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Background: Strong partnerships, community engagement, and multisectoral collaboration in the health supply chain are synergistic pillars towards achieving universal health coverage. In Rwanda, the health supply chain involves the collaboration of various stakeholders, including distributors, manufacturers, wholesalers, and customers. However, since the eruption and ending of COVID-19, there has not been any study to assess stakeholders' perspectives on the status of the benefits, challenges, and best practices of collaborative partnerships among health supply chain stakeholders in Rwanda. Therefore, this research was conducted to fill that gap in order to devise ways for improved visibility, coordination, and efficiency of the health supply chain management system in Rwanda. Methods: This quantitative cross-sectional study, collected data from 11th April to 18th May 2024. It involved 103 respondents from 54 institutions engaged in the management of the health commodities supply chain in Rwanda. These were the Ministry of Health, Rwanda Biomedical Center, Rwanda Food and Drugs Authority, Rwanda Medical Supply Ltd, other Central Medical Stores namely Bureau des Formations Médicales Agréées du Rwanda (BUFMAR) and Medical and Allied Service Solutions (MEDIASOL); private wholesale pharmacies, non-government organizations, and Health Facilities (hospitals). A sample size of 103 respondents was determined by the Yamane formula, and purposive sampling was used to select the respondents to complete a self-administered questionnaire specifically developed for this study. The outcome measures were perceived benefits, challenges, and strategies to overcome challenges of collaborative partnerships among health supply chain stakeholders in Rwanda. Results: Availability of health commodities ranked at 98.0%, infrastructure/accessibility of health services (86.4%), and cost-effectiveness (84.5%) were the most mentioned benefits. Most stated challenges included insufficient financial resources from stakeholders (84.5%), shortage of skilled staff (77.7%), and limited dialogue or lack of information sharing (69.9%). Most respondents agreed that collaborative partnerships can be improved by political will (96.1%), supply performance measurement (92.2%), improved financing policies (84.5%), fostering trust and transparency building (78.6%), and a well-structured health supply chain (72.5%). Conclusion: Establishing and strengthening stakeholder collaborations are essential for improved performance. Staff capacity strengthening and mutual information sharing will reduce risks, and improve forecasting, leading to cost-effectiveness and customer satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the determinants that contribute to the successful adoption of social commerce businesses among women, including entrepreneurial mindset, perceived value, social commerce literacy, and collaborative ecosystems. It also explores the potential impact of collaborative ecosystems and the successful adoption of social commerce businesses on women's entrepreneurship. Targeting 223 women who are actively involved in social commerce businesses, data was analyzed using Smart PLS software. The results indicate that entrepreneurial mindset, perceived value, social commerce literacy, and collaborative ecosystems significantly impact the successful adoption of social commerce business among women. Furthermore, the study also found that the successful adoption of social commerce businesses and collaborative ecosystems has a significant impact on women's entrepreneurship. This study contributes to the literature and theory of social commerce adoption, women entrepreneurship, and collaborative ecosystems in several ways. It makes a valuable contribution to social commerce theory by spotlighting the intricate interplay among diverse factors that collectively shape the successful adoption of social commerce ventures among women. The study's findings also hold significant implications for a range of stakeholders, encompassing practical insights that can instigate positive transformations and enrich the realm of social commerce business and women's entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurial and established firms form collaborative relationships to commercialize products. Through such ties, entrepreneurs seek (a) development help to hone ideas into marketable products and (b) access to markets. In most cases, entrepreneurs face a trade-off: they can be a big fish in a small pond, getting more attention and development help from a smaller firm with less market access, or a small fish in a big pond, getting less attention and help from a larger firm with more market access. Our study investigates what goes into choosing between these options. Drawing from resource dependence theory and an empirical study of tie formation between developers and publishers of PlayStation 2 video games, we develop and test a framework that identifies the key decision variables and focuses on two moderators--resource need evolution and resource uncertainty related to competition--that explain whether a big fish (more development help) or a big pond (more market access) drives tie formation. Our findings point to prospective peers as one of the significant decision criteria at tie formation and highlight the dynamic nature of resource dependence. Altogether, the results give resource dependence theory a dynamic element it has lacked in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has produced contradictory insights into how prior collaboration between organizations--their relational embeddedness--impacts collective collaborative performance. We theorize that the effect of relational embeddedness on collaborative success is contingent on the type of success under consideration, and we develop a typology of two kinds of success. We test our hypotheses using data from Crunchbase on a sample of almost 11,000 U.S. start-ups backed by venture-capital (VC) firms, using the VCs' previous collaborative experience to predict the type of success that the start-ups will experience. Our findings indicate that as prior collaborative experience within a group of VCs increases, a jointly funded start-up is more likely to exit by acquisition (which we call a focused success); with less prior experience among the group of VCs, a jointly funded start-up is more likely to exit by initial public offering (a broadcast success). Our results deepen understanding of the connections between organizational performance and collaboration networks, contributing to entrepreneurship research on the role of investors in technology ventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the "multiunit back-end problem" of open innovation based on a case study of the Banque Populaire Caisse d'Epargne (BPCE) Group, a large French bank with two business units. The multiunit back-end problem occurs when internal business units who consider themselves rivals are asked to collaborate for the success of an open innovation initiative. BPCE failed several times to use external startups to accelerate its digital transformation due to rivalry between its internal business units. This article presents guidelines that firms with rival business units can use to align their front-end and back-end when working with startups to accelerate their digital transformation program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the mechanisms underpinning returns to brokerage positions by considering the role of individuals’ strategic orientation toward brokering. We conceptualize individuals’ strategic orientations in terms of arbitraging versus collaborating behaviors enacted when occupying a brokerage position. Leveraging a novel data set collected in a global consumer product company, we theorize and find evidence for the fact that arbitraging and collaborating orientations have differential effects on the relationship between brokerage and performance, significantly impacting on individuals’ ability to extract value from brokerage. We discuss the implications of these findings for the structural analysis of informal networks in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Research Summary: We investigate the implications of the degree assortativity of intra‐firm networks for firms' innovation performance. We argue that prevalent patterns of collaborative relationships between organizational members can lead to variations in the levels of degree assortativity in intra‐firm networks, ranging from disassortative structures (highly central members connect with peripheral members) to assortative ones (highly central members connect with other highly central members and vice versa). These patterns influence knowledge access and resource mobilization pathways and are thus associated with various firm‐level invention outcomes. Using coarsened exact matching methodology and controlling for other characteristics of the intra‐firm network structures, we find that assortative structures in the pharmaceutical industry are associated with larger invention output, but inventions originating from assortative structures have lower average novelty and impact. Managerial Summary: A central challenge in knowledge‐based industries is the design of collaborative teams to increase innovative output. In this article, we show that firms in the pharmaceutical industry vary in the extent to which central inventors within a firm collaborate with peripheral inventors. Further, the ideal composition varies based on the desired innovative output: Firms with frequent collaborations between central inventors have higher inventive productivity, while firms with higher mixing between central and peripheral inventors generate inventions that are on average more novel and have higher impact. Results have implications for organizational design toward desired innovative outcomes, as well as management of strategic human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a response to the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) must collaborate and work together; namely, using collaborative commerce (c-commerce). To some extent, SMEs have taken advantage of various web, e-marketplace, and social media resources to collaborate in their business activities. However, this only occurs to a partial extent. Consequently, a study was conducted to build a conceptual model of c-commerce for SMEs, for use as a standard in these collaborative activities. Data collection was performed through in-depth interviews, observation, and literature reviews. The sample selection was done via purposive sampling; specifically, SMEs' fashion products with high personalisation and good production quality. The conceptual model of c-commerce is based on the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), a suitable method for building models for new and complex ecosystems. The conceptual model is compared with a rich picture and then analysed. The final result of the conceptual model is employed to construct a c-commerce system for SMEs in creating joint products and sharing resources with their stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Studies of circular economy and innovation have received increasing attention in academic literature in the last quadrennium. They fill a managerial gap on how to operationalise the transition from the linear model to the circular. They show practices, tools and mechanisms that allow creation of business models based on circularity premises. In this article, we seek to identify the intellectual contours of this emerging field, conducting a review of the basic conceptual framework, with an analysis of articles published on the topic of circular economy and innovation. In summary, a systematic literature review was developed, whose final bibliographic portfolio consisted of 94 analysed papers. The results of the study show that eco‐innovation and innovation in business models are highlighted in this field. They are operationalised, mainly, by activating dynamic, relational and absorptive capabilities. The most important innovation practices in this context are waste management, eco‐design business models, product leasing and collaborative commerce. The main contribution of this study is to pave the way for new conceptual developments in organisational capabilities to make transition sustainable and serve as a support arsenal for the maturation of circular economy studies supported by the theory of innovation and also to link management practices to operational processes in the business and production environment favouring the transition to a circular business model. It generates insights for the scientific progression of studies and shows propositions that can be validated in future quantitative studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of our research study is to develop a hybrid instrument built on the revised Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) framework, which is reliable in predicting the behavioral intention to use the Uber ridesharing app. It focuses on extending the UTAUT2 in collaborative consumption, particularly from a consumer and ridesharing-app perspective. Our proposed framework, UTAUT-CC, preserves existing UTAUT2 constructs -- performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social expectancy, and facilitating conditions. It also retains demographic moderating variables of age and gender, while maintaining some of the key integral relationships depicted in those models. We integrated three new constructs deemed relevant in linking collaborative consumption and a sharing economy -- price, trust, and convenience. We incorporated elements of online and offline services (O2O) together from respective perspectives of mobile technology and ridesharing. Our overall model explained 70.5% of the variance of behavioral intention of Uber. We concluded the paper by exploring actionable implications for practitioners and scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges in commercial chains is to assess what their customers want and need, where uncertainty and risks sometimes become a limitation in the process of decision-making in an integrated way among the chain actors. Hence, the need for collaboration between the actors of a chain arises to mitigate the bullwhip effect, and the fact that the end customer finds himself at the center of it. This article aims to systematize a methodology for the study of the demand in a collaborative way in a Cuban commercial chain. The study is carried out in three stages: the demand management is analyzed, the demand is diagnosed and its calculation; and the demand is exchanged. This work presents a methodological value, for being a proposal of tools for the demand in the chain and a practical value for the application of the methodology in a practical case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This study intends to provide theory-driven empirical findings of the factors affecting users' loyalty to a collaborative commerce platform provider and further suggests that the platform loyalty lead to future extended use of collaborative commerce services. DeLone and McLean model serves as a basic framework for this study. Our variation of the model tested the impact of perceived value, relationship quality, and service quality on platform loyalty, which would influence future extended use of collaboration commerce services. Our results confirm that perceived value and platform quality were the best predictors for platform loyalty, which in turn, had a positive influence on future extended use intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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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]

Crowdsourcing is a promising way of solving problems in a distributed manner within a stipulated time. The working principle of crowdsourcing platforms can be either competitive or collaborative. In both of this, crowd workers (solvers) get a remuneration either predecided through bidding or preannounced by the requester (task provider). Even being convenient, the curse of competitiveness often reduces the participation of workers. We highlight that by introducing collaboration in competitive crowdsourcing markets, we can handle decomposable-type tasks in an efficient way. Here, we propose a novel mechanism for the said purpose. If the tasks are decomposable, workers may get interest to collaborate on the subtasks. This increases the chance of receiving more number of cost-effective solutions. The proposed mechanism encourages the workers to collaborate by sharing the remuneration thoughtfully. Thus, both the requester and crowd workers get benefit from the system. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism through empirical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare the characteristics of performance measurement in cross-functional and supplier-oriented purchasing and supply management (PSM) practices. It clarifies the purposes and content of performance measurement in three PSM practices.Design/methodology/approach A multiple case study approach is utilized in this study. Each of the cases is related to a contemporary performance measurement development project during the period 2015–2016. Interviews are conducted to obtain a pre-understanding of the research questions at hand. The case studies continue as an action research including measurement development workshops.Findings Identification of causalities between measurement objects and the measurement value benefits are contemporary issues of performance measurement development in the PSM context. The findings indicate that the measurement of outputs and outcomes instead of inputs and measurement supporting supplier relationship management is increasingly important in the service context. Measurement purpose affects the characteristics of PSM performance measurement. This study identifies that more informal control and non-standard measures are needed in interactive PSM practices such as cross-functional integration.Research limitations/implications The study provides practical examples of performance measurement in service purchasing, classifies the characteristics of performance measurement and highlights the need to extend the scope of measurement in the PSM context. The findings of the case studies reported support practitioners in developing performance measurement that satisfies contemporary managerial needs.Originality/value Earlier studies are often not explicit with the purpose of performance measurement. This study contributes to the existing literature by linking performance measurement characteristics to the understanding of PSM practices and providing a wider overview of the varying characteristics of performance measurement supporting strategic purchasing of services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To predict what products customers will buy in next transaction is an important task. Existing work in next-basket prediction can be summarized into two paradigms. One is the item-centric paradigm, where sequential patterns are mined from customers’ transactional data and leveraged for prediction. However, these approaches usually suffer from the data sparseness problem. The other is the user-centric paradigm, where collaborative filtering techniques have been applied on customers’ historical data. However, these methods ignore the sequential behaviors of customers which is often crucial for next-basket prediction. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid method, namely the Co-Factorization model over Sequential and Historical purchase data (CFSH for short) for next-basket recommendation. Compared with existing methods, our approach conveys the following merits: 1) By mining global sequential patterns, we can avoid the sparseness problem in traditional item-centric methods; 2) By factorizing product-product and customer-product matrices simultaneously, we can fully exploit both sequential and historical behaviors to learn customer and product representations better; 3) By using a hybrid recommendation method, we can achieve better performance in next-basket prediction. Experimental results on three real-world purchase datasets demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach as compared with the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal controls influence information quality, thus affecting the ability of supply chain partners, who rely on collaborative systems of information sharing, to reliably contract. Using SOX-related internal control assessments as a proxy for internal control quality and U.S. GAAP-mandated major customer disclosures, we find that supplier internal control quality influences supply chain relationship duration. Specifically, our evidence demonstrates that: (1) poor internal control quality increases the likelihood of subsequent customer-supplier relationship termination; (2) timely control weakness remediation attenuates termination likelihood; and (3) weaknesses affecting customer contracting drive the effect of internal control quality on relationship termination. Our results control for supplier operational quality and performance, and are robust to propensity score matching techniques, controls for reverse causality, and alternative proxies for relationship termination and internal control quality. Overall, our findings are consistent with customers viewing strong supplier controls as important, albeit overlooked, contracting elements with significant implications for supply chain relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, businesses, policymakers, and researchers alike have advocated the need for (and potential of) value creation through inter-organizational collaboration. Researchers have widely argued that organizations that are engaged in collaborative processes create value. Because researchers have tended to focus on the identification of organizational motivations and on key success factors for collaboration, however, both the nature and processes of value creation in inter-organizational collaboration have yet to be examined. A recent theory by Austin and Seitanidi (Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 41(5):726-758, 2012a; Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 41(6):929-968, 2012b) has proposed an analytical framework for analyzing value creation in inter-organizational collaboration, based on four types of value. The purpose of this current study is to empirically test this framework, and to provide key pointers for analyzing the nature of value, particularly in relation to learning. Our detailed empirical research is based on a 6-year retrospective case study of an inter-organizational partnership within an international development project for local economic development in Guatemala. The study’s contributions are twofold. First, it provides evidence of the critical path of the creation of diverse types of values in a collaborative process; second, it links the different types of value creation with the types of learning that occur in an inter-organizational process. [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]

There is already a wide acceptance on the importance of involving supplier and customer companies in product development. Decent understanding prevails on the relationshiporiented approach to product development including various collaboration forms. However, there is less research on the factors explaining the decision of attending to joint product development. In addition, less studies have examined the integrated role of both suppliers and customers in product development initiatives. This study searches answers to the following research questions: 1. What is the role of different actors in product development initiatives? 2. What factors motivate suppliers and customers to participate in product development? The research is carried out as an in-depth qualitative single case study in a large project manufacturing company. It takes the perspective of a focal company striving for product improvements. The first part of the empirical study consists of 15 semi-structured interviews. The second part includes two discursive workshops and builds upon the results of the interviews. This study contributes to the existing research by explaining the challenges and conditions facilitating joint product development with supplier and purchaser companies. The results highlight the role of customers in improving the effectiveness of product development. As a practical contribution, the paper reports the application of workshop method as a facilitator of collaboration between supplier, purchaser (focal company) and customer companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Internet age, recommender systems (RS) have become popular, offering new opportunities and challenges to the business world. With a continuous increase in global competition, e-businesses, information portals, social networks and more, websites are required to become more user-centric and rely on the presence and role of RS in assisting users in better decision making. However, with continuous changes in user interests and consumer behavior patterns that are influenced by easy access to vast information and social factors, raising the quality of recommendations has become a challenge for recommender systems. There is a pressing need for exploring hybrid models of the five main types of RS, namely collaborative, demographic, utility, content and knowledge based approaches along with advancements in Big Data (BD) to become more context-aware of the technology and social changes and to behave intelligently. There is a gap in literature with a research focus in this direction. This paper takes a step to address this by exploring a new paradigm of applying business intelligence (BI) concepts to RS for intelligently responding to user changes and business complexities. A BI based framework adopting a hybrid methodology for RS is proposed with a focus on enhancing the RS performance. Such a business intelligent recommender system (BIRS) can adopt On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools and performance monitoring metrics using data mining techniques of BI to enhance its own learning, user profiling and predictive models for making a more useful set of personalised recommendations to its users. The application of the proposed framework to a B2C e-commerce case example is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Collaborative consumption, such as car sharing, specifically implicates customer-to-customer interaction, which must be regulated by service providers (companies, peers and self-regulating communities), comprising different challenges for business organizations. While in conventional business relations, consumers are protected from undesirable customer behavior by laws, regulations (power) in the context of collaborative consumption are rare, so that trust becomes more relevant. It is the purpose of the study to investigate possible mechanisms to prevent undesirable customers in collaborative consumption.Design/methodology/approach In between subject designs, samples of 186 and 328 consumers filled in experimental online questionnaires with vignettes. Analyses were made of differences among car sharing companies, private persons and car sharing communities in terms of the power of providers, trust in providers and trust in other users of the shared goods, undesirable customer behavior and consumer–provider relations.Findings Companies, private persons and self-regulating communities differ in terms of perceived power and trust. Participants specifically perceive mainly coercive power with the car sharing company, but with the private person and the community, reason-based trust in other users is perceived as prevalent. Nevertheless, undesirable customer behavior varies only marginally over the models.Originality/value The present study is the first to investigate measures to prevent undesirable customer behavior over different collaborative consumption models. This enables appropriate identification of market segments and tailoring of services. The study identifies opportunities for companies in contrast to private persons and self-regulating communities and, in doing so, provides important stimulation for marketing strategy and theory development. [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]

This paper makes a sociolinguistic study of the language variation in Begusarai Maithili and tries to investigate its sociolinguistic base. It also attempts to establish a correlation between language variation and the cast system in Begusarai district. The collaborators are the native speakers of Begusarai Maithili which is one of the varieties of Maithili spoken in Begusarai district. The overall outcome of the study suggests the occurrence of a strong sociolinguistic relation between the language variation in Begusarai Maithili and the caste system. The research site is Begusarai district which is one of the districts of Bihar in North India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory community network mapping can support collaborative sensemaking within and across communities and their surrounding stakeholder networks. We introduce the CommunitySensor methodology under construction. After summarizing earlier work, we show how the methodology uses a cyclical approach by adopting a Community Network Development Cycle that embeds a Community Network Sensemaking Cycle. We list some observations from practice about using community network mapping for making inter-communal sense. We discuss how extending the methodology with a patterndriven approach benefits the building of bridges across networked communities, as well as the sharing of generalized lessons learnt. To this purpose, a community collaboration pattern language is essential. We show initial work in developing and using such a language by examining the cross-case evolution of core community network interaction patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]