Open Innovation in Times of Crisis: An Overview of the Healthcare Sector in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge and disruptive technological changes in the healthcare sector, transforming the way businesses and societies function. To respond to the global health crisis, there have been numerous innovation projects in the healthcare sector, including the fast design and manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical devices, and testing, treatment, and vaccine technologies. Many of these innovative activities happen beyond organizational boundaries with collaboration and open innovation. In this paper, we review the current literature on open innovation strategy during the pandemic and adopt the co-evolution view of business ecosystems to address the context of change. Based on a detailed exploration of the COVID-19-related technologies in the UK and global healthcare sectors, we identify the key emerging themes of open innovation in crisis. Further discussions are conducted in relation to each theme. Our results and analysis can help provide policy recommendations for the healthcare sector, businesses, and society to recover from the crisis.

Transformational Ability of Energy Network Companies: The Role of Institutional Logics and Boundary Spanners

Energy network companies play a vital role in energy transitions. The transformational ability of these companies influences the process of energy transitions and the effectiveness of policies in this domain. This study shows the need for managers of network companies as well as scholars and policy makers operating in the midst of energy transitions to acknowledge the importance and value of boundary spanners in improving the transformation ability of these companies to play their role in facilitating energy transitions. Evidence comes from an in-depth analysis of an energy network company in the Netherlands. Our findings show that the transformation ability of energy network companies depends on various instances of boundary spanning as these organizations address differing or conflicting intra- and inter-organizational institutional logics when contributing to an energy transition. In the context of energy transitions, inter-organizational boundary spanning generally demands more resources and attention than the spanning of intra-organizational boundaries. Additionally, intra-organizational boundaries affect inter-organizational relationships, particularly in the policy arena. Our findings indicate that to carry out the type of institutional change that an energy transition requires, more attention and resources should be dedicated to intra-organizational boundary spanning, even as the need to connect external stakeholders increases.

How Does Knowledge Coupling Affect Firm’s Incremental Innovation? The Moderating Effects of Government Support Policies

Acquiring and combining different knowledge elements across organizational boundaries has become an important strategy for firms’ innovation outcomes. Based on the theory of resource orchestration, this paper divides knowledge coupling into two dimensions: complementary knowledge coupling and substitutable knowledge coupling. Then, this study aims to explore the different impacts of knowledge coupling types on firm’s incremental innovation and verify the moderating role of government support policies in this relationship. Based on the survey of 279 high-tech enterprises from China, our analysis results indicate the following. (1) Complementary knowledge coupling has an inverted U-shaped impact on firm’s incremental innovation, while substitutable knowledge coupling has a positive influence on incremental innovation. (2) The fitness between government support policies and knowledge coupling types can promote the result of firm’s incremental innovation: when firms adopt complementary knowledge coupling strategies, finance and taxation support policies are more conducive to firm’s incremental innovation; when enterprises use substitutable knowledge coupling strategies, innovative environment support policies are better for the promotion of firm’s incremental innovation. The research results provide a theoretical basis for firms to select appropriate government support strategies to exert the effects of innovation based on characteristics of internal and external knowledge resources.

Corporate Personality

This chapter discusses how separate legal personality can be explained as a solution developed by company law to address the problem that organizations are social rather than brute facts. For a company to come into existence, certain documents need to be registered. These contain information that facilitates the interaction between the company and third parties. Registration as a company then gives an organization a public legal manifestation. The Companies Act does not limit the corporate form to organizational action. The corporate form can therefore be used for other purposes and organizational boundaries do not align with legal personality. But this does not undermine the observation that company law is designed for the operation of organizations.

Hackathons as affective circuits: Technology, organizationality and affect

Technology invites a re-consideration of organization and organizing by calling attention to mediated forms of value production among loose social collectives outside formal organizational boundaries. While the nascent concept of organizationality holds potential for such a re-conceptualization, the processes through which loose social members become invested in co-orientation and collective effort require further empirical and theoretical exploration. In this paper, we link organizationality research with critical media studies on affect and technology to theorize how affect holds provisional collectives together while promoting new modes of value extraction. Empirically, we draw from an ethnographic study of hackathons – transdigital innovation spaces where participants act with and through technology – and suggest three intertwined processes as part of an affective circuit that stokes and directs affect. The paper’s contribution is threefold. First, by analyzing how affective circuits bind, integrate and co-orient action among loose members, we contribute to understanding organizationality as affectively constituted. Second, by showing how hackathons leverage desire for community, we offer a critical perspective on affective capture and argue that organizationality involves novel modes of value production. Third, we complement theorizing of hackathons by exploring them as sites of organizationality, focusing on the provisional, relational and affect-rich nature of new forms of organizing in the digital age.

Starbucks and HMSHost: addressing discrimination across organizational boundaries

Theoretical basis 1. Maria Jarlstrom, Essi Saru, and Sinikka Vanhala, “Sustainable Human Resource Management With Salience of Stakeholders: A Top Management Perspective,” Journal of Business Ethics, 152, (2008): 703–724. 2. Benjamin A. Neville, Simon J. Bell, and Gregory J., “Stakeholder Salience Revisited: Refining, Redefining, and Refueling an Underdeveloped Conceptual Tool,” Journal of Business Ethics, 102, (2011): 357–378. 3. Mick Marchington, Fang Lee Cooke, and Gail Hebson. “Human Resource Management Across Organizational Boundaries,” Sage Handbook of Human Resource Management, (2009): 460–477. Research methodology This secondary source case is based mainly on three documents: the 20-page report by a labor union, Unite Here, titled “One Job Should Be Enough: Inequality at Starbucks”; and two reports by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. and Covington & Burlington, LLP. Case overview/synopsis In February 2020, Unite Here, a labor union, released a damming report about employment practices at the airport Starbucks stores operated by licensee, HMSHost. Among other charges, the report identified several instances of racial and gender discrimination that HMSHost dismissed as a ploy by a union intent on organizing its employees. The adverse publicity, however, put Starbucks Corporation in the spotlight because of the company’s publicly stated commitment to workplace equality. The recently hired Nzinga Shaw, the company’s first-ever Global Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer, had to address the issue at HMSHost lest it adversely affect Starbucks’ reputation as a progressive employer. Complexity academic level The case is best suited for a graduate or undergraduate course in human resource management or labor relations. As diversity is typically covered in the first third of such courses, the ideal placement of this case would be in the early part of the course. As Starbucks is a well-known name, and it is very likely that students have had their own experience with Starbucks, as either a customer or an employee, the case is likely to draw their interest. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.

Crowdsourcing Innovation

Crowdsourcing—a form of collaboration across organizational boundaries—provides access to knowledge beyond an organization’s local knowledge base. There are four basic steps to crowdsourcing: (a) define a problem, (b) broadcast the problem to an audience of potential solvers, (c) take actions to attract solutions, and (d) select from the set of submitted ideas. To successfully innovate via crowdsourcing, organizations must complete all these steps. Each step requires an organization to make various decisions. For example, organizations need to decide whether its selection is made internally. Organizations must take into account interdependencies among these four steps. For example, the choice between qualitative and quantitative selection mechanisms affects how widely organizations should broadcast a problem and how many solutions they should attract. Organizations must make many decisions, and they must take into account the many interdependencies in each key step.

A Boundary Tool for Multi-stakeholder Sustainable Business Model Innovation

Sustainable business model innovation cannot reach its full sustainability potential if it neglects the importance of multi-stakeholder alignment. Several studies emphasize the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration to enable sustainable business model innovation, but few studies offer guidance to companies for engaging in such a collaborative process. Based on the concept of boundary work, this study presents a tested process tool that helps companies engage with multiple stakeholders to innovate sustainable business models. The tool was developed in three iterative phases, including testing and evaluation with 74 participants in six sustainable business model innovation cases. The final process tool consists of five steps to facilitate multi-stakeholder alignment for sustainable business model innovation: (1) defining a collective ambition, (2) mapping and negotiating the changing organizational boundaries, (3) exploring opportunities and tensions for aligning stakeholders, (4) defining first interventions and (5) developing a collaboration pitch. We found that the tool enables discussions and negotiations on sensitive topics, such as power reconfigurations and mutual responsibilities to help stakeholders align. For companies, the boundary tool enriches sustainable business model innovation by offering guidance in the process of redesigning their multi-stakeholder system, assessing their own organizational boundaries, exploring, negotiating and prioritizing strategic actions based on organizational boundary changes and kick-starting new partnerships.

Enhancing the impacts of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration in BIM-enabled construction projects – an SLT perspective

PurposeThis study employs situated learning theory to elucidate the mechanisms of interorganizational collaboration by analyzing the relationships among absorptive capacity, institutional compensation, task cognitive integration and interorganizational collaboration in BIM-enabled construction projects.Design/methodology/approachAn online questionnaire survey was conducted with managers and professionals involved in building information modeling (BIM-) enabled construction projects, and 220 valid responses were received. Data were analyzed by means of the linear regression models and bootstrap method.FindingsThe results show that (1) absorptive capacity, institutional compensation and task cognitive integration have a positive impact on interorganizational collaboration; (2) institutional compensation partially mediates the effect of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration; (3) task cognitive integration fully mediates the effect of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration; (4) institutional compensation and task cognitive integration serially and fully mediate the relationship between absorptive capacity and interorganizational collaboration and (5) the serial mediating model has a greater indirect effect than the other two models considered in this study.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the body of knowledge by demonstrating the way to break through the three types of organizational boundaries (i.e. syntactic, semantic and pragmatic organizational boundaries) and provide an internal collaborative mechanism from the perspective of situated learning theory. This study presents the critical effects of absorptive capacity, institutional compensation and task cognitive integration on interorganizational collaboration, selects the enhanced mediating model for explaining the effects of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration and enables managers to update the traditional collaborative model in BIM-enabled construction projects.