Our world is increasingly faced with wicked environmental sustainability challenges, requiring entrepreneurs to work in multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) to address these challenges. Network orchestration is essential for these MSIs to realize their sustainability goals and make an impact. The concept of opportunity beliefs is central in understanding the actions taken by these entrepreneurs. However, the current theorization of opportunity beliefs formation is individual-centric. Furthermore, there is little understanding of how orchestration influences the opportunity beliefs formation in multi-stakeholder teams. We build on the framework of McMullen and Shepherd (2016), who presented a two-stage model of how third-person opportunity beliefs transform into first-person opportunity beliefs. We advance two contributions by using a single case study and applying the Gioia method to code and analyze the data. First is a two-stage model consisting of the formation of joint first-person opportunity beliefs that suggests that value-aligning and informing resource orchestration activities are essential in this process. Second, we advance the idea that the resource orchestration activities have both enabling and adversely constraining effects impairing the formation of joint first-person opportunity beliefs under conditions of organizational pressure.
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Het tweejarige onderzoeksprogramma The Network is the Message richt zich op de effectiviteit van sociale media: wanneer zijn sociale media effectief, wat bepaalt die effectiviteit en hoe kunnen we dit meten? Startpunt in deze management summary van thema 2 ‘meten is nog niet weten’ is het inzicht dat het allemaal begint met doelstellingen. Doelstellingen zijn van essentieel belang om te kunnen bepalen of je succes hebt of niet. En bij doelstellingen horen Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), met een set zorgvuldig geselecteerde metrics die de beste bijdrage leveren om die doelstellingen in kaart te brengen. Op die manier kun je ook bepalen of je je tijd en middelen goed inzet en je misschien effectiever zou zijn deze door deze anders te verdelen.
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We examine the demise of a multi-stakeholder network that was launched to promote an inclusive dairy market in Ethiopia to better understand why nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may develop interventions in contexts of poverty that fail to endure after they exit. We identify organizational reflexivity – the capacity to recognize and understand the recursive interplay between an intervention and the local environment – as a key explanatory mechanism for this intervention outcome. Limited reflexivity not only prevented the NGO we studied from properly aligning the intervention with the context (design failures), but also prevented the organization from adjusting its intervention when negative feedback emerged (orchestration failures), which eventually evolved into the demise of the network (maintenance failure). While our study confirms the theoretical premise that NGOs need to contextualize their interventions, we expand current knowledge by highlighting the role of organizational reflexivity in this process. Moreover, by showing how reflexivity deficits can trigger a cascade of failure, especially when intervening in voids where incumbent firms have interests in maintaining the void, our study calls attention to the politicized nature of institutional voids.
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Collaborative networks for sustainability are emerging rapidly to address urgent societal challenges. By bringing together organizations with different knowledge bases, resources and capabilities, collaborative networks enhance information exchange, knowledge sharing and learning opportunities to address these complex problems that cannot be solved by organizations individually. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the apparel sector, where examples of collaborative networks for sustainability are plenty, for example Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals, and the Fair Wear Foundation. Companies like C&A and H&M but also smaller players join these networks to take their social responsibility. Collaborative networks are unlike traditional forms of organizations; they are loosely structured collectives of different, often competing organizations, with dynamic membership and usually lack legal status. However, they do not emerge or organize on their own; they need network orchestrators who manage the network in terms of activities and participants. But network orchestrators face many challenges. They have to balance the interests of diverse companies and deal with tensions that often arise between them, like sharing their innovative knowledge. Orchestrators also have to “sell” the value of the network to potential new participants, who make decisions about which networks to join based on the benefits they expect to get from participating. Network orchestrators often do not know the best way to maintain engagement, commitment and enthusiasm or how to ensure knowledge and resource sharing, especially when competitors are involved. Furthermore, collaborative networks receive funding from grants or subsidies, creating financial uncertainty about its continuity. Raising financing from the private sector is difficult and network orchestrators compete more and more for resources. When networks dissolve or dysfunction (due to a lack of value creation and capture for participants, a lack of financing or a non-functioning business model), the collective value that has been created and accrued over time may be lost. This is problematic given that industrial transformations towards sustainability take many years and durable organizational forms are required to ensure ongoing support for this change. Network orchestration is a new profession. There are no guidelines, handbooks or good practices for how to perform this role, nor is there professional education or a professional association that represents network orchestrators. This is urgently needed as network orchestrators struggle with their role in governing networks so that they create and capture value for participants and ultimately ensure better network performance and survival. This project aims to foster the professionalization of the network orchestrator role by: (a) generating knowledge, developing and testing collaborative network governance models, facilitation tools and collaborative business modeling tools to enable network orchestrators to improve the performance of collaborative networks in terms of collective value creation (network level) and private value capture (network participant level) (b) organizing platform activities for network orchestrators to exchange ideas, best practices and learn from each other, thereby facilitating the formation of a professional identity, standards and community of network orchestrators.
