Inter-organisational knowledge sharing between airport security organisations has become increasingly vital to maintain the highest standards of security and public safety. Social networks are considered a significant space for knowledge sharing within and across organisations. The purpose of this research is to investigate inter-organisational knowledge sharing in social media between key organisations in policing and airport security. A cross-sectional case study strategy combining qualitative and quantitative methods was employed to investigate the use of social media in inter-organisational knowledge sharing in the context of airport security in the UAE. Findings showed that the structural characteristics within knowledge sharing were highly centralised and polarised with low intensity in knowledge sharing. Social capital was constrained at a relational level due to cultural factors of trust, risk aversion and power distance that influenced a closed culture and reduced the scope for tacit knowledge sharing practices as well as low level cognitive capital. Analysis of dimensions of the SECI model for knowledge creation revealed that knowledge and the process of knowing was impacted by cultural distinctions that constrained socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation processes. The key barriers to knowledge sharing were identified and associated with trust, risk aversion, organisational culture, resource constraints and interoperability factors. This study makes a contribution to theory and practice in terms of the relationship between social capital dimensions and knowledge creation processes and the characteristics of knowledge-sharing within social media. The study further adds to knowledge on the antecedents of inter-organisational knowledge sharing, particularly in the Arabic context. / UAE Government and Ministry of Interior

No / Organizations in the not-for-profit (NFP) sector are increasingly collaborating with other organizations to mutually raise overall joint value created. However, literature on inter-organizational collaborations in the NFP sector lacks a clear, empirically proven understanding about which factors drive such joint value creation and whether and how these factors and their effects differ for the two parties involved. Based on the relational view and an analysis of 121 partnership dyads, we identify that some factors governing the successful creation of joint value differ for the two partners while others are relevant to both parties. Those latter factors, in turn, differ in their effects on the respective outcome.

Can interorganisational relationships be managed for effective functioning? This is the problem investigated in this research. Organisations world-wide are adopting co-operative relationships with other organisations. These interorganisational relationships are viewed as a way to enhance their own business performance (Williamson 1985, 1991; Dyer 1997; Gulati 1998; Barringer & Harrison 2000; Das & Teng 2000; Quinn 2000; Stuart 2000; Johnson, Korsgaard & Sapienza 2002). Despite this, the success rate for interorganisational relationships is not high (Hutt, Stafford, Walker & Reingen 2000; Quinn 2000; Hitt, Ireland & Vaidyanath 2002) with many of them failing to achieve their objectives. Understanding how to manage these boundary-spanning arrangements is important to realising the objectives of the business strategy. The research setting is a large private hospital in Australia. It works with a network of external service organisations that provide the Hospital with a range of clinical and non-clinical support services including: Diagnostic Imaging, Pathology Pharmacy, Food Services, Environmental Services, and Human Resources support. This research explores how these different relationships were managed in their operating period: 1998 to 2002. It reveals the dynamic and often ad hoc way, in which managers made sense of the collaborative service context, and how managers influenced the process of interorganisational relationship formation. Extant research about interorganisational relationships comes from a variety of fields. For this research it is most relevant to draw from the research fields of organisational theory, organisation behaviour, sociology, psychology and management. These fields contribute findings that provide useful knowledge upon which to build further understanding about how managers contribute to construct interorganisational relationships functioning (Ring & Van de Ven 1992, 1994; Walsh 1995; Chikudate 1999a, 1999b; Boddy, Macbeth & Wagner 2000; Hutt, Stafford, Walker & Reingen 2000; Lasker, Weiss & Miller 2001). This research uses an interpretivist methodology that enables the researcher to explore the dynamic nature of the Manager's sense-making in the construction of six interorganisational relationships. For the purposes of this research, interorganisational relationships are defined as new structures that emerge through the social interaction of actors involved in shared service delivery. The collaborative context of interorganisational relationships stimulates managers' sense-making by challenging institutionalised ways of behaving. This sensemaking process builds new knowledge stores and contributes to emerging, new management routines. The process is transformative and enables the emergence of interorganisational relationships. It emerges from this research that managers take cues from their context. These cues are used to interpret and make assessments that enable decisions about those actions that they take to construct the interorganisational relationships. A manager's processing of contextual cues, through interpretive frames and dispositional sense-making filters, is an inter-subjective, socially constructive process. The 'self' is a dimensional influence in the managers' sense-making and management behaviours and is implicated through the notion of contextual interpretive frames and dispositional sense-making filters. A model of interorganisational relationship management as a transformational process is developed. The association between contextual influences and managers' behaviours will raise awareness for professional practitioners of the challenges involved in managing across organisational boundaries and in turn, may contribute to more successful implementation of interorganisational business relationships.

Background: Performance measurement as a management control tool has received considerable academic attention. As the number of inter-organisational relationships, such as customer-supplier relationships, increases, there is a new scope for performance measurement as a management control tool. In order for a company to assess the effectiveness of its supplier relationships it has to define, measure and evaluate variables that are critical for the success of the relationship. The role of management control, and thereby of performance measurement, has increasingly been discussed in theory. However, empirical research in this area is still somewhat limited. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to analyse how performance measurement in inter-organisational relationships should be designed in order to be effective. Results: Theory which is applicable on performance measurement as a control tool in general also appears to be applicable on performance measurement as a control tool in inter-organisational relationships. Exactly which requirements performance measurement should meet, in order to be effective, is difficult to establish since they often imply a trade-off between different factors. In order to be effective, performance measurement partly needs to be adjusted to the situation, which adds yet a dimension to, and difficulty of, performance measurement in inter-organisational relationships.

<p>Background: Performance measurement as a management control tool has received considerable academic attention. As the number of inter-organisational relationships, such as customer-supplier relationships, increases, there is a new scope for performance measurement as a management control tool. In order for a company to assess the effectiveness of its supplier relationships it has to define, measure and evaluate variables that are critical for the success of the relationship. The role of management control, and thereby of performance measurement, has increasingly been discussed in theory. However, empirical research in this area is still somewhat limited. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to analyse how performance measurement in inter-organisational relationships should be designed in order to be effective. </p><p>Results: Theory which is applicable on performance measurement as a control tool in general also appears to be applicable on performance measurement as a control tool in inter-organisational relationships. Exactly which requirements performance measurement should meet, in order to be effective, is difficult to establish since they often imply a trade-off between different factors. In order to be effective, performance measurement partly needs to be adjusted to the situation, which adds yet a dimension to, and difficulty of, performance measurement in inter-organisational relationships.</p>

M-Tech (Department of Logistics Management, Faculty of Management Sciences) Vaal University of Technology / One of the most significant changes in the paradigm of modern business management is that individual businesses no longer compete as solely autonomous entities, but rather as supply chains. In this emerging competitive environment, the ultimate success of the business will depend on management’s ability to integrate the company’s intricate network of business relationships. Effective supply chain management (SCM) has become a potentially valuable way of securing competitive advantage and improving organisational performance since competition is no longer between organisations, but among supply chains, which can be obtained through the sharing of appropriate information between supply chain partners and forming healthy inter-organisational relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of supply chain dynamism, information sharing and inter-organisational relationships on supply chain performance in manufacturing, service and mining in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. Data for the study were collected from 350 prominent organisations and the relationships proposed in the framework were tested using different statistical techniques. The results indicate that supply chain dynamism have a positive influence on both information sharing and inter-organisational relationships. They also indicate that higher levels of information sharing can lead to enhanced competitive advantage and improved supply chain performance, which further indicate that the more organisations have healthy inter-organisational relationships, the better the supply chain performance becomes. These results have value to both the academic and business worlds as they provide verification of the widely held belief of the value of effective supply chain management and performance.

The development of library Consortia in Zimbabwe was necessitated by the need to reduce subscription costs and to widen access to electronic resources as well as implement new technologies among academic libraries. The development of Zimbabwe University Library Consortium (ZULC) and College and Research Library Consortium (CARLC) enabled libraries to cooperate and collaborate in building capacity to support teaching, learning and research through access to quality scholarly information. The trajectory of consortia development in Zimbabwe since 2002 has however been characterised by a focus on the academic sector to the exclusion of other types of libraries. The future development of library consortia in Zimbabwe can be better envisioned when correlated with the country’s national development agenda. While not made explicit, this agenda is underpinned by the idea of access to information. This study investigated how the benefits of the existing library consortia can be harnessed to promote the achievement of Zimbabwe’s national development goals. More specifically, it examined the ways that the development paths of ZULC and CARLC can be transformed to support the country’s national development agenda and programmes. This culminated in a model that will accelerate and guide the future development of its library consortia to facilitate a supporting developmental role. The novel aspect of this study is that it seeks to integrate library consortia into the national development plans of a developing country and to extend their benefits as widely as possible. An extensive literature review of the characteristics, models, and development of consortia in selected countries was complemented by an empirical mixed-method component that generated data through interviews, questionnaires, observation, and the analysis of key documents. A special feature of the study is a detailed analysis of the successes and challenges of library consortia in other countries and in the Southern African region to supplement the empirical data that informs the proposed model. The main finding is that a model with a multi-type structure and a National Coordinating Committee is best to transform the development paths of Zimbabwe’s academic library consortia to support the country’s national development agenda. The model’s key elements are finance, structure, governance, functions, and special features. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Information Science / PHD / Unrestricted

Circular economy (CE) proposes a transition in production and consumption practices that has a key relevance in wood-based industries, since forests are also connected to climate and biodiversity goals. If the bioeconomy is to sustainably suffice the increasing demand in the Nordics, wood-based manufacturing should become more circular. The wood commodity has embedded some circular principles to its production processes, but generally employs a waste management perspective, and research gaps exist on the relationships between actors. Inter-organisational collaboration (IOC) has been presented as key to enable effective circular solutions. While some studies exist in converging IOC and circularity, previous research demand empirical investigations.  This thesis investigates the current state of IOCs for forming and improving circular value chains in wood-based manufacturing, while empirically validating the CE and supply chain collaboration model by Calicchio Berardi and Peregrino de Brito (2021). To this aim, network and IOC theory form the theoretical underpinning. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with Nordic wood-based manufacturing companies.  Findings show that IOCs for the CE can concern material sourcing, side streams, and/or main products, and the nature and extent of these collaborations are explained. Side stream collaborations were strong for companies close to the primary resource, and for those material sourcing IOCs for circularity took the shape of new requirements. Main product collaborations were very diverse and recent, indicating a growing trend in collaborating for circularity. Based on empirical data, a linguistic change from supply chain to value cycles is proposed. The model used is found valid and mostly represented in this study, indicating how these IOCs form and improve. However, a revised version is presented – the CE and value cycles collaboration model – based on empirical findings from this study. The authors then indicate future research streams possibilities and practical implications of the study.

This dissertation examines emergent forms of digitally enabled boundary-spanning by considering the within- and cross-field interactions developed by LGBTQIA* organisations on social media. Within scholarship on collective actors characterised by strong collective identities, LGBTQIA* collective action fields have been conventionally found to be rather fragmented and polarised, as well as isolated from other fields. Nonetheless, recent studies have shown evidence of the emergence of cooperative and solidarity efforts by LGBTQIA* actors, suggesting that such LGBTQIA* organisations may actively engage in crossing categorical boundaries and overcoming differences in the attempt to achieve social change. Within this framework, information and communication technologies (ICTs) may provide LGBTQIA* communities with spaces to converge, share experiences, and articulate politicised identities also through the connection with other collective actors. Despite these findings, we currently lack a systematic understanding of the extent to which LGBTQIA* collective actors span field boundaries through the development of digitally enabled interactions, of how such ties evolve over time, and on the circumstances that may favour or inhibit their emergence and duration. Furthermore, the role of ICTs in supporting the emergence of boundary-spanning processes has so far been rather understudied. This dissertation addresses these concerns by conducting a mixed-method comparative research on LGBTQIA* actors based in Madrid and Milan. In particular, it focuses on different types of interactions (mentioning, sharing, and promoting collective action events) developed by such organisations on their Facebook public pages during the 2011-2020 decade. To examine the role of both cultural patterns (collective identities and framing strategies) and structural circumstances (political opportunities and threats), this study combines network and text data, analysed through social network and frame analysis. The findings provided by this research show that Spanish and Italian LGBTQIA* organisations increasingly crossed categorical boundaries through social media between 2011 and 2020, thus suggesting that ICTs do play a role in sustaining boundary-spanning processes. Moreover, they find that collective framing and networking are inextricably entangled, and hence contribute to shedding light on both symbolic and behavioural dimensions of digitally enabled boundary-spanning. To conclude, they show that actors embedded in different socio-political contexts engage in networking and framing, thus emphasising the role of contextual opportunities and threats in moderating the nexus between ICTs and boundary-spanning, as well as between framing and networking. This dissertation contributes to both social movement literature and gender studies. On the one hand, by shedding light on emergent forms of boundary-spanning processes enabled by ICTs, it not only contributes to examining the role of ICTs in empowering marginalised communities, but also further elaborates the entanglement between digital, hybrid, and on-the-ground collective actions. On the other hand, by systematically investigating an emerging phenomenon over time and across contexts, it contributes to generating knowledge on the circumstances encouraging collective actors to overcome differences and cooperate. Understanding this is of utmost importance, since cooperative relations provide collective actors with additional and diverse resources and experiences, as well as political legitimation, to resist processes of democratic erosion and achieve social change.

Comme dans la plupart des pays développés, l’hôpital public français fait face à de nombreux défis : démographie médicale défavorable, évolution des modes de prise en charge des patients, accumulation de réformes introduisant de nouvelles règles de financement ou de gouvernance, etc. L’organisation encore très éclatée du maillage hospitalier, qui compte près d’un millier d’établissements publics, rend difficile une transformation d’ampleur qui réponde à ces multiples contraintes.Dans ce contexte, la loi de modernisation de notre système de Santé de 2016 impose désormais à tous les hôpitaux publics de France d’adhérer à un Groupement Hospitalier de Territoire (GHT). Le GHT s’inscrit à la suite de nombreux instruments d’action publique visant à réorganiser le paysage hospitalier, mais dont les effets ont été souvent modestes. De multiples interrogations entourent cette nouvelle réforme, aussi bien à propos de ses finalités que de ses conditions de mise en œuvre. En effet, elle tranche avec le mouvement de reprise en main par l’Etat qui prévalait jusqu’à présent, en laissant une large autonomie aux acteurs de terrain dans son application.La thèse repose sur l’analyse de cette mesure, à travers l’étude de trois cas de construction de GHT. La principale ambition de notre travail est de s’interroger sur l’inscription de la réforme des GHT dans un nouveau paradigme de l’action publique.Nous montrons que malgré ses objectifs en apparence relativement vagues, cette réforme marque une véritable rupture dans l’action de l’Etat, visant à amorcer des dynamiques locales d’exploration de nouvelles modalités d’orga-nisation territoriale de l’offre de soins. Cette approche correspond à un nouveau régime de gouvernementalité, qui offre aux acteurs des objets de gouvernement, comme les parcours des patients, capables d’enclencher des apprentis-sages collectifs à travers la mise en place de partenariats d’exploration. Toutefois, en raison de plusieurs incohérences persistant dans l’action de l’Etat, les trajectoires de ces GHT s’annoncent hétérogène. Nous formulons donc quelques préconisations pour le management de ces dynamiques exploratoires, ainsi que pour une ingénierie de l’action publique plus cohérente, afin de mener à bien ces nouvelles orientations. / As in most of developed countries, French public hospitals are facing several challenges: shortage of medical resources, development of new care practices, 
as well as recurrent reforms introducing new financing or governance rules. The fragmented organization of the hospital network, which is made up of nearly a thousand public institutions, makes it difficult to implement a large-scale transformation that would meet these multiple constraints.In such a context, the latest healthcare law (2016) now requires all public hospitals in France to join a Territorial Hospital Group (THG). THGs come after a series of instruments that aimed at reorganizing the territorial hospital organisation, with mixed results up to now. This new reform has aroused many questions regarding its objectives and implementation conditions. Indeed, it contrasts with the strong state-control trend that had prevailed so far, by giving local actors a large amount of autonomy.The thesis is based on the analysis of this reform through a multiple case study. The main ambition of this work is to question the inclusion of the THG law in a new public action paradigm.Despite its apparently relatively vague objectives, I show that this reform is a real break in public action, as it aims at initiating local exploration dynamics around new territorial organizations. This approach corresponds to a new governmentality regime, providing actors with specific objects of government, such as care pathways, capable of triggering collective learning through the creation of exploration partnerships. However, due to remaining inconsistencies in the government’s action, the trajectories of these THGs appear to be very heterogeneous. Therefore, I suggest several recommendations for the management of these exploration dynamics, as well as for consistent public action engineering, in order to carry out such new orientations.