Charles Huber

How teams in networked organisations develop collaborative capability: processes, critical incidents and success factors

In this article, we present a study on collaborative capability of teams in three networked organisations in Austria and Switzerland. So far, collaborative capability has mostly been conceptualised on an organisational or individual level as a set of attributes that actors employ to collaborate successfully. We found that this view of collaborative capability needs to be enlarged. Collaborative capability of teams is characterised by at least two components: an attribute-based perspective that focuses on capabilities of single actors or organisations, and a perspective on group dynamics which describes how teams successfully develop collaborative capability. We examined collaborative work processes and task requirements and the way critical incidents in different project stages influenced the development of collaboration. We discuss our findings with regard to the different organisational settings of the networks analysed and the current literature on collaborative capability and networked organisations. Moreover, we identify six critical success factors for collaboration and discuss the role of network management in co-innovation.

Universities as key enablers to develop new collaborative environments for innovation: successful experiences from Switzerland and India

A large variety of organisational forms for collaboration have emerged during the last years as a result of the many socio-economic challenges faced by the society and enabled by the new ICT developments. As a result, in both developed and developing countries, different initiatives are carried out to motivate organisations, to network in new collaborative environments for innovation. In few cases, these initiatives have been promoted by Universities where academic researchers play a very important role by diffusing these networking concepts to local SMEs and by carrying out applied projects to coach and guide firms in the formation of these new collaborative environments. The Virtuelle Fabrik and Swiss Microtech in Switzerland and the TeNeT group in India are three successful collaborative environments located in different settings where a local university has played, and still plays, a very important role for the collaborative environments’ creation, continuous evolution and improvement. Therefore, the objective of this paper is twofold: (1) to describe the local university key role for developing new collaborative environments and (2) to propose a methodology to benchmark and assess the different initiatives carried out by universities to develop new successful collaborative environments, identifying critical success factors (CSFs).

Lessons learned from the lifecycle management of collaborative enterprises networks: The case of Swiss Microtech

Purpose – Research on the dynamics of Collaborative Enterprises Networks (CEN) lacks consistency and industrial feedback. The purpose of this paper is to present insights and lessons learned from an industrial case study dealing with the practical experience gathered during the creation, alliance development, and business operation phases of a CEN.Design/methodology/approach – The proposed research methodology relies on qualitative approach, using unstructured interviews with the main decision makers in the network. The objective of the interviews is to highlight the most important events in the lifecycle of the network. From the important elements discussed, success and failure key factors are identified.Findings – Through the case study, the authors identify the main success and failure key factors to consider in CENs. Furthermore, relying on the current state of the art, they highlight the main research directions, particularly with respect to the development of modelling approaches capturing the dynam...

Collaborative networks: Human aspects and corresponding IT support

Industrial SME face new challenges in the global market as customers are requiring more complete solutions and reducing the number of their suppliers. Small SME can face these new challenges through cooperation within collaborative networks. Human aspects are fundamental in collaborative networks as people, and not organizations or IT systems cooperate. This paper addresses the major human aspects encountered in this form of organization such as trust issues, knowledge sharing, coordination and planning activities as well as communication and mutual understanding and their influence on the business processes and the corresponding supporting IT tools.

Virtuellefabrik.Ch — A Source Network for VE in Mechatronics

This chapter will give a short description how the network was built up and has developed during the last 6 years. It will describe then the business model with concept and organization of the source network as also of the VF temporary organization for a specific customer demand. Then the VF temporary organization of a real business opportunity is shown in a more detailed manner with the internal order management system. At the end of the chapter an actual cluster project within of the source network will give some ideas about the source network development to the future.

Collaborative Capability of Teams in Network Organizations.

In this paper, we present a study on collaborative capability of teams in three network organizations in Austria and Switzerland. So far, collaborative capability was mostly conceptualized on organizational or individual level as a set of attributes that actors employ to collaborate successfully. We found that this view of collaborative capability has to be enlarged. Collaborative capability of teams is characterized by at least two components: an attribute-based perspective that focuses on capabilities of single actors or organizations, and a perspective on group dynamics, that describes how teams develop collaborative capability. We discuss our findings with regard to the different organizational settings of the networks analyzed and the current literature on collaborative capability and network organizations.

DecoCHina, a Chinese-Swiss collaborative network of Industrial SMEs

Industrial SMEs face new challenges in global markets with customers requiring more complete solutions and ability to source their procurements anywhere in the world. If large companies have enough resources to gain from the new opportunities provided by the Chinese market, small SMEs can only compete through cooperation within collaborative networks. The DecoCHina network is an example of such a solution that requires new business processes and the corresponding ICT support tools.

The Role of Universities Developing New Collaborative Environments: Analysing the Virtuelle Fabrik, Swiss Microtech and the Tenet Group

In both developed and developing countries, different initiatives are carried out to motivate organisations, mainly companies, to network in new collaborative environments for innovation. In many cases these different initiatives have been promoted by Universities where academic researchers play a very important role by diffusing these networking concepts to local SMEs and by carrying out applied projects to coach firms in the formation of these new collaborative environments. In some occasions, Universities can also join the network to transfer new knowledge during the new product/service development process. The Virtuelle Fabrik and Swiss Microtech in Switzerland and the TeNeT group in India are three successful collaborative environments located in very different settings where the local University has played and still plays an important role for the collaborative environments’ continuous evolution and improvement. Therefore, the objective of this paper is twofold: 1) to assess the University key role for developing new collaborative environments and 2) to propose a methodology to benchmark the different initiatives in Universities to develop new collaborative environments.

Virtual project management: introduction

This article gives a short introduction into virtual project management and it shows that virtual teams and virtual project management have significant advantages like adding special expertise to a project team even though the expert is not in the same geographic area or drastically reduce of travel time. The major differences between virtual project management and classical project management can be found in the project communication and in project team management. The introduction includes also a short overview of the papers in this special issue.

Order Acquiring and Processing in the Virtual Factory

Setting up virtual organizations such as the virtual factory are a new way of doing business where companies can successfully cooperate to address new markets they will never be able to address alone. This paper presents the order acquiring and —processing done by a web-based intranet platform. Through Intranet communication, all partner companies can post projects and seek possible cooperation partners. From the internee portal a customer can place a demand to the virtual factory, which is then transmitted trough an internal order management system to all partners. In a next step all partner can see the demand or can try to satisfy the order. The paper shows that in a virtual organization, roles and rules are very important issues besides ICT. The paper also presents how the net2net communication between three other virtual factories in Switzerland and Germany are built using the same concept.