Collaboration modes, preconditions, and contingencies in organizational alliance: A comparative assessment

Collaboration indicates management intention for new competence and knowledge development by collective and inter-supportive means. From a pragmatic point of view, business organizations see collaboration as an opportunity for new competitiveness and efficiency, and public authorities also perceive collaboration as a means to prescribe unified solutions to social issues. Beyond these pragmatic views, academics’ conceptions of collaboration give rise to categories of theoretic paradigms for strategic decisions. This research reviews all these perspectives. This research also examines collaboration modes and contingencies in specific situations and assesses their association with contextual collaboration preconditions. This examination explains the association in terms of collaboration values or scopes (why), its forms or patterns (how) and its coordination, leadership and governance role (who), and its contexts (where and when). To do so, the research uses a case study of a publicly funded cross-sectoral innovation collaboration project. The case-based propositions and the theoretic assessment cross-examine the validity with each other, resulting in a discursive method to develop the collaboration theory for practices. The research concludes with a remark on the role of conveners in directing and managing collaboration. This research contributes to an epistemological conflation in collaboration management, strategic alliances, and social innovation.