Managing A Global Partnership Model: Lessons from the Boeing 787 ‘Dreamliner’ Program

Managing Boundaries in Multiteam Structures: From Parochialism to Integrated Pluralism

Multiteam structures are increasingly used to coordinate complex tasks between different groups. To realize this potential, however, the members of a multiteam structure must manage a complex set of boundary relations within, between, and beyond the various constituent teams—boundary relations that can be cooperative, competitive, or some combination of both at the same time. This multimethod study provides insight into how multiteam structures can meet this challenge. Specifically, we examined how the different organizations that utilize and support the Dutch railway system learned to manage boundaries as they transitioned from a centralized, arms-length structure to a colocated, multiteam structure for coordinating disruption responses (i.e., the Rail Operations Control Center (ROCC)). In part 1 of our study, qualitative analyses of interview, observational, and archival data suggested that learning to manage boundaries within the ROCC was not simple or linear but evolved through trial and error during various phases. Ultimately, the ROCC developed an approach we call “integrated pluralism,” establishing a dynamic balance that combines both collaborative and competitive approaches to boundary management. In this manner, the ROCC teams were able to attain integrated solutions and coordinated task accomplishment while simultaneously defending internal team operations and home organization interests. In part 2, we employed an interrupted time series analysis to demonstrate that the implementation of the ROCC resulted in significant performance improvements. Consistent with the results of part 1, we found that these improvements emerged gradually over time as teams learned to work out their boundary relations and transitioned to integrated pluralism. These findings provide new insights into how individuals and teams can work together to tackle the unique boundary management challenges presented by multiteam structures and illuminate the dynamic trial and error process by which component teams can learn to both cooperate and compete.

Coping With Institutional Complexity and Voids: An Organization Design Perspective for Transnational Interorganizational Projects

This study investigates how transnational interorganizational projects (IOPs) cope with institutional complexity and voids. A case study of a cross-border gas pipeline suggests the coexistence of institutional complexity and voids that amplify collaboration hazards in developing transnational IOPs. Institutional complexity harms the feasibility of a unified form of organizing, whereas institutional voids sabotage the ability of involved organizations to collaborate in a market-based approach. A hybrid organization featured by modular structure, complementary advantages, and system integrator, was designed to navigate complex institutional environments. This study contributes to the project–organization–institution linkage by depicting the impacts of institutions on project organizing.

Ensuring Adaptation While Seeking Efficiency: Tiered Outsourcing and Skip-Level Supplier Ties in the Airbus A350 Program

When outsourcing design tasks, firms want their suppliers to be both efficient and adaptive. Whereas efficiency is necessary to reap economic gains from outsourcing, adaptation is required to deal with interdependencies as the design evolves. Achieving both objectives simultaneously, however, is difficult because procurement contracts require a trade-off between providing incentives for efficiency and facilitating adaptation. In the presence of formal contracts that provide strong incentives for efficiency, ensuring adaptation thus requires effective relational contracts between the buyer and the supplier. But because the focus of prior research has been on dyadic buyer–supplier relationships, it is unclear how the efficiency–adaptation trade-off can be mitigated in the multitier supplier systems that are common in many industries. Addressing this gap, we argue that in hierarchical supplier systems, relational contracts between contractual partners become more important, but at the same time harder to establish, than in single-tier supplier systems. An in-depth case study of the adaptive frictions that arose in the Airbus A350 program allows us to illustrate this challenge of tiered outsourcing. Moreover, we show how Airbus came to resolve the frictions by leveraging skip-level ties—direct informal contacts to lower-level suppliers with which no contractual relationship existed, thus replacing the archetypal notion of a supplier hierarchy by a more complex relationship structure. We discuss the boundary conditions of our findings and suggest propositions for the emergence of skip-level ties in tiered outsourcing.

How Firms Build Isolating Mechanisms for Knowledge: A Study in Offshore Research and Development Captives

Understanding how firms protect their knowledge from leakage is becoming increasingly important, especially when knowledge is not well protected by legal mechanisms such as patents. The rapid rise in research and development (R&D) activities taking place in offshore locations that only offer weak legal protection for intellectual property provides the ideal context to study this question. Using interview and survey data from captive R&D centers of multinational firms in India, we (1) identify five organizational practices that firms use to protect their knowledge from leaking to competitors in offshore locations, (2) consider whether these practices limit knowledge leakage or limit damage from leaked knowledge, and (3) explore whether they are complements or substitutes.

A Topological Analysis of Trade Distance: Evidence from the Gravity Model and Complex Flow Networks

As a classical trade model, the gravity model plays an important role in the trade policy-making process. However, the effect of physical distance fails to capture the effects of globalization and even ignores the multilateral resistance of trade. Here, we propose a general model describing the effective distance of trade according to multilateral trade paths information and the structure of the trade flow network. Quantifying effective trade distance aims to identify the hidden resistance information from trade networks data, and then describe trade barriers. The results show that flow distance, hybrid by multi-path constraint, and international trade network contribute to the forecasting of trade flows. Meanwhile, we also analyze the role of flow distance in international trade from two perspectives of network science and econometric model. At the econometric model level, flow distance can collapse to the predicting results of geographic distance in the proper time lagging variable, which can also reflect that flow distance contains geographical factors. At the international trade network level, community structure detection by flow distances and flow space embedding instructed that the formation of international trade networks is the tradeoff of international specialization in the trade value chain and geographical aggregation. The methodology and results can be generalized to the study of all kinds of product trade systems.

OUTSOURCING NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FOSTERED BY DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: A DECISION-MAKING MODEL

Several studies in the literature have addressed the issue of outsourcing in relation to New Product Development (NPD) or R&D processes. However, the issue of how the outsourcing decisions in the NPD process are best undertaken by the firms has not been fully addressed. Understanding factors influencing the decision of innovation outsourcing more likely remains a need within the current research stream. As it stands, the existing literature takes account of neither a complete set of decision making dimensions, nor the specificity of the NPD process, especially when a disruptive technology fosters product innovation. Although these studies have analysed the antecedents of the innovation outsourcing, the decision-making dimensions are not considered in an integrated multidimensional decision-making model, that considers the inter-related effects of their contemporaneous consideration. There are, therefore, significant gaps in the literature, which this article intends to fill. Our study aims to understand how organisations approach outsourcing decisions relating to NPD activities in technology intensive industries, and the performance implications of these decisions. The context of the study is that of aircraft industry. Therefore, this article discusses the findings of an empirical research that explores an embedded and in-depth longitudinal case study, namely, the Boeing 787-8 programme (the first model of the B787 Dreamliner programme). This new aircraft is a disruptive technology product innovation within the industry because it adopts new material technologies that make it possible to meet future customer needs. The programme has radically changed the partnership model adopted in the industry’s supply chain. The aim of the empirical research is to verify how the proposed model works to investigate outsourcing strategies related to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner programme. The research question that we aim to answer is: which strategic dimensions in a decision-making model are able to extensively and thoroughly address the outsourcing decisions relating to NPD activities given the hypothesis that a disruptive technology fosters product innovation?

The Challenge of Innovation in Highly Complex Projects: What Can We Learn from Boeing's Dreamliner Experience?

Understanding the link between project complexity and innovation is highly pertinent. Yet, the challenge of innovative complex projects has received limited research attention and little theory development. This article provides a retrospective analysis of the difficulties experienced by Boeing during the development project of its highly innovative Dreamliner aircraft. Eventually successful, this project suffered extensive delays and cost overruns. The article analyzes the project's complex nature of innovation, while using several frameworks to provide an integrative view of its challenges and suggesting possible alternative ways to address them. Insights for complex project teams and future research directions are offered.

Hierarchicality of trade flow networks reveals complexity of products

With globalization, countries are more connected than before by trading flows, which amounts to at least trillion dollars today. Interestingly, around percents of exports consist of intermediate products in global. Therefore, the trade flow network of particular product with high added values can be regarded as value chains. The problem is weather we can discriminate between these products from their unique flow network structure? This paper applies the flow analysis method developed in ecology to 638 trading flow networks of different products. We claim that the allometric scaling exponent can be used to characterize the degree of hierarchicality of a flow network, i.e., whether the trading products flow on long hierarchical chains. Then, it is pointed out that the flow networks of products with higher added values and complexity like machinary, transport equipment etc. have larger exponents, meaning that their trade flow networks are more hierarchical. As a result, without the extra data like global input-output table, we can identify the product categories with higher complexity, and the relative importance of a country in the global value chain by the trading network solely.