Paula Ungureanu

Bridging the Research–Practice Divide

This study investigates the relationship between multiple role management strategies and knowledge spillovers across roles. We focus on a particular category of boundary-spanning professionals, the scholar-practitioners—professionals who work across the boundaries of academic and practice worlds—and apply a role theory lens to study (a) the sources of interrole conflict they experience at role boundaries, (b) the strategies of multiple role management they enact, and (c) the knowledge spillovers associated to such strategies. We develop a grounded model that describes three role management strategies, which occupy different positions on a role separation–integration continuum, and generate different mechanisms of knowledge spillover. Our study sheds light on the understudied relationship between role management strategies and knowledge consequences, and the type of tensions individuals experience in this process. In addition, we discuss how the strategic management of teaching, research, and practical application roles can help bridge academic and managerial practice worlds.

The Dynamics of Inter-organizational Hybrid Partnerships in Technology Transfer

Drawing on the literature on inter-organizational and hybrid partnerships, we put forth a process-based perspective on the evolution of regional innovation systems (RIS), with particular attention to the changing role of TTOs throughout the RIS lifecycle. We theorize on how perceptions of environmental turbulence (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, in short VUCA) may influence partners’ decisions to adopt a given organization model for the broker/TTO that manages the partnership. We show that perceptions of environmental turbulence may lead to a set of possible decision pathologies at the partnership level that interfere with the organizational structure of the TTO. We suggest that perceptions of turbulence and decision pathologies play an important part in explaining RIS may deviate from the intended direction or produce outcomes that are unexpected.

Making matters worse by trying to make them better? Exploring vicious circles of decision in hybrid partnerships

Our research is concerned with how and why vicious circles of decision occur in hybrid partnerships. The literature reports three types of decision dysfunctions that can alter the trajectory of multi-stakeholder collaborations: escalation of commitment, procrastination and indecision. While previous studies focused on one dysfunction at a time, we inquire about cases in which dysfunctions coexist and interact in the same partnership. Employing multiple sources of qualitative data, we conducted a longitudinal field study in a cross-sector partnership that co-created and managed a science park. We offer an in-depth account of ‘vicious circles of decision’ in which partners’ attempts to solve a dysfunction paradoxically led to the accumulation of additional dysfunctions. We explain that the process is more likely to happen when solutions are (1) conditioned by the very risk–opportunity tensions they try to solve and (2) inscribed in material artefacts for greater visibility. As well as augmenting the literature on hybrid partnerships, we contribute to the debate in organization studies about the evolution of collaborations within frames of concurrent risk–opportunity tensions and theorize about the role of materiality in such processes.

From Broker to Platform Business Models: A Case Study of Best Practices for Business Model Innovation in Hybrid Interorganizational Partnerships

This study is concerned with how hybrid partnerships – i.e., multiparty cross-sector partnerships dealing with broad problems that go beyond the scope and scale of single partners – set up, implement, and then innovate business models. In particular, we draw on a hybrid partnership for open innovation where six public and private organizations came together with the intention to set up and implement joint innovation projects with large-scale impact at the regional level. Two business models of hybrid partnerships are discussed in this chapter, the brokering model and the platform model, as well as the mechanisms of transition from the first to the latter. Our findings suggest that while the platform model seems more appropriate for complex projects in which a wide number of heterogeneous interests coexist, both models present advantages and disadvantages. We suggest that advantages and disadvantages of hybrid partnership business models should be considered in a relational manner, by focusing on how the business model innovation will impact on each parameter of the current model and, at the same time, on how manageable the parameters of the new model are in terms of partnership strategy, structure, and mobilizable resources.

Brokers or platforms? A longitudinal study of how hybrid interorganizational partnerships for regional innovation deal with VUCA environments

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role played by turbulent environments in the evolution of hybrid (i.e. multi-party, cross-sector) partnerships for regional innovation. Although extant research suggests that organizations decide to participate in such partnerships to cope with their turbulent environments, little is known about how actual perceptions of turbulent environments influence the setup and evolution of a partnership.,The qualitative study adopts a longitudinal design to investigate the evolution of a cross-sector regional innovation partnership between ten very different organizations. With the help of the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) model proposed by Bennett and Lemoine (2014a), the authors study the relation between partners’ initial perceptions of environmental turbulence and the models adopted for the partnership throughout its lifecycle (emergent, brokering and platform).,The authors show that partners’ intentions to solve perceived environmental turbulence through collaboration can have the unexpected consequence of triggering perceived turbulence inside the collaboration itself. Specifically, the authors show that perceived partnership VUCA at each stage is a result of partners’ attempts to cope with the perceived VUCA in the previous stage.,The study highlights a set of common traps that both public and private organizations engaged in hybrid partnerships might fall into precisely as they try to lower VUCA threats in their environments.,The work accounts for the relationship between external and internal perceptions of VUCA in hybrid partnerships for regional innovation, and, in particular, provides a better understanding of what happens when organizations choose to enter hybrid partnerships in order to deal with perceived threats in their environments.