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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine network failures and the main reasons why network organizations, intentionally developed by a group of actors to pursue specific goals, become unfruitful and fail in their goals and expectations of creating collective value. The goal of this paper is thus to contribute a better understanding of the reasons network organizations encounter problems in their dynamics that prevent them from reaching the expected outcomes. Design/methodology/approach The study is firstly based on a literature review finalized to identify the main variables considered as potentially impacting on network failures. Secondly, the paper is based on a survey conducted on 189 strategic networks that highlighted difficulties in achieving their goals. An analysis of the 24 questionnaires returned generated the results discussed. The empirical study concerns strategic networks intentionally created and signed by Italian SMEs according to a specific law designed to promote the development of inter-firm cooperation (“network contracts”). Findings The results of the research highlight the role of specific key items related to individual, structural, legitimacy, interaction and governance variables in explaining failures in network organizations. According to the data, failure can occur immediately before the network start-up, resulting in a blocked network or in a subsequent developmental stage, resulting in a dormant network. The empirical research demonstrated that the items affecting network failure differ between blocked and dormant networks. The authors explain such differences, considering them according to the expected goals declared by the two different types of networks. Originality/value The question of why networks fail is relevant in times of disruption and digitalization when new forms of organization are needed to link businesses and various stakeholders and thereby develop innovative and sustainable ideas for an entrepreneurial future. However, very few studies have examined network failure. The study contributes to this field of research by investigating the dynamics of networks intentionally developed to reach shared goals. The findings can be useful to both companies that decide to start up a strategic network and the policymakers that promote, finance and monitor inter-firm collaboration.

This study introduces the concept of business network commons as valuable, fragile resources that are available for partnering firms' collective use but that also require users' engagement and collaboration to be protected and/or (re)generated. Building on the theory of commons and the literature on self-organizing networks and organizational fields, this study identifies organizational variables that shape the network's local organizational field and play a relevant role in protecting and developing business network commons. These variables are participatory architecture, organizational integration, and the presence of specific mechanisms for opportunism prevention and resolution. The fsQCA analysis suggests that specific combinations of these three organizational variables at network level enable high firm performance through the development and protection of business network commons. The boundary conditions under which different network-level organizational configurations can equifinally lead to high firm-level performance depend on the different possible levels of fragility of the business network commons at stake.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an original six-phase model describing entrepreneurial learning in the transition of place-based enterprises toward a sustainable exploitation of natural common resources (commons). Design/methodology/approach The six-phase model proposed by this study explains the learning processes involving place-based enterprises through two important existing theories: adaptive co-management and Lachmann’s evolutionary, embedded theory of entrepreneurship. The proposed model integrates these two theories on the basis of a longitudinal case study on the fishing enterprises in an Italian marine protected area (MPA). Findings In the case study, the success factors identified by the adaptive co-management literature proved important in enabling an embedded entrepreneurial learning process consistent with Lachmann’s view. The case analysis allowed the authors to cluster these learning processes around six phases. Further, even if traditional fishing is not knowledge-intensive, this case shows the transition to a sustainable business model required intense efforts of educated institutional work and scientific research. Interestingly, the key learning processes were enabled by the emergence of a larger, networked social entity (a network form of organization) including the community of fishermen, the MPA management and a network of scientists studying the marine area ecosystem. Research limitations/implications This study is explorative and relies on a single case study. Despite this limitation, it opens up new research paths in the fields of entrepreneurship, institutional work, network organizations and adaptive management of the commons. Originality/value This study is strongly interdisciplinary; it proposes an original model based on a theoretical view that is highly innovative for organization and management studies; and addresses a relevant but overlooked issue with important societal implications.

Drawing on multiple-level embedded case study research of eight dyadic joint-design alliances and 14 collaborative ventures within them, this study sheds light on how value, in the form of common and private benefits, is created in interorganizational relationships. To do so, I focus on network governance (i.e., interorganizational coordination based on social networks) and its outcomes. As a result, I advance a cross-level model of how a system of reciprocally influencing network-level (i.e., structural) and dyad-level (i.e., relational) social mechanisms affects the propensity of allied organizations to engage in knowledge-intensive activities that yield considerable knowledge-based benefits and strategic outcomes at the alliance and firm levels. I conclude that simultaneous consideration of structural and relational embeddedness can enrich our understanding of network-based forms of organization and their impact on the outcomes of interorganizational cooperation. Although the system of social mechanisms needs to be understood as an interconnected whole, practicing alliance managers are advised to leverage different social mechanisms depending on the specific knowledge benefits they intend to achieve.

ResumenEl estudio del comportamiento organizacional aparece como uno de los desafíos más importantes de esta nueva era, su adecuada comprensión y entendimiento representan un pilar fundamental en el éxito o fracaso de quienes hacemos de la administración de estos organismos, nuestra profesión, así como también representa eiacute;oacute;xito o fracaso de las propias organizaciones.El texto que a continuación se presenta tiene como principal objetivo analizar las nuevas tendencias en cuanto a modelos organizacionales se refiere, a la vez que busca contribuir al conocimiento administrativo, describiendo las principales características y las principales formas que puede adoptar la externalización de funciones, para lo cual se ofrece al lector una revisión del modelo en red, la organización virtual, el trébol irlandés y el modelo de organización federal, claros ejemplos de lo que conocemos como outsourcing.También se aborda el origen del outsourcing, algunas diferencias conceptuales, sus principales ventajas y riesgos, además de incluir una revisión a la situación actual de la externalización de funciones en Chile.AbstractThe study about organizational behavior appears as one of the most important challenges of this new age. Its suitable comprehension symbolizes the foundations of the success or failure for those who take the organizational management as profession, and it also symbolizes the success or failure for those organizations.This document's main objective is the analysis of new tendencies referring to organizational models at the time it contributes to administrative knowledge by describing the main characteristics and alternatives that could be adopted in outsourcing. A review of the network model, the virtual organization, the shamrock organization and the federal organization model, is presented as examples of what is known as outsourcing.It is also studied the origin of the outsourcing, some conceptual differences, its main advantages and risks, and its current situation in Chile.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) for health or eHealth solutions hold great potential for generating systemic efficiencies by strengthening five critical pillars of a health system: human resources for health, supply chain management, health care financing, governance and service delivery, and infrastructure. This report describes the changing landscape of eHealth initiatives through these five pillars, with a geographic focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. This report further details seven criteria, or prerequisites, that must be considered and addressed in order to effectively establish and scale up ICT-based solutions in the health sector. These criteria include infrastructure, data and interoperability standards, local capacity, policy and regulatory environments, an appropriate business model, alignment of partnerships and priorities, and monitoring and evaluation. In order to bring specific examples of these criteria to light, this report concludes with 12 specific case studies of potentially scalable ICT-based health care solutions currently being implemented across the globe at community, national, and regional levels. This report is intended to be used by development practitioners, including task team leaders at the World Bank, to strengthen their understanding of the use of ICT to support health systems strengthening (HSS) efforts as well as to highlight critical prerequisites needed to optimize the benefits of ICT for health.

Economic development makes new demands to the quality of business management. One of the answers to this challenge is the creation and distribution of network organizations. Networks are a form of integration of independent business units. Economic motives for the formation of the network are to improve the efficiency of resource use members of the network and gaining access to the resources of the other participants of the network. Feature of the interaction within network is that members of the network are connected not only relations of cooperation, but also competition. This makes the network potentially unsustainable. There is a high risk of decay of network. Rid of it requires the use of special methods of management. They should take into account the specifics of networks as management objects. The study shows that the performance of the network will grow, if on the basis of the consent of all the participants in it will create a single focal point. The main objective of this center is to coordinate the actions of the participants and the formation of the optimal composition of the network. In the network management is recommended, in addition to formal contracts, to take into account the informal rules of network availability. To increase their effectiveness suggest measures for their gradual formalization. It is recommended, in particular, to develop and to fix the agreement between members of the network distribution mechanism between benefits, costs and risks.