Collaborative Advantage: How Organizations Win by Working Together

Citation

Xu, Y. (2008), "Collaborative Advantage: How Organizations Win by Working Together", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 27 No. 9, pp. 987-989. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710810901327

The central assumption in Collaborative Advantage: How Organizations Win by Working Together by Elizabeth Lank is that the competitive advantage of a single organizational entity today is increasingly dependent on the ability to establish collaborative advantage through participating into different collaborative processes. In this book, Elizabeth points out that despite the importance of collaborative advantage, managers' understanding of collaborative behaviour today is still fragmented. “How many collaborative ventures is your organization connected with?”. The answer is more than you think. The author contends that because of failure to recognize the connected nature of the organizational world, we have largely failed to educate managers or leaders sufficiently in the art of making collaborative working effective.

Collaboration has developed into a whole range of small and large networks that underpin the knowledge‐based economy today. Using her 20 years experience in corporate world and her advisory experience in collaborative working, Elizabeth presents a full spectrum of collaborative working issues in this book. The collaborative working issues are explored in different types of organization, from the private to the public sector, and from the small to the large sized firms. The aim of the book is to provide a useful guidance for organizations to get involved in cross‐organizational collaboration or to improve the overall capability in order to collaborate effectively.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section covers chapter 1 aiming to explore some of the language and labels surrounding cross‐organizational working. The author believes managers can follow effective or less effective ways to operate in a collaborative, networked world today. Unfortunately to date guidelines for effective collaboration have been only implicit rather than explicit, and they are generally discovered by trail and error. The lack of common language, among other things, has led to less effectiveness or failure in collaboration. The common language and concepts as presented in this section, and used after, set up an efficient dialogue between the author and the readers of different backgrounds. This section also presents a map of the territory of collaborative working through a framework linking reasons, outcomes and key practical action in collaboration processes together.

The second section of the book includes eight chapters. From chapter 2 to chapter 9, each chapter looks at one core theme in the framework described by the first section. The contents of each core theme are highlighted as follows:

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  Chapter 2 explains how to prepare for collaboration such as diagnosing the need of collaboration, assessing and approaching potential partners as well as identifying capability to implement or exit the collaboration.

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  Chapter 3 addresses issues on how to structure organizations for collaboration such as choosing the appropriate organizational forms, structuring the day‐to‐day governance, allocating costs and benefits to partners as well as forming intellectual property policy.

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  Chapter 4 attends to issues on how to integrate individual efforts to play key roles at both strategic and operational level. Key issues include designing the first meeting to establish trust, shaping realistic and workable agenda based on clarified joint outcomes, and generating effective form of meeting among partners along the collaborative processes.

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  Chapter 5 addresses issues on how to maintain enthusiasm and commitment throughout the lifespan of the collaborative venture. The specific issues include protecting the core values, handling conflicts and reviewing and adjusting the scope of collaboration as well as working across cultural differences.

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  Chapter 6 concerns issues on how to resource collaborative effort when a number of organizations come together to achieve something jointly. Most issues arise because in reality resource allocation processes may not sit comfortably alongside the resource needs of the collaborative venture.

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  Chapter 7 gives idea on how to build up a long‐term, open and effective communication channels via using information technology properly. Issues such as building up information architecture in the collaborative venture are explored.

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  Chapter 8 pinpoints issues on how to build learning into the fabric of the collaborative venture. This chapter considers the problem of how to develop learning and knowledge transfer at the individual, team and organization level respectively, and how to assess the success of the collaborative process as well as actual outcomes.

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  Chapter 9 addresses issues on how to generate every major capability to eventually realize advantages. The author suggests focusing on the people factor in order to identify and nurture collaborative skills, leadership and specialised capabilities.

In section three of the book, which covers chapter 10 and 11, the author re‐emphasizes the application of the eight core collaborative processes to the practice. She argues internal collaboration, though not the focus of discussion in this book is actually crucial. It is difficult for an organization that cannot achieve effective collaboration inside to create collaborative advantage with outside organizations. The author identifies different forms of internal collaboration based on which the role, responsibility, and rewarding policy on individual for supporting cross‐company work are clarified. Then, the author addresses the implementation side further. Effective collaboration eventually depends on how each individual behaves. She identifies different roles people play in the collaboration and the skills required for each type of players. Those skills are strengthened in the relationship between individual people and the relationship between organizations. In the process of putting collaboration effort into practice, a management philosophy for achieving collaborative advantage is established.

Indeed, as indicated by the title, Collaborative Advantage: How Organizations Win by Working Together, the book focuses on the “how” issues in each collaborative process. It provides practitioners with a clear framework and specific guidelines via clearly pointing out the key issues and potential pitfalls at each step of collaboration. The logic of identifying the problem first, then seeking for solution and finally sustain the effective effort is reflected in every part of the book.

To tackle the multi‐faced practical issues in the complex collaboration processes, the author relies heavily on the evidence from interviews, company documentation, public information, and story telling. Her stories not only give examples about those well‐known organizations such as British Council, the World Bank, Pearson and General Electronic, but also cover many less famous and small firms across different sectors, thus expanding her well‐structured argument to various type of organizations. A checklist at the end of each chapter is very useful for the reader to reflect the main action needed for creating collaborative advantage at each process.

Overall, this book leads the way forward to explore issues in inter‐organization collaboration. It focuses on how to realize collaborative advantage in practice. The first time I read the book, it impressed me too practical, like a manual guidance supported with perhaps too many bulletin points, descriptive information mainly, and checklists. However, when I read it the second time, I found the objectives of the author are well met with the way she structures the contents and the style she presents all information from various sources. In hindsight, within less than two hundreds pages, the author has neatly presented the core issues based on her comprehensive and practical experience on the topic. For academic researchers in the field of management of inter‐organizational collaboration, the book apparently gives a good example about the complexities of creating collaborative advantage in reality. In summary, the book should provide interesting reading for practitioners mainly, and sends a condensed but clear message to the academia that it is more than challenging to achieve collaborative advantages effectively in practice.