Human Side of Collaborative Partnerships

Abstract

The research on collaborative partnerships has accumulated a vast body of knowledge, which has assisted us with comprehending several complex organizational phenomena, including mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures, and entrepreneurial partnerships. Yet, the existing studies have not paid sufficient attention to the human side factors. We join the current conversation within the microfoundations perspective of management and organization studies by suggesting that investigating the human side factors as the microfoundations of collaborative partnerships can advance our collective understanding of the phenomena in important ways. This article has three general objectives. First, we show that collaborative partnerships have been a long-standing issue in management and organization studies and provide an overview of the puzzles that informed and motivated this special issue. Second, we highlight the key insights and contributions of the articles included in this special issue by reviewing their theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches, and findings. Finally, we outline a future research agenda on the human side of collaborative partnerships that can help advance management and organization studies.

Organisational Resilience in Acquisition Integration—Organisational Antecedents and Contingency Effects of Flexibility and Redundancy

“…At a general level, our findings support micro‐foundations research concerned with identifying antecedents and mechanisms underpinning key concepts in acquisitions (Angwin, Paroutis, & Connell, ; Cooper, Stokes, Liu, & Tarba, ; Liu, Sarala, Cooper, & Xing, ). Our study also reveals complex relations underpinning resilience.…”

Contextualising Risk and Building Resilience: Returnees Versus Local Entrepreneurs in China

“…Third, our study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature on effectuation from a psychological perspective (Gorgievski & Stephan, ). Specifically, our study joins the recent psychological micro‐foundational movements on organisation and management studies (Liu et al, ) by suggesting resilience as a micro‐foundation for effectuation theory in the context of entrepreneurs dealing with risk. Furthermore, the conceptual framework derived from our study points to the distinctive characteristics of effectual and causal coping approaches in building resilience.…”

Local Government as Institutional Entrepreneur: Public–Private Collaborative Partnerships in Fostering Regional Entrepreneurship

“…Future work incorporating other actors, especially universities, can provide additional insights regarding entrepreneurial public–private collaborative partnerships, both in general and in the specific context of regional entrepreneurship. Third, by examining the role played by local governments in fostering regional entrepreneurship, we extend the previous work on public–private collaborative partnerships (Liu et al ., ). We identified two mechanisms of entrepreneurial public–private collaborative partnership from a temporal perspective; future research could assess the generalizability of our results by means of quantitative studies across regions and/or countries.…”