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Article
Publication date: 1 March 2013

Andreas Werr and Philip Runsten

The current paper aims at contributing to the understanding of interorganizational knowledge integration by highlighting the role of individuals' understandings of the task and…

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Abstract

Purpose

The current paper aims at contributing to the understanding of interorganizational knowledge integration by highlighting the role of individuals' understandings of the task and how they shape knowledge integrating behaviours.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper presents a framework of knowledge integration as heedful interrelating. Knowledge integration is conceptualized as help seeking, help giving and reflective reframing, and the paper discusses how these knowledge integrating behaviors are shaped by actors' representations of the situation and their role in it. The framework is illustrated and refined in relation to a qualitative case study of an IT outsourcing project.

Findings

Narrow and separating representations of actors' roles, partly based on institutionalized ideas of the proper behaviors of “buyers” and “suppliers”, impede knowledge integration. Such representations render the knowledge integrating behaviors help seeking, help giving and reflective reframing illegitimate.

Research limitations/implications

Results call for attention to actors' representations of the situation and their role in it in order to understand knowledge integration. The interorganizational setting, with its institutionalized roles, provides unique challenges that need to be investigated further. As findings are based on a single case study, further research needs to extend the findings to other kinds of interorganizational collaboration.

Originality/value

The paper adds to the understanding of interorganizational knowledge integration by drawing attention to the importance of individual actors' representations and behaviors. Hereby, the dominant organizational and network levels of analysis in the literature on interorganizational knowledge integration are complemented by an individual level of analysis.

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Book part
Publication date: 29 July 2020

Stefano Grando, Fabio Bartolini, Isabelle Bonjean, Gianluca Brunori, Erik Mathijs, Paolo Prosperi and Daniele Vergamini

This chapter opens the second part of the Volume, focusing on the small farms' role and dynamics within the evolving food system. Assessing small farmers' actual and potential…

Abstract

This chapter opens the second part of the Volume, focusing on the small farms' role and dynamics within the evolving food system. Assessing small farmers' actual and potential contribution to the change towards a sustainable food and nutrition security requires a deep understanding of their strategic decision-making processes. These processes take place in a context highly conditioned by internal and external conditions, including the complex relations between farm and household, which are mapped and described. Building on an adaptation of Porter's model (Porter, 1990), the chapter investigates how farmers, given those conditions, define their strategies (in particular their innovation strategies) aimed at economic and financial sustainability through a multidisciplinary analysis of scientific literature. Internal conditions are identified in the light of the Agricultural Household Model (Singh & Subramanian, 1986) which emphasizes how family farming strategies aim at combining business-related objectives, and family welfare. Then, a comprehensive set of external conditions is identified and then grouped within eight categories: ‘Factors’, ‘Demand’, ‘Finance and Risk’, ‘Regulation and Policy’, ‘Technological’, ‘Ecological’, ‘Socio-institutional’ and ‘Socio-demographic’. Similarly, six types of strategies are identified: ‘Agro-industrial competitiveness’, ‘Blurring farm borders’, ‘Rural development’, ‘Risk management’, ‘Political support’ and ‘Coping with farming decline’.

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