26: Relational bonds enabling cooperative inter-organisational relations for missions: a process view (Jorge Martins, Kirsi Hyytinen, Kaisa Lähteenmäki-Smith, Henri Wiman)
Inter-organisational collaboration is at the core of mission-oriented innovation. In face of grand challenges, such as climate change, global health crises, and sustainable development, individual organisations lack the resources, expertise, and capacity to attain transformative, sustainability-oriented goals individually. Missions require collective efforts that go beyond the capabilities of any single entity. Inter-organisational collaboration becomes indispensable in this context, where organisations come together to develop innovations, address these grand challenges, and pool their resources and knowledge to accomplish objectives they cannot achieve on their own (Kirchner et al., 2023). Relational bonds (Ring and de Ven, 2019) between organisations are not mere transactional arrangements; they are complex entities with properties that can be characterised by varying levels of commitment, trust and mutual understanding, and by diverse governance models (Wittman et al., 2021). The strength and nature of these relations are key factors in determining the success of the collaborative endeavours underpinning missions, as well as the capabilities for mission-oriented innovation agencies (Spanó et al., 2023). Commitment and trust create a foundation for cooperation, mutual understanding fosters effective communication, and governance models help establish rules and norms. These elements are pivotal for building and sustaining productive inter-organisational relationships in the context of missions. This conference track adopts a process-oriented approach to delve into the intricacies of missions’ inter-organisational collaboration. Process research seeks to explain how phenomena emerge, develop, and grow over time, and in the context of mission-oriented innovation, this perspective is essential. It allows us to explore the evolution of relations, the adaptation of partners, and the temporal structuring of collaboration. Inter-organisational collaboration for missions is not without its complexities. Organisations often come from different backgrounds, cultures, and structures, making coordination and alignment a challenge. Moreover, the rapid pace of technological advancement and the increasing technological embeddedness (Cepa and Schildt, 2019) in inter-organisational collaborations add a significant layer of complexity. Understanding how these technological changes affect the development of inter-organisational trust, mutual adaptation, and the temporal structuring of collaboration is vital for “governing technology, research, and innovation for better worlds”. In this track, we seek to examine some of (without being limited to) the following themes:
1) What kind of relational bonds do parties rely on in the processes involved in negotiating, committing to, and executing cooperative inter-organisational relationships for missions.
2) The design of participatory architectures enabling highly iterative processes across the stages of mission discovery, scoping, ideation, and delivery.
3) How inter-organisational relations lead to an iterative refinement of missions through making opportunities, tasks and interdependencies more salient.
4) The generative effects of technological embeddedness in the development of trust, strategic learning and anticipatory orientation in missions work.
Keywords: mission-oriented innovation, inter-organisational collaboration, relational bonds, participatory architectures