Human Side of Collaborative Partnerships

Introduction

Collaborative partnerships constitute an important phenomenon in contemporary organizations (Child, Faulkner, & Tallman, 2005). While there are many different types of collaborative partnerships—such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) (Graebner, Heimeriks, Huy, & Vaara, 2017; Tarba, Cooper, Sarala, & Ahammad, 2016), joint ventures (Beamish & Lupton, 2009), strategic alliances (Das & Teng, 1998), cooperative network alliances (Bunyaratavej, Doh, Hahn, Lewin, & Massini, 2011; Koza & Lewin, 1999), and entrepreneurial partnerships (Liu & Almor, 2016; Lu & Beamish, 2006; Pahnke, Katila, & Eisenhardt, 2015)—the key characteristic of this organizational form centers on the cooperation of individuals across traditional organizational boundaries (Graebner, Heimeriks, Huy, & Vaara, 2017). Although the existing research on collaborative partnerships has accumulated a vast body of knowledge and has thereby assisted us with comprehending these complex organizational phenomena, we argue that the existing studies have not paid sufficient attention to the human side factors. Therefore, by joining the current conversation on the microfoundations movement in management and organization studies (Felin, Foss, & Ployhart, 2015), we suggest that investigating the human side factors from a microfoundational perspective can advance our collective understandings of collaborative partnerships in important ways.

This article has three general objectives. First, we seek to show that collaborative partnerships have been a long-standing issue in management and organization studies and provide an overview of the puzzles that informed and motivated this special issue. Second, we highlight the key insights and contributions of the research articles included in this special issue by reviewing their theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches, and findings. Finally, we outline a future research agenda for examining the human side of collaborative partnerships to advance management and organization studies.

The Human Side and Microfoundations in Collaborative Partnerships

Prior research on collaborative partnerships has investigated several important human side factors (Buono & Bowditch, 2003; Seo & Hill, 2005), such as emotions in M&A (Kusstatscher & Cooper, 2005; Reus, 2012); psychological contract to retain management team in M&A (Kiessling, Harvey, & Moeller, 2012); commitment and trust in strategic alliance (Cullen, Johnson, & Sakano, 2000); human resource management (HRM), socio-cultural integration, and knowledge transfer in M&A (Sarala, Junni, Cooper, & Tarba, 2016); and leaders’ identity work in M&A (Xing & Liu, 2016). However, the existing studies tend to lack an overarching theoretical framework to organize the multifaceted human side factors. Therefore, in the following, we refer to the microfoundations movement in management and organization studies and argue that the microfoundational perspective can further advance research on the human side of collaborative partnerships.

A Brief Introduction to the Articles in This Special Issue

In this section, we introduce the four articles in this special issue. We discuss their theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches, findings, and overall contributions to the study of the human side of collaborative partnerships. Before we introduce the individual articles, we first provide some background about this special issue project. The call for papers was announced in early 2015. Our guest editing team organized two dedicated Professional Development Workshops in 2015 to solicit high-quality papers and promote the focal theme of this special issue: one titled “Human Side of Collaborative Partnerships” at the 2015 Academy of Management Annual Meeting and the other one titled “Psychological Micro-Foundations of Collaborative Partnerships” at the 2015 British Academy of Management Conference. The submission deadline for this special issue was in November 2015 (Cooper, Liu, Sarala, & Xing, 2015). In total, we received 19 submissions covering multiple aspects of collaborative partnerships. We were pleased to see some manuscripts cover the topic beyond our original call, such as cross-sector partnerships and global project development. After a rigorous review process with each paper reviewed by three high-quality reviewers undertaking multiple rounds of reviews, we included four papers in this special issue. Table 1 offers an overview of these four articles along with some key dimensions.

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Table 1.

An Overview of the Articles in This Special Issue.

Authors	Theoretical perspectives	Methodological approaches	Key findings	Focus on human side	Types of collaborative partnership	Geographical coverage
Paustian-Underdahl, Samantha; Fainshmidt, Stav; Sanchez, Juan; Misati, Eve; Zhao, Yue; Zhang, Haiyan	Economic institutions Transactional stress theory	Quantitative	In less advanced economies, acquisitions are associated with increased perceptions of growth opportunities, which are in turn associated with more positive employee outcomes (e.g., work–life balance, job satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, and reduced turnover intentions).	Employee reaction to mergers and acquisitions	Mergers and acquisitions	29 countries
Bauer, Florian; Dao, Mai Anh; Strobl, Andreas; Tarba, Shlomo	Shared metal models Innovation	Quantitative	Shared team and task mental models positively influence exploitation activities following an acquisition whereas only shared team mental models are beneficial for exploration.	Shared team and task mental models	Mergers and acquisitions	German-speaking countries in Europe
Søderberg, Anne-Marie; Romani, Laurence	Bourdieu’s concept of capital Boundary spanning theory	Qualitative	Transactive and transformative modes of collaboration coexist. Partner status affects the forms of boundary-spanning activities.	Managers’ boundary-spanning activities	Global information technology development projects	Indian vendor managers and their European client
Luvison, Dave; Cummings, Jeffrey	Role theory	Conceptual	The nature of firm-sent expectations is affected by alliance managers’ receipt of legitimate partner-sent roles. The above relationship is moderated by entrepreneurism and the structure of the interfirm collaborative environment.	Alliance managers’ legitimacy	Alliance managers	NA

In the first article, Paustian-Underdahl and colleagues examine employee reactions to acquisitions. The authors take a novel theoretical approach by drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of economic institutions theory and transactional stress theory, which allows them to link institutional-level factors to the human side of acquisitions. The empirical setting includes 29 countries, including both more advanced economies and less advanced economies, with a total sample of 10,803 middle managers and executives. The novelty of the article is in showing that the country-level economic development plays an important role in determining employees’ perceptions of growth opportunities resulting in acquisitions: In less advanced economies, acquisitions are associated with increased perceptions of growth opportunities, which in turn lead to more positive perceptions related to the human side employee outcomes, such as work–life balance, job satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, and reduced turnover intentions. A vital contribution of the article is in showing the interplay of institutional and micro level factors, which sheds new light to understanding the human side of acquisitions in specific and the human side of collaborative partnerships in general.

In the second article, Bauer, Dao, Strobl, and Tarba study how shared team and task mental models that were developed prior to an acquisition can influence exploration and exploitation innovation activities during postacquisition integration. The theoretical underpinnings are based on shared mental models as informal coordination mechanisms and exploitation and exploration as innovation activities. By using a sample of 101 transactions of acquirers from the German-speaking countries in Europe, this study contributes by identifying more nuanced relationships between shared mental models and innovation activities depending on the type of the innovation activities: while both shared team and task mental models positively influence exploitation activities following an acquisition, only shared team mental models are beneficial for exploration. Furthermore, the study shows that the effect of informal coordination is contextual: The beneficial effect of shared team mental models on exploration tends to be devitalized as the relative size increases. Thus, the study contributes by highlighting important contingencies and boundary conditions when examining the human side of acquisitions in specific and the role of informal coordination in collaborative partnerships in general.

In the third article, Søderberg and Romani use the qualitative case study method to examine collaboration in global information technology development projects between Indian vendor managers and their European client. Applying the theoretical underpinnings of Bourdieu’s concept of capital as economic, cultural, social, and symbolic, the study focuses on interorganizational boundary-spanning activities in vendor–client relationships. The novelty of the study is that it articulates a context-sensitive understanding of boundary work from the rare perspective of Indian vendor managers and thereby sheds light for understanding collaborative partnerships within the “West-Meets-East” context. More broadly, the study contributes to the understanding of the human side of collaborative partnerships by showing the coexistence of transactive and transformative modes of collaboration in vendor–client relationships and by elaborating on the role of partner status in boundary-spanning activities.

In the fourth article, to continue with the theme of boundary-spanning of Søderberg and Romani (this issue), Luvison and Cummings focus on alliance managers as boundary spanners who navigate receiving firm-sent role expectations while also receiving legitimate partner-sent expectations. Building upon the role theory, this conceptual article proposes a theoretical framework that illustrates how the limiting nature of firm-sent expectations is affected by alliance managers’ receipt of legitimate partner-sent roles, and how this effect is moderated by alliance managers’ entrepreneurism and the structure of the interfirm collaborative environment. This conceptual paper contributes to the understanding of microfoundations by providing a theoretical, multilevel framework that connects micro level behavioral antecedents with their macro level structure manifestations in the organizational setting of collaborative partnerships.

Collectively, these four articles nicely illustrate the wide topic scope of collaborative partnerships by including partnerships ranging from M&A to joint projects and alliances. Theoretically, the wide range of theoretical perspectives—from economic institutions theory to shared mental models and boundary spanning—shows that different theoretical views and their combinations are needed to truly understand the nuances of phenomena as complex as collaborative partnerships. Methodologically, the presence of quantitative and qualitative studies as well as conceptual work demonstrates the broad range of possibilities for scholars to investigate the human side of collaborative partnerships from many different methodological orientations.

Future Research Directions

Our focus on the importance of the human side of collaborative partnership resonates with the microfoundations movement in management and organization studies by emphasizing the micro level, psychological underpinnings that may better explain macro level phenomena. By including the human side and psychological microfoundations in conjunction with diverse research contexts and methodologies, future research efforts can obtain a more nuanced understanding of collaborative partnerships. In specific, we identify three fruitful directions for future research on collaborative partnerships: (a) increasing focus on positive organizational behavior, (b) paying more attention to the specifics of emerging economies and to the role of context in general, and (c) embracing methodological pluralism.

First, the field of positive organizational behavior has emerged from the movement of positive psychology (Cooper, 2013; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The purpose of positive psychology “. . . is to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from pre-occupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 5). Thus, positive psychology studies individuals’ strengths and virtues that enable individuals and their organizations to thrive. We suggest that there are many opportunities for future research on the human side of collaborative partnerships to build on positive psychology. For instance, positive emotions and resilience are useful concepts for explaining how individuals deal with failures and setbacks (Fredrickson, 2003). Collaborative partnerships tend to be associated with especially high likelihood of failures, and hence concepts derived from the literature on positive organizational behavior may be conducive to designing intervention tools for teams and organizations to thrive and forge resilient pathways in collaborative partnerships.

Second, emerging economies, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), are still enjoying an unprecedented growth rate, despite the current turbulent global economic environment. By leveraging the power of cross-country collaborative partnerships, especially those that connect emerging and advanced economies, innovative solutions can be created to address global societal challenges, such as climate change (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016). Given that the emerging economies differ in several important institutional and cultural dimensions, we suggest that future study should pay more attention to the human side of collaborative partnerships in emerging economies. In so doing, new insights can be generated for theoretical advancement and empirical refinement in terms of understanding the contingencies and boundary conditions of collaborative partnerships. This approach also resonates with the importance of considering the role of context in management and organization studies (Johns, 2006). Some articles included in this special issue examine collaborative partnerships in the emerging economy context (e.g., Søderberg and Romani), while some emphasize the role of context in explaining collaborative partnerships (e.g., Paustian-Underdahl and colleagues).

Third, we encourage methodological pluralisms in social sciences research based on our belief that there is no “golden rule” method, but the nature of research questions determines the choice of the appropriate research method. We argue that a diversity of research methods—including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods—allows for examining social phenomena from multiple theoretical perspectives. In fact, to capture the complexity of microfoundations theory, multilevel research may help to build theoretical and empirical bridges across multiple levels of analyses (Hitt, Beamish, Jackson, & Mathieu, 2007). Furthermore, qualitative research can help to embrace and leverage the power of pluralism in generating novel insights (Cornelissen, 2016), whereas rigorous inductive research also carries the potential to tackle global societal challenges (Eisenhardt, Graebner, & Sonenshein, 2016). A recent critique of empirical social science urged scholars to utilize the appropriate methods when examining complex social science phenomena (Lewin et al., 2016). We believe that embracing pluralism in research methods contributes to tackling collaborative partnerships from multiple perspectives, and this approach is reflected in this special issue.

In conclusion, understanding the multifaceted aspects of human side through the microfoundations perspective can help us better understand and predict antecedents, outcomes, and contingencies related to collaborative partnerships at multiple levels. We invite other scholars and practitioners to join the debate to move forward this interesting research agenda.