Relational Space: Creating a Context for Innovation in Collaborative Consortia
Name
Carroll_Relational Space.pdf
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230.63 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Bradbury-Huang, Hilary
Lichtenstein, Benyamin
Carroll, John Stephen
Senge, Peter M.
Alternative Title
Relational Space and Learning Experiments: The Heart of Sustainability Collaborations
Date Issued
2010
Journal
Research in Organizational Change and Development
Publisher
Emerald Group Pub.
Citation
Hilary Bradbury-Huang, Benyamin Lichtenstein, John S. Carroll, Peter M. Senge. (2010) "Relational Space and Learning Experiments: The Heart of Sustainability Collaborations" in William A. Pasmore, Abraham B. (Rami) Shani, Richard W. Woodman (ed.) 18 (Research in Organizational Change and Development, Volume 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.109-148.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Corporations are now collaborating to meet complex global sustainability challenges, which, until recently, were considered beyond the mandate of business leaders. Multi-organizational consortia have formed, not as philanthropic efforts, but to find competitive advantage. To examine the dynamics of an early collaboration of this sort, with a view to suggesting how future inter-organizational projects might be fostered, we pursued an in-depth multi-method case study of “The Sustainability Consortium.” The Consortium has convened Fortune 50 senior managers since 1998. Our analysis uncovers the primacy of “Relational Space” – a rich context for aspirational trust and reflective learning across organizational boundaries, which is enabled by, and in turn gives rise to, collaborative projects. Within this space, an ecology of organizational leaders committed to sustainability can accomplish together what would be impossible in their individual organizations. We explain the viability of this collaboration.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1108/S0897-3016(2010)0000018008
