Breaking into collaboration: Communicative strategies for gaining entry when you are not invited

TY - JOUR

T1 - Breaking into collaboration

T2 - Communicative strategies for gaining entry when you are not invited

AU - Woo, Da Jung

AU - Leonardi, Paul M.

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant number SES-1057148).

PY - 2018/12/1

Y1 - 2018/12/1

N2 - Inter-organizational collaborations (IOCs) offer opportunities for organizations to share resources and address complex social problems. Although researchers have cast IOCs as a broadly-inclusive process in which organizations decide to join forces through mutual agreements, many IOCs are not equal partnerships, but are led by a single organization or a tight collection of organizations that have already been convened. This paper explores how new organizations that wish to join ongoing IOCs can navigate their entry when they are not seen as needed or important. Drawing on qualitative data collected through field research of regional planning, including interviews with conveners (urban planners who are the main organizers of IOCs and charged with vetting new potential members) and representatives of 12 different organizations that tried to break into ongoing IOCs, this paper proposes a process model inducted from the findings that describes the communicative practices that enabled and constrained organizations' entries into ongoing IOCs.

AB - Inter-organizational collaborations (IOCs) offer opportunities for organizations to share resources and address complex social problems. Although researchers have cast IOCs as a broadly-inclusive process in which organizations decide to join forces through mutual agreements, many IOCs are not equal partnerships, but are led by a single organization or a tight collection of organizations that have already been convened. This paper explores how new organizations that wish to join ongoing IOCs can navigate their entry when they are not seen as needed or important. Drawing on qualitative data collected through field research of regional planning, including interviews with conveners (urban planners who are the main organizers of IOCs and charged with vetting new potential members) and representatives of 12 different organizations that tried to break into ongoing IOCs, this paper proposes a process model inducted from the findings that describes the communicative practices that enabled and constrained organizations' entries into ongoing IOCs.

KW - Conveners

KW - Expertise

KW - Interorganizational Collaboration

KW - Organizational Communication

KW - Partnerships

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U2 - https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy052

DO - https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy052

M3 - Review article

VL - 68

SP - 1127

EP - 1154

JO - Journal of Communication

JF - Journal of Communication

SN - 0021-9916

IS - 6

ER -