Multi-organizational collaborations involving the industry, academia, and government have become prevalent in developing knowledge to address complex societal problems. These fluid and loosely coupled forms of collaboration, known as knowledge ecosystems, provide the necessary organizing elements for the search and creation of new knowledge. While the literature acknowledges the prevalence of knowledge ecosystems, it remains relatively silent on how their organization develops over time. This lacuna in our understanding is problematic, given the challenge of governance voids for cross-sectoral knowledge collaborations, which lead to difficulties in mobilizing action, securing resources, and ultimately achieving the knowledge-related goals of these collaborations. To address this gap, we theorize knowledge ecosystems as meta-organizations, examining how they gradually develop organizing elements that bridge the initial governance void. Empirically, we draw on an in-depth field case study of the High-Capacity Transport ecosystem in Sweden, demonstrating how three interrelated organizational elements—participation, identity, and actorhood—emerge through an iterative, yet broadly sequential process to resolve governance void challenges in resourcing, belonging, and collective action. Furthermore, we identify discursive and performative meta-organizational practices that enable the actors to collectively enact the aforementioned organizational elements and to engage in knowledge search. We further demonstrate how the organization of knowledge ecosystems is never ‘complete’ and the governance void remains only partially resolved, given the underdefined nature of new knowledge as the ecosystem's shared goal. Overall, our process model contributes to the theory, practice, and policy of knowledge ecosystem emergence and organizing.

Grand challenges call for innovation and collaboration across sectors. Yet, many cross-sector and multi-stakeholder initiatives often fall short of achieving their intended goals, and creating the expected value. Addressing this issue requires a better understanding of how to develop and design emergent multi-stakeholder programs with actual societal value. This article leverages an in-depth case study of Sweden’s High-Capacity Transport program to develop a process model that demonstrates how three interconnected value pathways—goal gearing, participatory engagement, and program leveraging—ensured the gradual expansion of program goals and of interest among diverse participants who enhanced collective value creation and contributed to the success of this multi-stakeholder collaboration.

A core problem in sustainability transitions is to ensure that actors come together and work on a common goal. Earlier research has argued that developing a project-oriented agency is essential to ensure transitions. By examining two contrasting cases, the Sustainable Transportation program and the Sustainable Hospital program, we identify two distinct types of project-oriented agency: (1) emergent and (2) induced. The former showcases an inclusive approach emphasizing open collaboration and resource mobilization, flexible goals, whereas the latter encompasses prescribed resource mobilization, contractual objectives, and deadlines. Beyond bottom-up vs. top-down dichotomies, these project-oriented agency types highlight different shaping contexts and logics of how actors mobilize projects for change. Our analysis identifies the nuanced dimensions of project-oriented agency and the impetuses, practices, and temporal structures through which they shape transition outcomes. The paper enriches the current understanding of how targeted projects and programs can bridge experimental niches with mainstream regime transformation, thereby enabling system-wide sustainability transitions.

Collaboration involving large variety of actors across sectors, industries, and institutional settings have become prevalent in searching and creating new knowledge for variety of wicked and complex problems. These fluid forms of collaboration – labelled as knowledge ecosystems – allow organizations to collaborate with other organizations and individuals in a quest to search for and create new knowledge. The literature has thus far helped recognize the prevalence of knowledge ecosystems and their potential benefits, but is relatively silent on their origins and emergence. To bridge this gap, in this paper we theorize knowledge ecosystems as meta-organizations that pursue organizationality via establishment of organizing elements that aim for joint search of new knowledge. By virtue of this foundation, we analyze a longitudinal case study of High-Capacity Transport ecosystem in Sweden, and demonstrate the key organizational elements that emerged over the course of over ten years. We distinguish a process model explaining how three elements of organizationality in a knowledge ecosystem – participation, identity, and actorhood – emerge sequentially and by building iteratively on each other. The process model contributes to the theory, practice, and policy of knowledge ecosystems emergence.

Over the last two decades, new forms of collaboration involving a network of a larger variety of actors across institutional settings have become more prevalent. These more fluid forms of collaboration as ecosystems and platforms allow organisations to collaborate at arm’s length with organisations and individuals searching for knowledge, developing complementary products, and services in project patterns. In this paper, we provide an exploratory understanding of the process of knowledge-work in such a new multi-actor organising platform (CLOSER) in Sweden. Taking a process perspective, we explore how the actors in the transport sector and forest industry, find difficulties to search for and transform the program network-related knowledge in a coopetitive context. Building on an in-depth longitudinal case study, we do that by shedding light on the High-Capacity Transport (HCT) program organizing and its (dis-) embeddedness in the platform. Based on the longitudinal analysis, the paper sets forth context features linking the search for and knowledge transformation activities within the multi-organisational network and among the participant organisation based on the interplay between industrial settings and the underlying conditions suggesting implications for practice in such new forms of collaboration and beyond.

This paper addresses the interplay between organization designs and value processes in the context of programs. Building upon the findings from a longitudinal case study of a complex multi-partner program within Sweden's transportation sector, we argue that different value processes over the program lifecycle require different program management arrangements. Specifically, the paper explores how three distinct value processes, namely value definition, value creation and value capture, were related to specific program organization design dimensions, including overall organizational form, program boundaries, organizational control modes, program protagonist and sources of funding. The paper explicates the dynamics of alignment between organization design and value processes and shows how the external context shaped the process of alignment. Thus, the study contributes to the literature by reporting a rich, longitudinal empirical case, identifying organizational preconditions for different value processes in programs and highlighting the dynamics of these processes.

Heeding recent calls for more studies on the relationship between projects and institutions, this paper reports on a collaborative case study to shed light on the recursive relations of large-scale projects and their institutional fields. Given the industry as the field-level institution, this study explores how two project organizations experienced the industry changes, its influence on the arrangement of large-scale projects, and the management response used to legitimize these arrangements. The qualitative secondary data analysis of two High-Speed rail projects in Spain and The Netherlands is based on semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis. This paper provides the institutional fields? contextual detail and deepens our understanding of temporal institutional complexity that bound large-scale project arrangements. The findings suggest that in both cases the management responses altered across time and evolved depending on the salience of the institutional pressure, through the interplay with 1) regulative, 2) normative, and 3) dynamic cultural-cognitive forces, resulting in cycles of project legitimacy.

Due to various influences of a dynamic context of universities and society there are many changes that are required in education and many goals to relate to. For example: new pedagogical knowledge, didactics and technology for learning, tougher requirements for throughput, new rules for examination and goals, new societal demands for equality and sustainability, requirements for goal related grading. Together this has resulted in that it is increasingly complex to make changes, develop, design, improve and validate education programs. If education programs are likened to systems, and the task of changing them likened with engineering tasks, then tools and models in systems engineering could be applied to support development also of education programs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate systems engineering processes and models to support development for education programs. The method for investigation has been to relate and reflect our own experiences to the framework from systems theories and systems engineering and where applicable apply this to education programs and the challenges encountered in a highly dynamic context in universities and in society. The methodology in this paper is based on practice of the authors. The authors are both researcher and teacher at KTH as well as assigned roles which requires program development. In this paper we continue to follow the development and implementation of education programs presented at INTED2017. To increase system thinking and system views is something we require in our engineering education, in accordance to CDIO. That this is not a common language in our own work and development is a weakness. This initial paper will help communicating the need for this and also present ways of working with our peers and students. In the end extended work on this will support developers in academia to support the transformation of resources, the organization of skill and technologies that enables delivery of education as well as the organization of people to make the education program function, or work, as intended.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of lock-in in large-scale projects. Although large-scale projects have been studied for decades, most studies have applied economic or psychological perspectives to emphasize decision-making processes at the project front-end. Of those studies, some have focused on poor decision-making due to lock-in and the escalating commitments of decision-makers to ineffective courses of action. However, little is known about the way that project decisions are affected by organizational and inter-organizational contexts and the actors involved. Understanding decisions from a process viewpoint with a long-term (inter-) organizational perspective will lead to a better understanding of lock-in and the overall performance of large-scale projects. This qualitative research is based on a case study. The research setting is the multi-actor Madrid–Barcelona High-Speed rail Line (HSL) project in Spain. Through observations, interviews, several project documents, and report analysis, we explore the processual nature of the choices made during the course of the project. We consider the contextual conditions that give rise or support the emergence of lock-in in relation to pre- and post-project effects, institutional influences, and management practices that create action spaces at the project level. Our findings suggest that lock-in emergence requires the recognition of the long-term (inter-) organizational perspective regarding mechanisms and effects rather than confining decisions to the individual or single actor control in the front-end of projects. Based on organizational theory, the main contribution of this paper is to enrich our understanding of the emergence of lock-in using process theories.

While they originate from different contexts and values, the Mechatronic and Project Management research communities are both committed to the study of the process of complex engineering systems design. These two fields have generally been engaged in their research separated from each other. Recently, calls have been heard from both to end such disciplinary separation. This paper seeks to conceptually relate the two research communities, seeking to understand how they can be seen as different, related and inclusive of each other through offering three conceptual models of their relationships.

This article challenges the dominant assumption of goal rationality behind temporary organizations’ design in project-based organizations (PBOs). While extant literature posits that organizations strive to select the most appropriate project arrangements to fit particular task requirements at hand, findings from an in-depth ethnography-inspired case study suggest that projects in PBOs tend to imitate each other's structures, strategies, and practices with little consideration of the potential performance effects. Building upon the new institutionalism, this article conceptualizes the PBO as an organizational field of temporary and permanent organizations embedded in wider organizational and institutional fields and explicates isomorphic processes among temporary organizations in PBOs.

Developing an engineering education program is much like systems engineering. Programs have a lifecycle and will be responding differently depending on how early in the life cycle or how mature the program is. This is shown in this study in which two programs at vastly different lifecycle stages are compared, one new and one mature. The new one is still under development and implementation and is verified in terms of CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate) and how it supports system thinking with a flipped education approach in combination with extended "flipped" aspects like gamification and close industry collaboration. The purpose is mainly to verify the concept of the new program and assess progress of a mature program. In this study, the development and continuous improvement of CDIO is compared for two programs in different life cycle stages. For comparison a self-assessment is performed using the CDIO standard 2.1.

This continuous research within Nordic engineering institutions targets the contexts and possibilities for leadership among engineering education program directors. The IFP-model, developed based on analysis of interviews with program leaders in these institutions, visualizes the program director’s informal and formal power. The model is presented as a tool for starting a shared discussion on the complexities of the leadership of engineering program development. The authors liken program development to hunting in teams. Each individual expert in the program is needed, and all experts will need to work and collaborate for the same target. This calls for strategic and long-term thinking of engineering education development. Institutions should support the development of both formal structures as well as informal leadership skills among their program directors, but never fall for the temptation to see the program director as the only actor on the stage.

OVERVIEW: Many manufacturers are moving to servitization, but making that move successfully requires considering the underlying business logic of a division or product. Differences in existing conditions, such as product characteristics or other business attributes, may determine success in transition to a services-based business model and create challenges for a firm moving, for instance, from a spare-parts model to advanced service contracts. Our study pinpoints a number of key product attributes that define how far a company can move up the service ladder. The findings suggest that the Power-by-the-Hour model pioneered by Rolls-Royce suits products that constitute critical ancillary input to, and not essential elements of, customers’ core processes; that require low initial investments relative to high total costs of ownership; that are used in controllable operating environments with measurable performance requirements; and that are associated with high risk and high costs in the event of failure. Further, the service delivery system must be integrated and orchestrated to be product-specific—that is, aligned with the function and operating conditions of the product in use.

Currently a debate exists among R&D management scholars in which Agile and Traditional (i.e. sequential/waterfall/ plan-driven) models are compared. Typically, this debate is driven from a pola ...

This paper presents a systematic, university--wide approach to creating an encompassing movement towards faculty development. In 2014, KTH Royal Institute of Technology launched the pedagogical dev ...

This paper challenges the implicit ‘one-size-fits-all’ assumption that dominates mainstream program management competence literature. Findings from case studies of 10 programs executed in a large pharmaceutical company suggest that different programs require different competences of program managers. Based on the Pellegrinelli's (1997) program typology we put forward a framework, linking specific management competences to program types. By establishing the link between the program typologies literature and program management competence literature, the paper shows that programs should not be treated as a generic and homogenous category in discussions on program management competences. In addition, the findings highlight program content as a significant contingency variable for understanding program management dynamics. The paper suggests a conceptual framework that combines program types with program management competence profiles that could be applied to appointment decisions, staff assessments and organizational development.

This paper put emphasis on change agents within the universities and how local initiatives can be systematically approached and ramped up. Rooted in the challenges and constraints that have been ad ...