Herencia Colonial

Interviews with all respondents included a discussion on the effectiveness of collaboration that explored both the costs incurred in successful collaboration and ensured that badly perceived collaboration experiences were also captured.

Most interviewees had at least one negative experience of inter-organisational collaboration and although one SME Owner who described himself as “naturally trusting” had become “more cautious” as a result, the indication was that most accepted some negative experience as inevitable in business and had otherwise not changed their attitude or approach to collaboration.

55. QA “he went under for quite a lot of money … so that was a bit of poke in the eye” [SME MD]

56. QB “there have been, over the years, several occasions, working very closely with customers on programmes, for whatever reason, either turned sour or didn't come to fruition. One we spent quite a lot of time and money actually developing a whole new [automotive product] and developed it, it worked fine; they diddled off to China. The whole company … upped sticks and went to China. So we'd done all that development work and got nothing for it but, luckily, the coating we developed works very well on automotive applications”.

So you still got something … “We ended up with a new product”. [SME MD]

The effectiveness of collaboration may also be directly compromised where any one party behaves opportunistically. The interviewee in one supply-chain example encountered, had several times during the interview stated the importance of collaboration but these statements were inconsistent with the examples provided. The respondent had negative experience of close working relationships and seemed to have developed a deep distrust of genuine collaboration. The statements of the importance of collaboration seemed to represent a view the interviewee felt should be expressed, rather than one that was genuinely held. In the example below the reference to a

“proper customer supplier relationship rather than a collaboration” is particularly revealing.

57. SC “At that stage, what we could have done, rather than pursued it with them, is we could have said, right, this is a great idea, great technology, but we're going to walk / these guys now, we've already got this complicated relationship. They are expecting something from us, we are expecting something from them, have a conversation with them, bid them goodbye. As soon as we get back to the UK find a company that does exactly the same thing, don't then / and have a proper customer supplier relationship rather than a collaboration. In this case that we've talked about, it's the collaborative element that's made it go sour.” [SME MD]

Throughout the findings, examples were encountered of the collaborative benefits of

brokering organisations. However, although ten of the eleven encountered were

perceived to be moderately or extremely effective at collaborative facilitation, one large regional trade association was heavily criticised. This organisation appeared to exhibit controlling behaviour rather than leadership:

58. QI “… became patently evident from the outset they didn't have a collaborative bone in their body and that was purely down to different behaviours, they just wanted to control all the features and all the outcomes of the programmes that we were working with them on, whilst espousing collaboration as a key feature of the whole programme. Unfortunately it got to a point whereby the relationship was quite fractured with them.” [SME Consultant]

Third-party collaboration organisers

The impact of third-party organisations in facilitating collaboration is a re-current theme throughout the data presented thus far. In many instances these third parties: determine the situational conditions under which collaboration occurs, control the actors involved, select the processes undertaken, and seek to demonstrate leadership to affect the behaviours that impact collaboration success.

In this third major section, the findings relating to these facilitating organisations are presented. These organisations are significant actors in the inter-organisational collaboration domain, yet are not the primary beneficiaries of collaboration. The functions performed by these bodies are examined in this section along with insights gained into the importance of leaders in their formation and operational effectiveness.

In contrast to vertical supply-chain collaboration where the relationships are orchestrated by one or more of the collaborating parties, most of the peer-to-peer horizontal collaborative relationships encountered in the study were co-ordinated by a third-party organisation. The situational analysis helped to identify several different generic forms into which these third-parties could be categorised. Eleven such bodies were encountered in the study, eight of which were directly engaged at a senior level and the others indirectly through their members. These organisations are collectively referred to as brokers. Examples included trade associations, public-funded collaboration programmes, a social enterprise, a networking and referrals organisation, a global industry regulating body, and large supply-chain heads looking to promote innovation through collaboration.

Description Type Actions

Regional manufacturing, Aerospace

Membership based trade association

Connecting, knowledge exchange, lobbying Regional manufacturing, Automotive Membership based trade association

Connecting, knowledge exchange, lobbying. Actively facilitated at least 3 collaborative consortia Regional health

sciences

Funded Programme Collaboration and investment facilitation, triple helix alliances.

National (UK), construction

Membership based trade association

Influencing including lobbying and standardising.

National (UK) and EU (derivative) specialist automotive

Membership based trade association

Lobbying primarily objective but also provides networking and knowledge exchange opportunities Global raw

commodity regulation

International trade association and regulator

Industry regulation, arbitration and lobbying. Networking events.

Regional business assistance

Social change lobbyist Collaboration to effect social change and to promote business collaborations led by women. Skills enhancement and business setup and growth facilitation National facilities

management

Membership based trade association

Lobbying, networking

Regional (EU peer-to- peer programme)

Alliance Bidding alliance formation, leadership

International, networking

Referrals facilitator Referrals, networking

National, Health (England)

Government Dept acting as supply chain head

Networking, standardising, knowledge exchange

Table 6 - Descriptions of brokering organisations

The organisations encountered each had different ways of working, differing styles of leaderships and different approaches to engaging a diverse set of stakeholders. The properties of the eleven organisations encountered, are shown in Table 6. Brokers collaborate with members/clients when helping to establish new trading relationships or in the establishment of more complex collaborative consortia. Most also collaborate with a wide array of public sector, regulatory, policy making, funding and research bodies on their members’ behalf. Despite the variations in structure, style and objectives between brokers, there were considerable similarities in the activities undertaken. The generic activities were classified as lobbying, networking, brokering, referring, standardisation and knowledge exchange activities. Different brokers put a different emphasis on the importance of each of these activities, with some focusing only on a subset, whilst others fulfil a much broader role. The activity profiles for these organisations is summarised below in Table 7.

Sector Category Primary Functions Inte rvie w ed Lobbying Ne twork ing Know ledge Exc ha nge Ac ti ve B roke ring S tanda rds R efe rr als

Aerospace Regional trade association Members X X X

Automotive Regional trade association CEO X X X X X

Construction National trade association Founder X X X X

Specialist automotive

Niche national trade association

CEO X X X X

Health Large supply chain head Manager X X X

Health Regional funded programme

CEO X X X X

Facilities National association Member X X X

Engineering Triple-helix, regional funded programme

Prog. Manager

X X

Commodities International regulation CEO X X X X

General business

Social interest charity CEO X X X X

General International networking organisation

Members X X

Table 7 – Functions performed by brokering organisations

The importance of these collaboration facilitation bodies is illustrated by two instances where, in the absence of a suitable existing organisation, the interviewed firms went to the trouble of establishing a new organisation. Both of these nascent trade

associations have been successful in their intention to act as lobbying organisations and to achieve government policy change. These new organisations were formed through peer level allying collaborative activity initially and the original founders have continued to be significantly involved as the organisation has grown. In these instances, where a company director also holds a senior influential or leading position in the trade association, then the founders may gain preferential outcomes on behalf of their companies, compared with other members, but the association is not as independent as those brokering organisations with a wholly independent governance structure.

One of organisations referred to above, established through allying processes, has continued to expand, and through a series of mergers with related organisations had, at time of the interview, become the Structural Timer Association with 378 members. The STA itself is now a partner organisation of a sector-wide collaboration Construction United that includes private sector and third sector organisations and trade bodies. As an organisation that represents a sector accounting for over 6% of the UK GDP, this body is likely to be able to exert strong lobbying on policy makers and government (Construction_United, 2016).

In the second example quoted in the allying discussion another nascent niche trade association established in the automotive sector has achieved a high level of members within its niche, and although it aims to expand geographically within Europe, there is no intention to grow the organisation further. This trade association exists predominantly for information sharing and for influencing policy decisions. It has established informal collaborative relationships with other associations in the sector but considers that the requirements of its members to be distinct and foresees a risk that these would become diluted if it were to merge with other lager associations in the sector. There is potentially a trade-off in structural organisation of trade associations between increased size and influence, and the needs of the sub-sector’s members.

Aggregation can provide additional value to members through enhanced influence and knowledge sharing. The regional funded programme referenced above recognises these benefits and is extending the brokering principle to the next level by acting as broker between a number of powerful stakeholders that have their own networks, to create a super-network.

59. ML “So we’re trying to be more powerful by networking networks” [Broker CEO].

In the example above, the broker is joining a diverse group of networks that are related by a common cause (improved health outcomes resulting from industry innovations). These cross-sector collaborations meet a specific need but represent only one objective of many for the member networks and are not suitable for further merger. Active, outwards facing broker organisations appear to recognise the benefits from wider collaboration and are to exploit relevant opportunities. The social enterprise collaboration broker has few directly comparable peer organisations with which it could merge, but collaborates with several other related networks that face similar operational challenges. In one example this broker is undertaking a pan-European technology collaboration to improve its effectiveness.

60. NN “Then we work with other practices in the field ... they'll be in a European context, so for example, our digital innovation initiative is looking at European collaboration with six other partners and we're looking at how … to enable business advisors to become more competent around [advising clients on technology]” [Broker CEO]

In summary, brokering organisations, particularly those that are perceived to be free of any conflict of interest, are in a strong position to facilitate each of the collaborative processes and to create the structural conditions that enable these processes to be pursued. The importance of effective leaders of brokering organisations was highlighted in the earlier discussion on collaboration effectiveness, and also in this section in the context of new trade association formation. Brokering organisations increase the bonding with, and between their member organisations that helps to provide the structural conditions through which social capital may be enhanced. The degree of bonding may be determined by how actively (or passively) brokering organisations are in connecting their members. Finally, this section also illustrates that brokering organisations may also perform these connecting activities outwardly with respect to other networks, as well as inwardly to their members or associates.

Summary of findings

The findings presented in this chapter are organised around a central category entitled Inter-Organisational Relationship Mining (I-ORM). This abstraction describes the overall practice of collaboration through three phases in which relationships are established, then developed into productive ventures that may then commercially exploit value in their third phase. Through the properties of the central category collaboration is profiled in terms of the actors involved, the basic social processes utilised and the behavioural and situational factors that impact the effectiveness of collaborative relationships. A typology of eight basic social processes is presented in a discursive style that included extensive extracts of original data examples.

Several important themes pervaded the data. Firstly, from the descriptions of the eight basic processes, the importance of individuals’ social interaction, rather than organisational interaction, is highlighted as the fundamental basis for collaboration. Secondly, the findings highlight the importance of third party brokering organisations as facilitators of collaborative activity, especially in peer-to-peer contexts. These bodies typically have different but compatible objectives to the organisations with which they interact, enabling synergistic interaction. Strong leaders with high levels of social capital are noted in several of the most effective brokering organisations. In a third recurring theme, the importance of social capital and knowledge capital is apparent in the data. These forms of value are also predominantly located in individuals rather than organisations. Finally, the elements that comprise the central category provide a framework through which any collaborative episode may be characterised in terms of the actors involved, the processes followed, the stage the relationship has reached and situational and behavioural factors that impact the effectiveness of relationship. These themes are developed further in the discussion in the next chapter, where further theoretical elaboration is undertaken as findings are discussed against extant knowledge. Following the discussion, the concluding sections outline the theoretical and practical contributions of the research, its limitations and the potential for further research.