Research
Research
Division of labor and task coordination and its impact on cooperation in grand challenge partnerships (R&R AJG4*)
Abstract: Little is known about how division of labor and task coordination unfold in grand challenge partnerships, where no one has formal authority to direct efforts. Leveraging longitudinal data on a grand challenge partnership with the system-level goal of transforming cancer from a deadly to a curable or chronic disease, we approach grand challenge partnerships as meta-organizations. We find that the enactment of the normative goals of either the parent organization or the meta-organization directs the behaviors and interactions of individual contributors. We develop a process model of how these discrete behavioral modes of dividing labor and coordinating efforts produce excessive behaviors— jointholism and alignophilia— triggering deteriorating cooperation. Our study offers a coordination-based explanation for why grand challenge partnerships often fail to sustain commitment and ultimately cease to exist.
Keywords: Grand Challenges, Organization design, Meta-organization, Behavioural foundations,
Abstract: There has been a shift in innovation policy in recent years toward more focus on systemic transformation and changed directionality. In this chapter, we describe a collection of challenges that such policies need to address. Based on a review of dominant frameworks regarding socio-technical transitions, we compare these theories with examples of innovation policy in different countries. Systemic transformation across an economy usually requires a process of creative destruction in which new competencies may be required, actors need to be connected in novel ways, and institutions may need to be changed. Our empirical illustrations show that support programs and initiatives across Europe do not always seem to result in such a process, as they include mechanisms favoring large, established firms and universities. These actors have often fine-tuned their activities and capabilities to the existing order, and therefore have few incentives to engage in renewal. As the incumbent actors also control superior financial and relational resources, there is a risk that they capture innovation policies and thus reinforce established structures rather than contributing to systemic transformation.
Keywords: Innovation policy, Third generation, System transformation, Regulatory capture
Authors: Bergkvist, Moodysson & Sandström
Abstract: Little is known about how meta-organizations addressing grand challenges drive and integrate effort contributions by their individual members without relying on formal authority. Therefore, we conduct an in-depth case study of a meta-organization in Sweden with the system-level goal of transforming cancer from a deadly to a curable or chronic disease to explore the drivers and impediments of effort integration. We find that informal levers for effort integration in meta-organizations always operate in conjunction with authority-based levers in the parent-organization. From this situational condition, we proffer a process model of how meta-org designers come to “overdose” socialization to drive effort for integration, leading to the formation of an in-group whose effort contributions are zeal-based rather than ability-based. By explicating the drawbacks of levering effort by socialization in this setting and the limited ability to mitigate such drawbacks, we provide a behavioral foundational explanation for why these types of arrangements, although driven by noble aims, often don’t live up to their expectations and fail to integrate effort.
Keywords: Effort integration, Meta-organization, Grand challenges, Socialization
Abstract: Mission-oriented innovation policies (MOIPs) are often implemented through “mission arenas” (MAs) where actors collectively try to address societal “wicked problems”. Yet, little is known about how attention – and subsequently time and effort – towards specific problems and solutions, and their geographical dimensions, unfold within MAs. We study four cases of MAs mandated and granted public funding to address self-articulated ‘missions’ in public health. We identify four distinct types of MA organisation, with different attention-regulating properties contributing to significant variation in their flexibility and breadth of attention. We propose a model explicating how all four MA organisations regulate attention away from future attention to regional problems and solutions – a finding that serves to problematise assumptions about attention in the MOIPs literature.
Keywords: Mission-oriented innovation policy, Mission arenas, attention-based view, wicked
problems, transformative innovation policy
Abstract: Scholars argue for the benefits of leveraging open innovation to tackle grand challenges. The rationale is that these complex, uncertain, and cross-jurisdictional problems require input from a broad range of actors, which can be achieved through crowdsourcing ideas. Stimulating idea sharing is challenging, and search initiatives often struggle to generate high-quality ideas. However, scholars have recently proposed that rhetorically highlighting the participatory nature of grand challenges can mobilize the efforts needed to formulate their solution, calling for exploration of specific rhetorical strategies and their outcomes. Therefore, we investigate how different types of normative appeals used by a grand challenge initiative affect their external search for novel ideas. In two online experiments, we test the causal effects of three conditions: (i) a normative appeal to contribute to solving a grand challenge versus (ii) a normative appeal to contribute as a domain-expert versus (iii) an informational appeal (control). We find small but positive effects regarding the willingness to share ideas of both treatments compared to the control, but no variation in idea content in terms of idea length and lexical richness across treatments. Our study contributes to the literature by empirically testing popular arguments on how to tackle grand challenges, suggesting that there are no magical formulas.
Keywords: Grand challenges, Experiments, Open innovation, External search, Rhetorical strategies, Normative appeals, Construal level theory
Keywords: Grand Challenge Partnerships, Strategic Organization, Psychological Ownership, Transaction Cost Economics, Meta-organization, Centralization