Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Organizational scholars have long emphasized inter-organizational relationships (IORs) as essential tools for addressing societal challenges and fostering innovation. In today’s hyper-connected and rapidly evolving environment, IORs are more vital and omnipresent than ever because they enable organizations to share resources, mitigate uncertainties, and tackle issues beyond their capacity.
 
The ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2017) – powered by technological advancements in their capacity to make autonomous decisions and act smartly, for example, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, big data, and Internet of Things (IoT) – is transforming IORs in several ways. On the one hand, technological advancement is overcoming longstanding barriers and offering new opportunities in traditional IORs, either dyadic or multiparty partnerships; on the other hand, novel collaborative forms such as digital ecosystems have emerged with both transformative opportunities and intricate challenges. While research has started to acknowledge the “global connectivity” (Autio et al., 2021) and “technological embeddedness” of IORs (Cepa & Schildt, 2023), the mechanisms by which digital technologies redefine the scope, modes, and meanings of collaborations remain unclear (Lumineau et al., 2023; Volberda et al., 2021).
 
This sub-theme aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on the role of inter-organizational collaboration in the digital age, focusing on the strategic opportunities, contributions to societal challenges, and the emerging constraints and paradoxes of collaborating across boundaries for the adoption of new technologies. Research often focuses on the enterprise level to understand the affordances and constraints of new technologies, while inter-organizational relations have been largely understudied. We are concerned with both changes in traditional IORs including both dyadic and multiparty relations and with more novel forms of organization afforded by technological advancement, such as digital ecosystems. We thus invite researchers to explore how emerging technologies reshape traditional and new forms of collaboration across boundaries.
 
Rethinking traditional IORs

Emerging technologies may offer solutions to long-standing IOR challenges, such as misalignment of goals and incentives, power asymmetries, unclear governance structures, lack of trust, and data-sharing concerns, but we have just started to understand when and how this happens. AI agents trained using big data offer unprecedented capabilities for automating decision-making and streamlining operations not only within but also across organizations (Bailey et al., 2022; Kazantsev et al., 2023). Blockchain enables secure, transparent, and traceable transactions, potentially reconfiguring trust and lowering collaboration costs under certain conditions (Lumineau et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2022). Digital twins and IoT sensors facilitate real-time coordination between involved parties, minimizing costly errors and delays.
 
Yet, these advances bring new challenges such as lack of flexibility, opacity and power imbalances. Blockchain, while fostering trust, may introduce rigidities that stifle adaptability in nuanced negotiations. IoT requires significant infrastructure investments, which are often inaccessible to resource-constrained organizations. Rapid advancements in AI and big data may lead to power asymmetries in favor of digitally advanced firms, exacerbating data monopolization and marginalizing smaller players. Additionally, cybersecurity vulnerabilities and governance disputes remain pressing concerns for all types of IORs.
 
From such standpoints, traditional theories of organizational design, resource dependence, power and institutional alignment must now contend with the implications of new technologies such as decentralized decision-making, automated trust mechanisms, and real-time data sharing (Annosi et al., 2020; 2021; Bailey et al., 2022, Hanisch et al., 2023; Lumineau et al., 2023; Ungureanu et al., 2019). Examining how inter-organizational practices and strategies are shaped by the affordances and constraints of new technologies is thus essential to understanding this changing landscape.
 
Understanding new possibilities for IORs and the rise of digital ecosystems

In addition to reshaping traditional IORs, emerging technologies are catalyzing novel forms of collaboration, many of which are embedded within digital ecosystems. These ecosystems often take the form of loose networks of diverse actors such as startups, multinational corporations, NGOs, governments or policymakers orchestrating a web of IORs (Autio et al., 2021; Gawer, 2022). When combined with the possibilities of new technologies, the diversity of resources pooled by such ecosystems promise an unprecedented increase of scale, scope and impact of inter-organizational collaboration in our societies. Platforms like Google Health and Microsoft Azure Health enable AI-driven data sharing for healthcare innovation, while blockchain-powered DeFi systems reshape financial collaboration by removing intermediaries. Smart city projects integrate IoT, AI, and big data for urban transformation, while initiatives like Global Forest Watch use big data analytics to monitor deforestation and provide real-time solutions for our environmental challenges.
 
However, the governance of these ecosystems poses significant challenges. Stakeholders often face misaligned goals, power imbalances, intellectual property disputes, and unclear data-sharing frameworks (Jacobides et al., 2024). In addition, technologies have limitations at this stage of development. For example, peer-to-peer systems, like those in blockchain ecosystems, introduce rising concerns about scalability, lack of shared standards, and disputes over decentralized governance (Wang et al., 2022; Ungureanu, 2025; Ungureanu et al., 2025). Importantly, the immaterial nature of digital technologies also raises questions about how to anchor these collaborations in meaningful physical or socio-economic contexts to ensure inclusivity and social and environmental accountability (Ungureanu, 2023). While some collaborations remain rooted in specific geographic or physical contexts, such as renewable energy projects or urban construction initiatives, others transcend boundaries, existing entirely in the digital realm (Backer, 2024).
 
In summary, digital technologies are fundamentally transforming IORs, not only by enhancing traditional dyadic and multiparty IORs, but also by catalyzing entirely new forms of loose collaborations within increasingly complex digital ecosystems. The extent to which traditional IORs are gradually transforming into digital ecosystems is also a timely question waiting to be addressed. The undergoing transformation brings tremendous potential but also introduces trade-offs, challenges, and dilemmas that demand scholarly attention.
 
We encourage submissions addressing a broad range of questions spanning across the domains of organization, strategy, technology and innovation, institutional theory and organizational behavior. We welcome diverse methodologies, including qualitative research, quantitative modeling, comparative case analyses, and conceptual papers. Examples of questions (by no means limiting) are as follows:

• How do digital technologies redefine traditional IORs and mitigate their long-standing challenges?

• When and how do traditional IORs transform into digital ecosystems and with what consequences?

• What governance practices and processes are at play in technologically embedded IORs?

• How do the design and enforcement of contractual governance change in technologically embedded IORs?

• How do the form and process of relational governance change in technologically embedded IORs?

• How are emerging technologies shaping trust processes? How do different types of trust (technological, inter-personal, institutional) shape collaborations in the digital age?

• How can digital affordances (e.g., transparency, automation) mitigate inefficiencies in traditional IORs, and at what cost?

• How do emerging technologies requiring inter-organizational collaboration shape the business models of involved parties and their alignment?

• How do institutional contexts influence the adoption and scaling of emerging technologies within IORs?

• How does digital transformation shape the material (place-based) and immaterial (digital) dimensions of IORs?

• How do decentralized technologies like blockchain challenge or substitute traditional IOR frameworks?

• How do digital ecosystems address or exacerbate governance challenges such as trust, accountability, or power dynamics?

• What ethical and social dilemmas emerge in using digital technologies to address large-scale problems requiring cross-boundary collaboration (e.g., smart cities, environmental monitoring, healthcare)?

References

• Annosi, M.C., Brunetta, F., Bimbo, F., & Kostoula, M. (2021): “Digitalization within food supply chains to prevent food waste. Drivers, barriers and collaboration practices.” Industrial Marketing Management, 93, 208–220, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2021.01.005
• Annosi, M.C., Brunetta, F., Capo, F., & Heideveld, L. (2020): “Digitalization in the agri-food industry: the relationship between technology and sustainable development.” Management Decision, 58 (8), 1737–175.
• Backer, L.C. (2024): “Trust platforms: The digitalization of corporate governance and the transformation of trust in polycentric space.” Regulation & Governance, 19 (3), 806–830.
• Bailey, D.E., Faraj, S., Hinds, P.J., Leonardi, P.M., & von Krogh, G. (2022): “We Are All Theorists of Technology Now: A Relational Perspective on Emerging Technology and Organizing.” Organization Science, 33 (1), 1–18.
• Cepa, K., & Schildt, H. (2019): “Technological Embeddedness of Inter-organizational Collaboration Processes.” In: J. Sydow & H. Berends (eds.): Managing Inter-organizational Collaborations: Process Views. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 91–115.
• Gawer, A. (2022): “Digital platforms and ecosystems: remarks on the dominant organizational forms of the digital age.” Innovation, 24 (1), 110–124.
• Hanisch, M., Goldsby, C.M., Fabian, N.E., & Oehmichen, J. (2023): “Digital governance: A conceptual framework and research agenda.” Journal of Business Research, 162, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113777
• Jacobides, M.G., Cennamo, C., & Gawer, A. (2024): “Externalities and complementarities in platforms and ecosystems: From structural solutions to endogenous failures.” Research Policy, 53 (1), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2023.104906
• Kazantsev, N., Islam, N., Zwiegelaar, J., Brown, A., & Maull, R. (2023): “Data sharing for business model innovation in platform ecosystems: From private data to public good.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 192, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122515
• Lumineau, F., Wang, W., & Schilke, O. (2021): “Blockchain governance – A new way of organizing collaborations?” Organization Science, 32 (2), 500–521.
• Lumineau, F., Schilke, O., & Wang, W. (2023): “Organizational trust in the age of the fourth industrial revolution: Shifts in the form, production, and targets of trust.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 32 (1), 21–34.
• Schwab, K. (2017): The Fourth Industrial Revolution. London: Portfolio Penguin.
• Ungureanu, P. (2023): “Putting Space in Place. Multimodal Translation of the Grand Challenge of Regional Smart Specialization from Policy to Cross-sector Partnerships.” Journal of Business Ethics, 184 (4), 895–915.
• Ungureanu, P. (2025): “Running Code or Better Code? Expertise De/centralization Tensions in the Ethereum Blockchain Ecosystem.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389505245_Running_Code_or_Better_Code_Expertise_Decentralization_Tensions_in_the_Ethereum_Blockchain_Ecosystem.
• Ungureanu, P., Bellesia, F., & Cochis, C. (2025): “Dealing with blame in digital ecosystems: The DAO failure in the Ethereum blockchain.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 215, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124096
• Ungureanu, P., Bertolotti, F., Mattarelli, E., & Bellesia, F. (2019): “Making matters worse by trying to make them better? Exploring vicious circles of decision in hybrid partnerships.” Organization Studies, 40 (9), 1331–1359.
• Volberda, H.W., Khanagha, S., Baden-Fuller, C., Mihalache, O.R., & Birkinshaw, J. (2021): “Strategizing in a digital world: Overcoming cognitive barriers, reconfiguring routines and introducing new organizational forms.” Long Range Planning, 54 (5), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2021.102110
• Wang, W., Lumineau, F., & Schilke, O. (2022): Blockchains: Strategic Implications for Contracting, Trust, and Organizational Design. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.