Interorganizational learning: a bibliometric review and research agenda

Unravelling trends, patterns and intellectual structure of research on bankruptcy in SMEs: A bibliometric assessment and visualisation

Despite the burgeoning interest among academics in investigating the factors contributing to the high business failure rate among SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), the systematic synthesis of the literature on bankruptcy in SMEs is restricted. This article aims to significantly advance the understanding of the causes and repercussions of bankruptcy in SMEs and the preventative actions that may be taken to avoid it. This review assesses 282 articles from 175 outlets employing quantitative and statistics-based bibliometric tools. This bibliometric assessment helped delineate the citation and publication trends and the top contributors to the domain. The underlying thematic clusters of research on bankruptcy in SMEs were also identified, deciphered and elaborated, along with charting the future research vistas through the lens of theory, context, and methods framework. The authors believe this bibliometric variant of systematic literature review makes a significant contribution to bankruptcy and SME research by highlighting the development of the literature and some of the most active research fronts in the domain by offering insights that were not clasped thoroughly or assessed by prior literature assessments.

The whereabouts of interorganizational learning: a maritime case study

Purpose

This paper aims to present the results from a case study that investigated interorganizational learning in a buyer and seller relationship in the context of the maritime industry. This examination emphasized unraveling how the buyer and seller in the case study interacted and transferred knowledge when using a new business model that relied on servitization. Furthermore, this paper also addresses and discusses work practices, and the relationship between intra- and interorganizational learning.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study entailing the introduction of digital technology and a new business model into the maritime industry was used as an empirical example of interorganizational learning. The case study was conducted over a period of over one year and focused on a buyer of freight ships and a seller of servitized technology used on the ships. The organizations involved were the ships, the shipowner’s office and the ship engine supplier. The primary data acquisition methods comprised semi-structured interviews and observations.

Findings

The case identified interorganizational learning within the organizations at the individual, group and organizational levels, but only a few learning signs could be viewed as bidirectional interorganizational learning that can create knowledge and competitive advantages for the organizations. This is explained by the interorganizational learning context and the organizations’ motivation for learning at a strategic level.

Originality/value

This paper addresses an identified need for empirical studies on how interorganizational learning unfolds within organizations and connects to intraorganizational learning. Interorganizational learning studies often examine partnerships and joint ventures, in which partners have entered into these relationships with learning as a specific goal. By choosing a case in which interorganizational collaboration is anchored in operational matters, the study demonstrates the importance of motivation and agenda when entering into partnerships, concerning how inter- and intraorganizational learning develops within organizations. Furthermore, approaching these levels from an interrelated and practice-oriented perspective challenges established success criteria for interorganizational learning.

The potential for learning from good RRI practices and implications for the usefulness of RRI as an umbrella concept

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to analyze reported good institutional responsible research and innovation (RRI) practices from an organizational and learning perspective to discuss the usefulness of RRI as a broad umbrella concept.

Design/methodology/approach

This study connects neo-institutional and translation accounts of diffusion to different modes of learning and discusses reported best practices from 12 reports, including in total 23 organizations in the research system worldwide, in light of this theoretical framework. This study categorizes the good practices identified in the reports and discusses how the nature of the practices influences the potential learning from them. The authors then apply the results from the discussion of this study to current policy developments on RRI.

Findings

The two most often mentioned good practices overall are organizational policies and the establishment of organizational units, but the type of good practices recommended differs across the various aspects of the RRI umbrella concept. This diversity within the RRI construct is a practical argument against the effectiveness of RRI as an umbrella concept.

Originality/value

This study is novel in the fact that the authors, building on Wæraas (2020), systematically relate types of good practice to neo-institutional theory and translation perspectives explicitly combined with learning approaches and apply this approach in the field of research organizations. The policy implications from the empirical and theoretical analyses are novel and timely in these early phases of the EU funding framework programme Horizon Europe and can also be relevant for the increasingly important umbrella concept of Open Science.

Sharing Incident Experiences: A Roadmap towards Collective Safety Information in the Norwegian Construction Industry

This paper is a study on sharing practices after incidents across organisations in the Norwegian construction industry as a means towards improvement of occupational safety. Interviews were performed with safety personnel from different actors, including clients, contractors, and designers. The findings show that several arenas for sharing of safety-related information across actors exist, however the sharing is limited, not structured, and occurs occasionally. Furthermore, the information is not widely shared across all actors in the industry for whom the information could be valuable, e.g., early phase actors. As a willingness to share and an excitement for new technology is present, the work goes on to propose how and where the industry can improve on information sharing after incidents to move towards interorganisational learning. A roadmap for the Norwegian construction industry is suggested for collective information sharing with a focus on technological and digital solutions.

The role of knowledge management in the tourism sector: a synthesis and way forward

Purpose

This study aims to explore and synthesize the role of knowledge management (KM) in tourism organizations (including micro, small, medium and large enterprises and destination management organizations).

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopts systematic review methods to synthesize the role of KM in tourism from 90 journal articles.

Findings

This study identifies the prominent theories adopted to explore the relation and impact of KM in the tourism sector, the geographic distribution of the literature and thorough qualitative synthesis. This study identifies the critical research themes investigated and the outcome of KM applications. Finally, through reviews, this study identifies critical gaps in the literature and offer promising avenues to advance the KM in tourism research.

Originality/value

This is one of the few papers that comprehensively review the role of KM in the tourism industry and offer implications.

The learning organization and organizational learning in the public sector: a review and research agenda

Purpose

This study aims to propose a new research agenda for the theories of “organizational learning” and the “learning organization” in relation to the public sector. The research agenda can be used by researchers to make explicit accounts of how and where the results from their studies advance the current state-of-the-art in the intersection between public sector and organizational learning and/or the learning organization.

Design/methodology/approach

A combined systematic and bibliometric review methodology is applied based on the research that has been published in the past three decades.

Findings

Through an analysis of 238 journal publications obtained from the Scopus database, the authors determine the leading authors, countries, highly cited papers and take the stock of current literature. Similarly, by analyzing papers published between 2010 and 2020, the authors identify current tendencies and emerging themes of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector and offer avenues for future research.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is potentially the first, fully refereed study published reporting on a bibliometric and a systematic review of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector.

Interorganizational learning: a strategic framework for service networks

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand the link between the organizing of service networks and interorganizational learning strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

By deepening the conceptual understanding of service networks and their central properties, an overview of the learning challenges for improved performance is provided. The implications of learning are then discussed using four conceptual types to advance our understanding of learning in various service networks. Two different frameworks are combined, one designed to analyze the properties of service delivery and the other to understand their interorganizational learning implications for different types of service networks.

Findings

This paper examines the central properties of service network delivery and explains their implications for interorganizational learning strategy operationalized in a service network typology.

Practical implications

The proposed framework deepens the understanding of the concept of service networks and brings attention to properties that have implication for interorganizational learning. Knowing the central properties in detail and their major organizing challenges allows for learning strategies to improve service network performance.

Originality/value

The value lies in the deepening the understanding of interorganizational learning in service networks, which is much needed in the growing body of literature on both concepts.

Interorganizational learning in the tourism industry: conceptualizing a multi-level typology

Purpose

While the importance of interorganizational learning (IOL) as a resource for strategic renewal has been acknowledged in research, limited attention has been placed on exploring IOL in complex networks or ecosystems. This paper aims to bridge this gap in literature through conceptualizing IOL in the tourism industry at the micro, meso and macro levels of the ecosystem.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper applies a narrative literature review to explore the tourism industry and IOL. Through insights which evolved from literature, exploratory typologies and propositions were developed forming the basis of the multi-level typology of interorganizational learning in the tourism industry.

Findings

Based on the multi-level typology of interorganizational learning in the tourism industry, market actors may develop in isolation, in clusters or networks, with the aggregate output of these formations constituting the basis of the tourism ecosystem. Within the multi-layers of the tourism ecosystem, IOL may be subdivided into seven distinct typologies, with learning ranging from active, passive, interactive to asymmetric. Each typology of IOL is subsequently influenced by relational ties, which may range from collaborative to competitive, and power distribution, which may lead to symmetric or asymmetric relationships.

Originality/value

The novelty of this paper lies in an ecosystem perspective of IOL in the tourism industry, outlining the multi-level nature of IOL in a destination.

Black swan: bibliometric analysis and development of research agenda

Purpose

There has been an increasing interest amongst the researchers to work and explore, “Black Swan” events which are not well studied. However, the “Black Swan” events hold an eminent relevance amongst academicians and practitioners. The present study offers nuanced understanding of “Black Swan” events.

Design/methodology/approach

We undertook an extensive bibliometric analysis of the extant literature using “Black Swan” as guiding keyword with the help of SCOPUS database.

Findings

The search for articles only yielded 59 articles. Our analyses highlight the prominent works, authors and journals. Further, this study reveal the research gaps that may help guide future scholars interested in “Black Swan” events to examine in different context.

Research limitations/implications

The current study develops a research agenda and offers numerous research directions. Research on “Black Swan” events can be apprehended at three different stages – pre-black swan event, about black swan event and post-black swan event with identified sub-themes.

Originality/value

This paper is the pioneer research work to dedicatedly analyse the existing set of literature with “Black Swan”.

Inter-organizational learning within an organization? Mainstreaming gender policies in the Swedish ministry of foreign affairs

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explain how theories of inter-organizational learning can create new insights and nuances to how processes of intra-organizational learning come about in a single, complex and multi-sited organization.

Design/methodology/approach

A constructivist thematic analysis of the “Handbook of Feminist Foreign Policy” produced by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SMFA) is completed, exploring the organization’s own presentation of the complex learning processes that took place when implementing the new policy in 2014.

Findings

The literature on inter-organizational learning has a so far unexplored explanatory potential to understand learning processes that take place in complex, multi-sited organizations. This case demonstrates why and how this potential is relevant to exploit. Five themes are constructed from the analysis; four pointing out how gender mainstreaming is spread throughout the different parts of the organization and one detailing how the learning process has provided the SMFA knowledge exportable to other organizations.

Originality/value

Due to the complexity in large, multi-sited organizations today, this paper argues what is classically understood as solely inter-organizational processes could also apply to a single organization, as the learning processes this engages in, transitions intra- and inter-organizational learning. The study advances current understandings through exploring mechanisms of gender mainstreaming.

Come on, network! Empowering employees to use Web-based interorganizational learning platforms in research and development

Purpose

An interorganizational learning (IOL) Web-based platform provides an ambidextrous working area, where employees can switch between exploration and exploitation-related activities. This study aims to present new indications on how to increase the acceptance and use of Web-based platforms for IOL. Specifically, it proposes how acceptance rates can be increased by focusing on the key mechanisms in Web-based platforms that are important from the users’ perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

Survey data were collected from employees in universities, companies, government agencies and research and technological development performers. Data analysis applies a multi-group analysis (MGA) based on the partial least squares structural equation modeling.

Findings

Performance expectancy is important in explorative, exploitative and ambidextrous organizations. Moreover, effort expectancy is an important driver of platform acceptance in explorative organizations, facilitating conditions in exploitative organizations and hedonic motivation in ambidextrous organizations.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the IOL literature by analyzing specific acceptance characteristics of potential users of a Web-based IOL platform for research and development. As the first paper published in this research context, it explicitly considers explorative, exploitative and ambidextrous organizations based on interactive and integrative interorganizational ambidexterity.

Interorganizational learning between knowledge-based entrepreneurial ventures responding to COVID-19

Purpose

The COVID-19 crisis has significantly affected entrepreneurial ventures, where knowledge resources are limited and contextual uncertainty is heightened. This paper aims to identify if and how interorganizational learning (IOL) may assist entrepreneurial ventures adapt, survive and grow in a crisis.

Design/methodology/approach

The following research question is asked: How may responding to the adversity induced by the COVID-19 pandemic affect IOL between entrepreneurial ventures? Four hypotheses were developed to carry out a quantitative study of 228 knowledge-based entrepreneurial ventures in Norway.

Findings

The results illustrate how different combinations of adversity from COVID-19 and the active responses conducted by entrepreneurial ventures influence IOL. Four clusters representing different behaviors are developed accordingly as follows: “collaborators”, “supporters”, “responders” and “victims.” The findings provide empirical support for the importance of engaging in interactive and collaborative activities for IOL.

Research limitations/implications

The findings can help in understanding how COVID-19 influences IOL between entrepreneurial ventures. Policymakers may use these findings to promote organizational continuity in entrepreneurial ventures by creating and nurturing support systems that promote IOL during a crisis.

Originality/value

Studying a contemporary and critical situation – the COVID-19 pandemic – the present paper provides an empirical study of the antecedents to IOL, adding to the currently scarce body of research on IOL in and between entrepreneurial ventures.