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While strategic alliances have emerged in recent years as common and important structural vehicles for business development, surprisingly little is known about how collaborative activities are organized and administered within these governance structures. We see classic organizational scholarship as useful insofar as it both provides clear classifications that distinguish alternative intraorganizational designs and explicates how they affect the inner workings of organizations. Existing alliance classification schemes based on type of collaborative activity, partner characteristics, or legal structure, on the other hand, rarely delineate important differences of how collaborative work is organized among partners. We seek to redress this shortcoming by developing a framework of alliance structural parameters based on classic organizational design considerations. Specifically we identify and discuss five key design parameters for alliances: the structural interface between partners, the structural "intraface" within partners, and the specialization, formalization, and centralization of the alliance organization. We show how consideration of these five parameters provides a deeper understanding of alliance governance and suggest how partner organizations can achieve differential levels of connectivity and steering for their collaborative ventures.

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In this article, we reflect on the role that leadership has played in the response to the global Covid-19 crisis. We discuss two major 'fault lines' of leadership: narcissism, and ideological rigidity. A fault line is a problem that may not be obvious under normal circumstances but could cause leadership to fail stakeholders and society at large in a defining moment such as a global pandemic.Using case examples from global political leaders we elaborate on these breaking points in crisis leadership and contrast them with the healing properties of leader compassion and mending forces of evidence-based decision making. We conclude our article with implications for responsible leadership research and practice. MAD statementThe Covid-19 pandemic is a global health crisis of unprecedented speed and proportion and it has highlighted that crises can bring out the best and the worst in leaders. In this article, we aim to Make a Difference by encouraging reflection on the crucial role of responsible leadership in crisis, specifically leaders' ability to build and cultivate sustainable and trustful relationships with different stakeholders. We draw attention to two toxic leadership tendenciesnarcissism and ideological rigidityand make an argument for curbing narcissism and instead fostering compassionate leadership, and for careful reflection on the role of ideology and evidence-based thinking in leadership development and practice.

Formal, compliance-focused governance for supply chain sustainability initiatives has a mixed empirical track record. We build on classic research on bureaucracy to examine how “enabling” and “coercive” formalization at the buyer–supplier interface affect attitudes, an important precursor to behavioral engagement. We conduct a randomized field experiment with the supplier community of a South African insurance company to directly compare treatment effects of enabling and coercive interventions. We report and discuss the enabling intervention’s positive attitudinal effects and the moderation of these effects by supplier characteristics. Our findings also reveal some notable null effects, especially from the coercive intervention. We believe this work contributes to a more nuanced understanding of formal governance choices in supply chains and their impact on supplier engagement.

This study develops and tests a conceptual framework that analyzes how and why a firm's experiences with complex intraorganizational structures (i.e., matrix) will affect its propensity to enter into, and ability to manage, complex interorganizational structures (i.e., alliances that are multilateral, multifunctional, or involve diverse industry partners). We posit that managers of matrix firms' greater familiarity with coordination, knowledge sharing, and conflict management challenges in intraorganizational collaboration gives them greater confidence in their ability to manage similar challenges in complex alliances. Using a combination of quantitative data analysis and semistructured interviews, we find support for our core prediction that matrix firms are more likely than nonmatrix firms to enter into complex alliances. Unexpectedly, we find that the stock market penalizes matrix firms that engage in multifunctional alliances, a phenomenon we suggest reflects a "double-complexity discount." The double-complexity discount refers to reduced organizational outcomes incurred for the simultaneous complexity of intra-and interorganizational governance structures. This study raises questions about the benefits and costs of firms' simultaneously engaging in complex intra-and interorganizational governance structures, with particular attention to the difference between managerial confidence and competence regarding complex collaboration challenges.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of health care workers’ mental health and well-being for the successful function of the health care system. Few targeted digital tools exist to support the mental health of hospital-based health care workers, and none of them appear to have been led and co-designed by health care workers. Objective RMHive is being led and developed by health care workers using experience-based co-design (EBCD) processes as a mobile app to support the mental health challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic to health care workers. We present a protocol for the impact evaluation for the rapid design and delivery of the RMHive mobile app. Methods The impact evaluation will adopt a mixed methods design. Qualitative data from photo interviews undertaken with up to 30 health care workers and semistructured interviews conducted with up to 30 governance stakeholders will be integrated with qualitative and quantitative user analytics data and user-generated demographic and mental health data entered into the app. Analyses will address three evaluation questions related to engagement with the mobile app, implementation and integration of the app, and the impact of the app on individual mental health outcomes. The design and development will be described using the Mobile Health Evidence Reporting and Assessment guidelines. Implementation of the app will be evaluated using normalization process theory to analyze qualitative data from interviews combined with text and video analysis from the semistructured interviews. Mental health impacts will be assessed using the total score of the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ4) and subscale scores for the 2-item Patient Health Questionnaire for depression and the 2-item Generalized Anxiety Scale for anxiety. The PHQ4 will be completed at baseline and at 14 and 28 days. Results The anticipated average use period of the app is 30 days. The rapid design will occur over four months using EBCD to collect qualitative data and develop app content. The impact evaluation will monitor outcome data for up to 12 weeks following hospital-wide release of the minimal viable product release. The study received funding and ethics approvals in June 2020. Outcome data is expected to be available in March 2021, and the impact evaluation is expected to be published mid-2021. Conclusions The impact evaluation will examine the rapid design, development, and implementation of the RMHive app and its impact on mental health outcomes for health care workers. Findings from the impact evaluation will provide guidance for the integration of EBCD in rapid design and implementation processes. The evaluation will also inform future development and rollout of the app to support the mental health needs of hospital-based health care workers more widely. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) DERR1-10.2196/26168