Projects involve inter-organizational networks that are central to collaborative projectbased value creation. Interest in value creation in the project lifecycle is mounting, and the front-end stage of projects is gaining increasing attention in the research literature. However, little is known about how network management activities facilitate value creation in the frontend and how such activities push a project toward higher end-states of value. The purpose of this research is to identify activities that facilitate the development of inter-organizational networks and augment value creation among multiple organizations in the front-end of projects. To this end, we conduct a qualitative empirical case study of the front-end of a health care campus development project. We identify four activities and five network attributes that explain how inter-organizational network can be managed for value creation in the front-end. These findings contribute to research on management of the front-end of projects and management of inter-organizational networks in projects.

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This study focuses on collective goal formation in business networks aimed toward new value creation and innovation. Previous research has depicted such networks as valuecreating systems or meta-organizations pursuing a system-level goal. We develop these views by addressing a research question: How can multiple organizations collectively form a system-level goal, and how does this affect new value creation at the level of the whole network? We conducted a multi-case study of two Finnish health care networks in which multiple diverse organizations participated in the formation of a system-level goal for the network and developed innovative joint treatment practices for the better care of patients. We derived six propositions and developed a conceptual model explaining how the collective formation of a system-level goal is linked to network-level value creation by increasing network actors' resource commitment. Furthermore, we introduced important moderating factors, network architects and domain similarity, which affect collective goal formation. We claim that the conceptual model strengthens pre-existing theories on managing business networks through a system-level goal, collective action, framing, agenda construction, and institutional mobilization. We contribute especially to previous research on networks aiming for new value creation.

Research communities across multiple disciplines have demonstrated an increasing concern about variations in the performance of social-ecological systems. In response to this concern, holistic research on resilience explores explanations for the performance of the systems under both predictable and unknown stressors and shocks. Embedded in broader systems, projects - which often involve a broad range of uncertainty and variability in performance outcomes - provide a fertile context in which to study resilience. On the other hand, projects involve temporary organising that is crucial in the extreme and changing contexts. In this essay, we frame a roadmap for the new theoretical domain of research at the intersection of resilience and projects. This framework intends to spark new research directions and can be used by scholars to investigate resilience at and across multiple levels-- individuals, groups/teams, projects, organisations, industries, and societies.