Abstract:

Organizations today are taking advantage of web-based technologies and global markets to create new inter-organizational forms to enable strategic collaborations. This conceptual article analyses and connects theory to the practice of a new inter-organizational form we call the transient collaboration network (or TCN) model. Briefly, organizations cannot themselves build all resources needed for competitive advantages in volatile business environments. The purpose of the TCN model is to allow organizations to achieve full potential to locate and access the right resources at the right time through collaborations with trusted partners. The paper identifies transient collaboration activities of companies through case observations and introduces a simulation study to further understanding of how collaboration structures affect both company and network-level performances. The contribution of the paper is to explain the underlying principles of transient collaborative networks to practitioners, to propose a framework to establish such networks, and to lay the foundation for additional research undertakings in the topic.