Our study elucidates collaborative value creation and private value capture in collaborative networks in a context of sustainability. Collaborative networks that focus on innovative solutions for grand societal challenges are characterized by a multiplicity and diversity of actors that increase the complexity and coordination costs of collective action. These types of inter-organizational arrangements have underlying tensions as partners cooperate to create collaborative value and compete to capture or appropriate value on a private or organizational level, resulting in potential and actual value flows that are highly diffuse and uncertain among actors. We also observe that network participants capture value differentially, often citing the pro-social (e.g. community, belonging, importance) and extrinsic benefits of learning and reputation as valuable, but found it difficult to appropriate economic or social benefits from that value. Differential and asymmetric value appropriation among participants threatens continued network engagement and the potential collective value creation of collaborative networks. Our data indicates that networked value creation and capture requires maintaining resource complementarity and interdependency among network participants as the network evolves. We develop a framework to assess the relational value of collaborative networks and contribute to literature by unpacking the complexities of networked value creation and private value capture in collaborative networks for sustainability.
This study tries to understand the power of knowledge within collaborative care networks to provide insights for designing successful collaboration within care networks by combining intersectionality and epistemic (in)justice. Becoming an informal carer for someone with an acquired brain injury (ABI) causes a dramatic disruption of daily life. Collaboration between professionals and carers with a migration background may result in unjust and unfair situations within care networks. Carer experiences are shaped by aspects of diversity which are subject to power structures and processes of social (in)justice in care networks. In this study, intersectionality was used to both generate complex in-depth insights into the different active layers of carer experiences and focus on within-group differences. Intersectionality was combined with the theoretical concept of epistemic (in)justice to unravel underlying dynamics in collaborative care networks contributing to the understanding that carers with a migration background are often not seen as ‘knowers of reality.’ This qualitative study conducted in the Netherlands between 2019 and 2022 incorporated three informal group conversations (N = 32), semi-structured interviews (N = 21), and three dialogue sessions (N = 7) with carers caring for someone with an ABI. A critical friend and a community of practice, with carers, professionals, and care recipients (N = 8), contributed to the analysis. Three interrelated themes were identified as constituting different layers of the carer experience: (a) I need to keep going, focusing on carers' personal experiences and how experiences were related to carers social positioning; (b) the struggle of caring together, showing how expectations of family members towards carers added to carer burden; and (c) trust is a balancing act, centering on how support from professionals shaped carers' experiences, in which trusting professionals' support proved challenging for carers, and how this trust was influenced by contextual factors at organizational and policy levels. Overall, the need for diversity-responsive policies within care organizations is apparent. Carers with a migration background need to feel heard so they can meaningfully tailor care to meet recipients' needs.
Social network analysis can be a powerful tool to better understand the social context of terrorist activities, and it may also offer potential leads for agencies to intervene. Our access to Dutch police information allows us to analyse the relational features of two networks that include actors who planned acts of terrorism and were active in the dissemination of a Salafi-Jihadi interpretation of Islam (n = 57; n = 26). Based on a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative and more formal statistical analysis (exponential random graph models), we analyse the structural characteristics of these networks, individual positions and the extent to which radical leaders, pre-existing family and friendship ties and radicalizing settings affect actors to form ties. We find that both networks resemble a core–periphery structure, with cores formed by a densely interconnected group of actors who frequently meet in radicalizing settings. Based on our findings, we discuss the potential effects of preventive and repressive measures developed within the Dutch counterterrorism framework.
Digital innovations in the field of immersive Augmented Reality (AR) can be a solution to offer adults who are mentally, physically or financially unable to attend sporting events such as premier league football a stadium and match experience. This allows them to continue to connect with their social networks. In the intended project, AR content will be further developed with the aim of evoking the stadium experience of home matches as much as possible. The extent to which AR enriches the experience is then tested in an experiment, in which the experience of a football match with and without AR enrichment is measured in a stadium setting and in a home setting. The experience is measured with physiological signals. In addition, a subjective experience measure is also being developed and benchmarked (the experience impact score). Societal issueInclusion and health: The joint experience of (top) sports competitions forms a platform for vulnerable adults, with a limited social capital, to build up and maintain the social networks that are so necessary for them. AR to fight against social isolation and loneliness.
Dutch society faces major future challenges putting populations’ health and wellbeing at risk. An ageing population, increase of chronic diseases, multimorbidity and loneliness lead to more complex healthcare demands and needs and costs are increasing rapidly. Urban areas like Amsterdam have to meet specific challenges of a growing and super divers population often with a migration background. The bachelor programs and the relating research groups of social work and occupational therapy at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences innovate their curricula and practice-oriented research by multidisciplinary and cross-domain approaches. Their Centres of Expertise foster interprofessional research and educational innovation on the topics of healthy ageing, participation, daily occupations, positive health, proximity, community connectedness and urban innovation in a social context. By focusing on senior citizens’ lives and by organizing care in peoples own living environment. Together with their networks, this project aims to develop an innovative health promotion program and contribute to the government missions to promote a healthy and inclusive society. Collaboration with stakeholders in practice based on their urgent needs has priority in the context of increasing responsibilities of local governments and communities. Moreover, the government has recently defined social base as being the combination of citizen initiatives, volunteer organizations , caregivers support, professional organizations and support of vulnerable groups. Kraktie Foundations is a community based ethno-cultural organization in south east Amsterdam that seeks to research and expand their informal services to connect with and build with professional care organizations. Their aim coincides with this project proposal: promoting health and wellbeing of senior citizens by combining intervention, participatory research and educational perspectives from social work, occupational therapy and hidden voluntary social work. With a boundary crossing innovation of participatory health research, education and Kraktie’s work in the community we co-create, change and innovate towards sustainable interventions with impact.
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.
