Professional roles within inter-organizational projects have become increasingly diverse and contested, yet little is known about how professionals react to such threats of marginalization. Drawing on empirical data from interviews with architects, a profession in which historically established role boundaries have become particularly blurred, we analyse how professionals negotiate their roles in inter-organizational projects. We identified three types of boundary work—reinstating, bending, and pioneering role boundaries—and illustrate their antecedents and effects for project collaboration. These categories exemplify different responses to the threat of marginalization depending upon professionals’ perceptions of what the specific project called for. Our study provides important insights into boundary work practices emerging in the context of inter-organizational projects and how professionals adjust their claims-making to perceived opportunities, thereby triggering incremental as well as more radical changes in the professional role structures.

Architectural firms often have difficulty generating profit from their services as they pursue not only commercial but also professional goals. These goals frequently conflict and have to be balanced during the process of value creation and value capture. So far, literature has focused on the interaction between the perceived use value for the customer and the fee that is paid to the firm. To better understand how professional service firms realize their organizational targets, professional value needs to be included. In this study, in-depth interviews with the architects and clients of nine housing projects provide insight into the content and process of value capture by architectural firms. The data reveal strategies by which architects tried to maximize the capture of professional value at the expense of profit or sometimes even their clients' perceived use value. These trade-offs in value capture confirm the importance of professional value when studying value creation and capture in a professional service context. This paper provides an understanding of how architectural firms struggle to balance competing goals and highlights the importance of well-managed value capture.

Prenatal nutrition is a key predictor of early-life development. However, despite mass campaigns to stimulate healthy nutrition during pregnancy, the diet of Dutch pregnant women is often suboptimal. Innovative technologies offer an opportunity to develop tailored tools, which resulted in the release of various apps on healthy nutrition during pregnancy. As midwives act as primary contact for Dutch pregnant women, the goal was to explore the experiences and perspectives of midwives on (1) nutritional counselling during pregnancy, and (2) nutritional mHealth apps to support midwifery care. Analyses of eleven in-depth interviews indicated that nutritional counselling involved the referral to websites, a brochure, and an app developed by the Dutch Nutrition Centre. Midwives were aware of the existence of other nutritional mHealth apps but felt uncertain about their trustworthiness. Nevertheless, midwives were open towards the implementation of new tools providing that these are trustworthy, accessible, user-friendly, personalised, scientifically sound, and contain easy-digestible information. Midwives stressed the need for guidelines for professionals on the implementation of new tools. Involving midwives early-on in the development of future nutritional mHealth apps may facilitate better alignment with the needs and preferences of end-users and professionals, and thus increase the likelihood of successful implementation in midwifery practice.

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