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The purpose is to explore the role of social relations in explaining exchange inter-organizational fuzzy-front open innovation R&D-projects collaborations. More specifically, we explore on social mechanisms for exchange and how such mechanisms may influence the project outcome. Social exchange theory is used for addressing this purpose. Despite that collaborative R&D-projects expect to bring advantages to collaborative partners, findings in prior studies are mixed. A three-year R&D-collaboration project was longitudinally studied using qualitative methods (29 interviews, observations of 7 project meetings). Three social mechanisms guiding interorganizational exchange are identified; trust, partner commitment and interorganizational congruence. Risks of lock-in situations in R&D-projects are identified outlining an information exchange paradox. This study advances understanding of social mechanisms as facilitators in social exchange and their significance for success/failure outcome in inter-organizational R&D-projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the last decade is marked by the unprecedented change in the organizing norms and practices of public goods' provision. Cross-sector social partnerships represent a new organizational form at the intersection of business, government, and civil society that seeks to replace the traditional paternalistic model of social development. Yet, despite the increasing corporate involvement in areas such as public education and the arts, management scholars have been slow to develop general theories for explaining how and why private involvement into the provision of public goods arises as a prominent alternative to the existing institutional arrangements. To fill this lacuna, this article presents an attempt to theorize public-private partnerships as a social practice. Our paper synthesizes the work of several practice theorists, the literature on institutional change and social mechanisms. Illustrating their arguments with a diverse set of cases, the authors identify four social mechanisms to explain the conditions under which cross-sector social partnerships are most likely to emerge and get established as a legitimate institutional practice for public goods' provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a mechanism-based theory of attention that explains how the structure of organizational attention networks emerges from time ordered sequences of interdependent acts of attention allocation. The theory posits that the observable structure of attention networks is produced and reproduced by four endogenous micro-relational mechanisms regulating how organizational participants allocate their attention to problems: attention focusing; attention reinforcing; attention mixing, and attention clustering. We propose a model where these mechanisms concatenate to give rise to a fluid attention network that changes in continuous time as participants join and leave the organizational arena, and problems emerge, disappear, and reappear. Our analysis of attention allocation in a large open source software project finds evidence that the mechanisms postulated by the theory are consistent with the evolutionary dynamics of the of the attention network actually observed throughout the complete life history of the project. Accounting for individual characteristics of problems, individual differences among participants, and for the formal organizational structure of the project does not affect the core results of the analysis. The study contributes to a new theoretical understanding of organizing as a process structured by temporal, rather than intentional, or consequential mechanisms connecting problems to carriers of potential solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread agreement that relationships are an integral part of organizational systems, we still have a fragmented understanding of underlying mechanisms of relationships at work. This limits our ability to answer the question of how desirable relationships come about as well as how relationships exert influence in the organizational setting. In this symposium we address these questions by explicitly focusing on the social mechanisms or explanatory processes underlying the formation of relationships at work. In doing so, we hope to uncover implicit concepts and assumptions in our theories particularly as we consider multiple levels of analysis. We will begin the symposium with three paper presentations. Each presentation will focus on a relational construct of interest, and the respective mechanisms that provide greater insight on the link between our constructs and the formation of relationships. These presentations will be followed by a moderated conversation with our expert panel. Aimed at furthering our understanding of work relationships and relational processes, this conversation will be focused around the benefits, drawbacks, and challenges of uncovering social mechanisms. We will conclude with considering other unidentified social mechanisms that may provide new insights and contributions to our respective constructs as well as to work relationships in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]