Managing to Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage

264 Pages·2005·2.86 MB·English

by  Chris Huxham

Managing to Collaborate
This ground-breaking text is concerned with the management of situations in which
people have to work collaboratively with those in other organizations. The last few years
have seen an explosion of inter-organizational working throughout different continents.
Collaboration between organizations can address issues such as economic development,
health, the environment, risk sharing, supply chain efficiency and human resource
management. It is an activity that touches almost every aspect of business and social life.
The authors of Managing to Collaborate combine rigorous theory with practical
examples to create a one-stop resource for academics, managers and students studying or
working in collaboration. The key features of the book include:
■ theory drawn directly from practice
■ rich theory explicated in simple language so it talks to everyone interested in
collaboration
■ a coherently developed understanding of the challenges in collaboration based on
careful research.
Chris Huxham is Senior Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research
(AIM) and Professor of Management at the University of Strathclyde Graduate School of
Business.
Siv Vangen is Senior Lecturer at the Open University Business School and Honorary
Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde Graduate School of Business.

Managing to Collaborate
The theory and practice of collaborative advantage
Chris Huxham
and Siv Vangen

LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York,
NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor &Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.”
© 2005 Chris Huxham and Siv Vangen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Huxham, Chris. Manging to collaborate : the
theory and practice of collaborative advantage/ Chris Huxham and Siv Vangen. p. cm. Includes
bibliographical references and index. 1. Strategic alliances (Business). 2. Partnership. 3. Business
networks. I. Vangen, Siv (Siv Evy), 1964– II. Title. HD69.S8H89 2005 658′.044–dc22
2004013650
ISBN 0-203-01016-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-33919-7 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-33920-0 (pbk)
To everyone we have quoted in this book and hundreds more whom we couldn’t include.

Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgements x

1
Part I INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
COLLABORATIVE ADVANTAGE

1 Collaborative advantage: What? Why? How? and Why Not? 2
2 Cases of collaboration 12
3 The principles of the theory of collaborative advantage 26
4 Action researching collaboration 38

51
Part II THEMES IN COLLABORATION PRACTICE

5 Grappling with advantage and inertia 52
6 Managing aims 73
7 Negotiating purpose 94
8 Membership structures and dynamics 111
9 Coping with trust 138
10 Using power 157
11 Issues of identity 170
12 The Meaning of leadership 184
13 Doing Leadership 194

210
Part III COLLABORATION IN PRACTICE
14 Using the theory: managing tensions in collaboration practice 211
15 Managing to collaborate—and getting a buzz from it 228
Bibliography 235
Index 244
Preface
Our involvement with research on collaboration was somewhat unexpected. Chris’s
initiation was with a piece of action research in the late 1980s when Glasgow was
awarded the status of European City of Culture 1990 and a multi-agency team—rather
more of a rarity then than it is now—had to make it happen. The notion of collaborative
advantage was developed in the aftermath of that. The notion of collaborative inertia
came a little later when it became obvious that harnessing the advantage was far from
straightforward in practice. Siv’s initiation was a few years later through an MSc project,
which turned into a research fellowship and a doctorate concerned with transferring
theoretical understandings of collaboration to practice. Neither of us would have
predicted at the start that 15 years later we would still be vigorously pursuing this
research agenda.
We have written a succession of articles during this time, but this book is the first time
we have been able to pull some of these together to represent the theory of collaborative
advantage holistically. Bringing together our research into this volume has therefore been
a labour of love (although we have to say that we didn’t love the labour it took!).
Coming from backgrounds in management science, our preoccupation has always
been with theory that can inform practice. We have endeavoured here to be explicit about
the way in which we have constructed and researched the theory of collaborative
advantage and about the way in which we see it being used. The theory is deeply rooted
in practice, but we have also paid a lot of attention to academic rigour. We hope this book
will be of interest as an academic monograph, not only in terms of its theoretical content,
but also in terms of its approach to practice-oriented research. We hope that it will be of
use to those who have to manage their involvement in collaborations for real. Throughout
the book we use many stories of, and quotations (sometimes paraphrased) from practice.
These have the dual role of being examples of the data from which the theory is derived,
and illustrations of it. They are obviously our perceptions of what happened or what was
said, but we have tried to represent these as faithfully as possible.
On a technical note, we have built much of the book around several of our articles. In
the main, we have extracted the parts that describe the theoretical conceptualizations. We
have left out the introductions, methodologies and discussions as these are covered
jointly elsewhere in the book. Instead, we have ‘topped and tailed’ the extracts with
discussions that provide linkage across the book and also draw out the way in which the
conceptualizations can be used in practice.
We deliberately sought to make this book accessible for all its audiences and therefore
we sometimes removed references that were included in the original articles. We have
also updated references to conference papers and the like that have since been published.
All of the references used in the book are intended as examples of what is actually a
hugely rich and diverse field, even though for continuity we do not normally use ‘e.g.’ to
emphasize this.