Keeping Alive Inter-Organisational Innovation Through Identity Work and Play

Abstract

PublishedThis paper discusses how people draw on the strategic interests and motivations of their home organisations in negotiating the activities inter-organisational collaboration for innovation will include. Through presenting ethnographic snapshots of a case involving fifteen partner organisations, the paper explores how members of a coordinating group make sense of the possibilities and constraints for joint work. As they discuss new activities, they engage in identity work and identity play, simultaneously identifying with their home organisations and the meta-organisation. This finding challenges previous research assuming the importance of a coherent and stable collective identity for collaborative work. Instead the author suggests that innovation practitioners leave space for multiple objectives to emerge over time within joint activities in order to keep alive interorganisational innovation. The author calls for more research into how the interplay of organisational identities enables and constrains the practices of organising for interorganisational innovation.

Meta-Organizations: A Clarification and a Way Forward

“…The meta-organization also needs to demonstrate the legitimacy of its collective identity toward state or public authorities, which it can do by assembling the legitimacy of its leading members and by positioning itself to address expectations. This study contributes to recent research on the collective identity of meta-organizations viewed as cycles of identity work and play (Webb, 2017).…”

Why Open Innovation is Easier Said Than Done: An Organizational Identity Perspective

“…According to Petroni et al (2012), open innovation influences R&D personnel for their role in inter-organizational innovation activities. When open innovation comes into the debate, the dynamics of organizational and individual collaboration merge and need to be managed with a human-centric approach, rather than an organizational-centered one, as individuals deal with the uncertainty of the 'give-and-take' of the collaboration that generates innovation (Salampasis and Mention, 2017;Webb 2017). This 'give-and-take' is the source of innovation as it comes from the above-mentioned knowledge flows.…”

“…Organizational identity is considered crucial for organization development since it affects actions, interpretation, and decision making of the members and management. Indeed, in open innovation, employees coming from different organizations keep representing their parent one, but still identify with the new organization established for the collaboration, incurring in identity shifts that might affect joint innovation activities (Webb 2017). For these reasons, scholars suggested the combination of managerial actions that can drive the dynamics related to the 'dual allegiance' of R&D employees involved in the exchange of knowledge during collaborative projects: a good governance of the balance between disclosure and protection of knowledge would allow success of collaboration (Husted and Michailova, 2010).…”

A practice-based framework for understanding (informal) play as practice phenomena in organizations

“…The second category includes play as meaning making and enactment through more conscious and purposeful people’s experiences and social activities in the workplace. When faced with uncertainty, tensions and disfunctionalities, employees engage in playful collective undertakings, such as narratives and storytelling, identity play, and improvisation, with the purpose of sharing knowledge and solving complex problems to enable organizational learning (Spraggon & Bodolica, 2017; Webb, 2017). The last category conceptualizes play as creation of tangible or virtual artifacts, such as online games and paintings, and functions that ensue from continuous social interactions among firm members.…”

“…Serious play emerged as the dominant stream of play as practice research emphasizing managerial efforts to achieve work objectives through a controlled emergence of play (Statler, Heracleous, & Jacobs, 2011; Schulz, Geithner, Woelfel, & Krzywinski, 2015). Despite recent advancements made in the literature (Vermeulen, Koster, Loos, & van Slobbe, 2016; Dodgson, 2017; Webb, 2017), the current depiction of playful practices in organizations remains incomplete. Portraying play as a functionalized activity that occurs in artificial settings under managerial supervision, serious play scholars overlook other forms of play, which are spontaneous, self-organized, employee-driven and situated in the natural work habitat.…”