Multi-sector collaboration is an important means of achieving strategic, cross-sectoral change. However, it also presents significant managerial challenges. In this paper, we examine these challenges in the case of a multi-sector collaboration formed to address treatment issues in the Canadian...

This article presents a response to Jaco Lok and Hugh Wilmott's comments on a 2004 paper by Professors N. Phillips, T.B. Lawrence, and C. Hardy on the discursive approach to institutional theory. The authors believe that the exploration of discourse analysis as a new avenue for future...

We explore the relationship between discourse and interorganizational collaboration, arguing that interorganizational collaboration can be understood as the product of sets of conversations that draw on existing discourses. Specifically, we argue that effective collaboration, which we define as...

In a qualitative study of the emerging field of HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy in Canada, we found that institutional entrepreneurship involved three sets of critical activities: (1) the occupation of “subject positions” that have wide legitimacy and bridge diverse stakeholders, (2) the...

We argue that the processes underlying institutionalization have not been investigated adequately and that discourse analysis provides a coherent framework for such investigation. Accordingly, we develop a discursive model of institutionalization that highlights the relationships among texts,...

Inter-organizational collaboration has been linked to a range of important outcomes for collaborating organizations. The strategy literature emphasizes the way in which collaboration between organizations results in the sharing of critical resources and facilitates knowledge transfer. The...

We argue that collaboration can act as a source of change in institutional fields through the generation of “proto-institutions”: new practices, rules, and technologies that transcend a particular collaborative relationship and may become new institutions if they diffuse sufficiently. A...

While many aspects of the collaborative process have been discussed in the management literature, the connection between collaboration and the dynamics of institutional fields has remained largely unconsidered. Yet, collaboration is an important arena for inter–organizational interaction and,...