addition, several trust antecedents were found to explain the development. The power of facilitated collaboration is also validated as helpful for trust development. This research makes several implications, such as proposing a series of trust antecedents, a treatment design of a collaboration engineering (CE) approach for trust improvement, and a new context application of CE. This research could also help the practitioners in globally distributed collaboration who want to improve trust over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sharing of truthful information involving business intelligence between supply chain partners is a challenge on account of the asymmetric nature of the information, where one party possesses information such as market intelligence that is neither available in the public domain nor verifiable through third parties. While busesinss-to-business (B2B) technology solutions, such as CPFR (collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment), facilitate the sharing of historical information (e.g., transaction records), business intelligence (e.g., potential customer demand) is considered private. Central to CPFR is collaborative demand forecasting (CDF) that allows supply chain partners to share private demand information and incorporate the jointly derived demand forecast into production planning and product replenishment decisions. Implementing CDF, however, is a challenge because of the high costs of the laborious collaboration effort (e.g., to resolve forecast differences). Hence, companies are unable to realize the benefits of CDF and, in turn, the full potential of CPFR. Typically, the issues of information truthfulness and collaboration cost are addressed through an exception management mechanism that defines a range of forecast updates within which collaboration is automated without any human intervention in B2B trading partners. In this paper, we develop incentive-based contracts that explicitly consider the truth-telling behavior and exception resolution in decisions related to the threshold values of demand information. Our first contribution to B2B information management is in establishing the strategic value of exception management and resolution mechanisms in B2B relationships, leading to truthful revelation of demand information. Our second contribution is in developing exception-based incentive contracts, especially in light of the advances in today's business practices and technology, to address issues associated with unobservable and asymmetric demand information. Specifically, we propose a resolution contract to coordinate the supply chain that directly incorporates both exceptions and resolution in an incentive mechanism. We show that these alternative contracts are all viable solutions in assuring truthful exchange of demand information but excel individually in specific situations and, thus, provide practitioners with alternative demand collaboration tools when price negotiation is not an option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss topics appearing elsewhere in the issue, including information on decision support tools for collaborative business networks, knowledge management in production engineering, and small and medium sized enterprises.

Along with increasing supply chain risks due to economic and environmental changes, it is imperative to answer the question of how to reduce supply chain risks. This study examines supply chain collaboration as a risk mitigation strategy. The study examines three types of risks, namely supply risk, demand risk and process risk in relation to three types of collaboration, namely supplier collaboration, customer collaboration and internal collaboration, as a mechanism to mitigate those risks. The proposed relationship model is tested with data collected from 203 manufacturing companies in Australia. The results show that each area of collaboration effectively reduces its respective supply chain risk, but only the mitigation of process risk and demand risk has a direct effect on supply chain performance. In addition, both supply risk and demand risk increase process risk. We offer theoretical and practical implications of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a complex business network finding a supplier can be a very time consuming task. In advanced supply networks like build-to-order supply chains, this task should be carried out under time constraints and under uncertainties both in suppliers and in the orders. The technology of semantic service oriented architectures is aimed to support such tasks, enabling self-organising flexible supply networks (FSN). A novel approach to dynamic network members’ discovery and selection based on competence profiles included in provided service descriptions is proposed. The approach is based on the idea to characterise all FSN members by their functions or services and to describe them via profiles thus defining their roles. The profiles described by the application ontology are associated with agent-based services that negotiate to take into account explicit and tacit preferences of the enterprises, in order to dynamically configure a network on demand. Semantic service discovery and dynamic composition are used to accomplish this task. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Lean supply chain management is a relatively new concept resulting from the integration of lean philosophy into supply chain management. Decision making in a lean supply chain context is challenging because of the complexity, dynamics, and uncertainty inherent to both supply networks and the types of waste (defined as any processes, including use of resources, which do not add value to customers). Efficient knowledge management has been identified as one of the key requirements to achieve integrated support for lean supply chain decisions. This paper proposes a decision-focused knowledge framework including a multi-layer knowledge model (to capture the know-why and know-with together with the know-what and know-how), a knowledge matrix for knowledge elicitation, and a decision tree for the design of the knowledge base. A knowledge system for lean supply chain management (KSLSCM) has been developed using artificial intelligence system shells VisiRule and Flex. The KSLSCM has five core components: a supply chain decision network manager, a waste elimination knowledge base, a knowledge refinement module, an inference engine, and a decision justifier. The knowledge framework and the KSLSCM have been evaluated through an industrial decision case. It has been demonstrated through the KSLSCM that the decision-focused knowledge framework can provide efficient and effective support for collaborative decision making in supply chain waste elimination. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research aims to provide a model for SMEs to address needs and expectations of specific target groups – such as elderly, obese, disabled, or diabetic persons – to customise functional and fashionable clothes and footwear of high quality, affordable price and eco-compatible. This will be achieved by the development of a new framework for the textile, clothing and footwear industry (TCFI) based on methods and tools for (co-)design, development, configuration, production, and distribution of small order quantities in collaborative networks. The aim of this paper is to describe the reference model depicting its structure and the related tools for collaborative networks enabling products to stay as long as possible digital in order to be produced on-demand. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Knowledge sharing has been recognised as a key enhancer of supply-chain performance. However, the sharing of knowledge may not take place easily and automatically among the supply-chain partners. This paper attempts to shed some light on the mechanisms underpinning knowledge sharing in supply chains. In particular, we focus on knowledge sharing in a dyadic buyer–supplier relationship. We posit that trust and power are two important antecedents of two types of knowledge sharing between a buyer and supplier, namely technical exchange and technology transfer. To build our research model, a large-scale mail survey was conducted from a contact list of 800 companies provided by the Singapore Logistics Association. The results of the structural equation modelling suggest that trust has significant effects on technical exchange and technology transfer. Further, power also affects technical exchange and technology transfer significantly, though the impacts appear to be weaker than trust. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In today's consumer era, of rapidly shortened product life cycles, new product development has become essential for both growth and survival of organisations. The agility of new product development is governed by the effectiveness and efficiency of an organisation's intelligence and knowledge-management skills. In this rapidly changing dynamic and multi-layered environment, recognising, managing and preventing Knowledge Loss can be a key determinant of success of an organisation. In this paper, we argue for a collaborative network structure within the organisation to prevent knowledge loss in new product development. Based on our first-hand observations via an in-depth case study of six Indian auto-component manufacturing companies, we identify the sources of K-loss. We recommend ways to create collaboration pools that increase flow of information and communication and help mitigate knowledge loss throughout the value chain. We summarise our finding as usable rules-of-thumb for helping senior and middle-level managers develop and leverage collaborative networks for effectively managing knowledge loss for their organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Global patterns of industrial production have resulted in relocation of industrial operations groups in an effort to create new markets for mass and customised mass production. The collaborative effort between these dispersed teams increases the likelihood of combining ideas and knowledge in novel ways. Internet technologies enable these virtual collaboration networks to seamlessly engage in discussions that demonstrate a richness of perspectives when it comes to problem-solving and innovative idea-exchange. Indeed, knowledge creation and harnessing collective knowledge are salient features of collaborative networks (CNs) and this is witnessed by a new interest in these entities. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) display a difficulty in partnering and collaborating in global networks, especially since their technological infrastructure may be lacking. Given the widespread adoption of collaborative technologies in social contexts, this research seeks to examine how such informal interactions are facilitated in SMEs through Web 2.0 tools. Specifically, this paper seeks to contribute to existing literature by examining how Web 2.0 affects the collaborative effort in two SME CNs; this study demonstrated that the collaboration effort is amplified when Web 2.0 tools are available. Other parameters such as trust in other members’ ability; perception of usefulness; and enhancement of collective knowledge are seen as supporting the CN mutuality. In addition, it brings together the three diverse research areas of collaborative networks, internet collaborative tools and psychological barriers and enablers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The research described in this paper demonstrates how individual operational capabilities and the collective knowledge and expertise of a collaborative customer–supplier network can be harnessed to manage the challenges associated with the provision of a requisite level of product variety and customisation. It concerns the discussion and application of a previously published approach to the classification of collaborative networks, the justification of the extension to this approach and the use of the approach as a knowledge-based reference framework to demonstrate how product variety and customisation can be supported across different forms of collaborative customer–supplier networks. In addition, explanations are provided on how collaborative networks can be classified, on how their adaptive capabilities can be established, and on the characteristics and attributes that particular types of network require in order to handle their commitment to the provision of variety and customisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research aims to investigate the contributions of interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management practices as predictors of collaborative commerce (c-commerce) adoption. A non-compensatory adoption decision process was modelled using a neural network approach to examine the predictors of c-commerce adoption. A survey was undertaken in 136 firms for this research. The results showed that both interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management processes played an important role in predicting the adoption of c-commerce. In particular, variables from interorganisational relationships such as trust, communication, collaboration, and information sharing are found to contribute strongly to the predictive power of the model when compared with knowledge-management processes. This study provides insights for firms that would like to improve their supply-chain collaboration through the implementation of c-commerce. The findings lead to an understanding of what attributes of interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management processes can contribute to the improved adoption of c-commerce in the supply chain. Unlike past adoption studies which have tended to focus on technology, and organisational and environmental factors, this research examined interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management processes which are increasingly gaining the attention of researchers and practitioners. This study has also extended the existing literature by examining a non-compensatory model for technology adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Enterprises need to adopt new business paradigms in order to make a rapid response to market changes and improve the competitiveness. The development of information and communication technology allows the support of new business paradigms such as extended enterprises, virtual organisations, regional clusters, etc. The research proposed concerns the study of a dynamic network in which the partners change in short term periods. The model proposed supports the enterprises in the decisions to participate or exit in a network of enterprises. The model is based on the definition of a set of rules that operate with local information to take the decisions. The local information is the output of the collaboration process; this means that the approach proposed integrates the collaboration methodology and the decision model. This environment is related to independent plants that cooperate with reduced information sharing. A simulation environment is developed to test the approach proposed. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is a very promising tool to support the enterprise's participation decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New product development (NPD) projects offer a unique opportunity to examine knowledge integration themes in a collaborative network. We propose a finer grained view of knowledge integration mechanisms in collaborative supply chains. Specifically, we propose two different types of mechanisms that are in play within a collaborative supply chain; short-term knowledge sharing and iterative knowledge enrichment. Using data from a large and diverse set of 432 NPD projects, we investigate the effects of knowledge sharing and enrichment between firms and their collaborative network partners, on product concept effectiveness and process performance. Our findings suggest that knowledge sharing and enrichment are significant mechanisms for enterprise-wide knowledge integration in collaborative networks. In addition, upstream knowledge sharing and enrichment has a significant influence on both product concept effectiveness and manufacturing process performance, over and above the effects of downstream knowledge sharing and enrichment. The relationship of upstream and downstream knowledge sharing and enrichment on product concept effectiveness and process performance had varying effects based on the contexts of product type, stage in the product life cycle and project size, indicating a context-specific influence of knowledge strategies. The implication of our results on academic theory and managerial practice is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conveners, as the main organizers of complex inter-organizational collaborations (IOCs), experience tensions as they make decisions based on collaborators' competing interests and ideas. This paper theorizes conveners' tension management as their proactive efforts to shape the IOC processes – as opposed to reactive responses to emergent tensions – and examines how they are related to IOCs' collaborative capacity. A comparative case analysis of two IOCs in regional planning reveals that conveners' organizing practices that actively promoted tensions contributed to creating a more dynamic and tension-resistant collaborative environment, compared to those of conveners who tried to prevent tensions. Using tensile structure as a metaphor, the author theorizes about when and how proactively promoting tensions can enhance collaborative capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the generative role that child collaborators can have in the development of an ecological performance practice. It elucidates how children might uniquely do the ecological in the context of devising professional contemporary performance. Specifically, this article focuses on a piece of practice-led research, Wild Life - a performance project that sits between choreography, live art and contemporary theatre. Wild Life involved collaborating with eight professional and non-professional performers between nine and 60 years to co-devise a performance that explored and enacted ‘wildness’. The process of co-creating, directing and critically reflecting on Wild Life has led me to propose that intergenerational collaboration is a particularly dynamic performance ecology through which to understand and develop an ecological practice. The main proposition of this article is that the ecological potential of performance lies in the actualities of devising in collaboration with diverse people, where children are treated as capable and skilled artists in their own right who have unique performance aesthetics, styles and abilities. I discuss how child collaborators might significantly enable live theatrical performance to do the ecological in its very modes and moments of enactment. I propose that the spontaneity and pragmatism of, what I call, the just doing-ness of child performers, can implicitly draw attention to what Jane Bennett (2010) describes as the ‘vital materiality’ of the human and, in doing so, performance can draw attention to our inevitable human interconnection and interactivity with(in) vibrant nonhuman matter. This discussion brings diverse fields into dialogue with each other in order to offer a unique discussion on children, performance and ecology. These fields are: performance and ecology; children in contemporary performance; intergenerational practice; and, vital materialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative arrangements and partnerships are increasingly perceived as the lifeblood of social entrepreneurship. How, why and when collaboration occurs across the social entrepreneurial ecosystem is an emergent area of research emphasis with potential to contribute to and develop new theories as well as provide practical insights. This introductory article, for the special issue on ‘The Collaborative Dynamic in Social Entrepreneurship’, draws on extant literature and three original contributions to explore the nature and challenges of the collaborative imperative in social entrepreneurship and to present possible avenues for future research. It also comments on theoretical underpinnings and provides methodological insights for the future study of collaborative social entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology advances enable people to trade and sell their own travel products, which in turn create numerous transformation changes into the tourism industry structure, the nature of tourism products and experiences, the competitiveness of traditional and new tourism players and the process creating (social) value in tourism. This paper investigates the application and implications of collaborative commerce in tourism and provides suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The organization of industry–science collaboration in case of knowledge transfer for radical innovation is central to this study. Based on a contingency notion, the relation between research and development (R&D) projects’ properties and the way of collaboration is explored. By means of in-depth interviews with industrial managers 32 projects were studied. We found two configurations: consortium-deluxe and research services-plus. The invention’s time-to-market was identified as the discriminating factor. The first configuration represents a large-scale consortium in which a firm over time informally adjusts the activities of some academic partners towards the objectives of its own project. In the research services-plus configuration, firms are looking for specific knowledge to complete their own, highly confidential projects. Because of internal deadlines, delay is undesired and the level of control is high. On the contrary to ‘classic’ research services, mobility plays an important role in services-plus. These configurations will help to reach more effective knowledge transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a growing research interest in the relationship between the composition of regional knowledge bases and the extra-regional collaborative ties maintained by actors during their development work. To investigate this relationship, we use patent data to characterize European NUTS 3 regions by their (i) comparative technological specializations; and (ii) related technological variety. We find domestic, extra-regional collaboration to be negatively associated with regional technological specialization and related technological variety. At the same time, we find related technological variety to serve in support of international innovation collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses if the collaborative networked organisations (CNO) concept can bring advantages in organising the international outbound logistics for SMEs. In the manufacturing domain, the European CNO research has identified benefits from using the concept in traditional supply chains, collaboration in various inbound networks and business ecosystems. Less focus has been on outbound logistics for delivering products and related service to customers at remote locations. The analysis is based on conducted company interviews. The interviewed companies have a good record of successful international operations. The used international delivery models are mapped into taxonomy of well-known outbound logistics models. The paper proposes a customer interface network model, based on the CNO concept to tackle problems encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research objectives of this paper are twofold. First, it attempts to identify the critical factors facilitating the acquisition of technology from foreign partner firms and performance enhancement in international collaborative formations. Second, it compares these factors across Western and Japanese sub-samples. A new concept, realised absorptive capacity, is employed to achieve these objectives. Using a sample collected through a questionnaire-based survey, our results show that trust and communication are critical components in transforming new knowledge, while active managerial involvement of the foreign firm and the participation of foreign expatriates are the keys to applying it for business operations. In particular, components consisting of the ability to exploit new knowledge (i.e. active managerial involvement of foreign firm, participation of foreign expatriates and provision of training) are closely associated with performance enhancement. In addition, our results confirm that there clearly exist different patterns of learning mechanisms and incompatible behaviours in improving performance between the two sub-samples. Based on the results, the authors suggest implications and future research avenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on interactive governance and legal pluralism and its benefits with reference to the governability of fisheries and coastal systems. The interactive and collaborative process of government, civil society and markets and their proactive role is discussed. The need of interactive governance, its empirical and normative aspects and its application in legal pluralism is also discussed.

This article discusses the influence of total quality management (TQM) and knowledge management (KM) on collaborative commerce (c-commerce) adoption. An extensive review of literature was carried out to develop an integrated model of TQM and KM to examine the influence of TQM and KM on c-commerce adoption. The findings provide a basis for developing a model to advance the TQM, KM and innovation adoption research literature. This study proposes a new integrated model which includes practices from both TQM and KM theories to examine if these practices will result in an improvement in the adoption of c-commerce. Organisations intending to adopt or increase the level of adoption of c-commerce will be able to make managerial decisions based on TQM and KM practices from this research. The study makes a significant contribution by combining TQM and KM models as a methodological example which is useful for practitioners to track the degree of TQM and KM effects on c-commerce adoption. This model can be used by companies to do a pre-test baseline measurement, and then periodically reassess the effects of any TQM and KM change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of people are organizing around common needs that affect their daily life meeting in new ways, seeking solutions and using digital technology for re-shaping their environments. This paper introduces the definition of Collaborative Communities and focus on the digital tools that they use. From the Information Design scope, it’s relevant to observe and support their actions, supplying them with better tools for designing their environments. A first step is to identify which actions they pursue and the characteristics of the involved tools. Fourteen participative-map cases have been analyzed for both their visual and technical features as well as their outcomes. A data cross-matching was conducted between their objectives, foci and a typology of collaborative actions on digital platforms. It identifies a technological discourse regarding the use of platforms and tools, while a political discourse can be seen in the use of either open source or private tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]