Value creation of today is often a co-production in multi-organizational settings. This requires knowledge about how to conceive multi-organizational actor roles as foundations for co-ordinating and efficiently co-produce customer value. Some contemporary business process modelling approaches builds upon modelling interaction between two business parties (i.e. dyadic interaction), but do not acknowledge interaction patterns involving several network actors in their different actor roles. In this paper value creation in multi-organizational businesses are seen as value chains in value networks. The notion of assignments is the underlying structure in a multi-organizational perspective on business processes and is used to create foundations for distinguishing interaction patterns. Modelling and improving multi-organizational business processes conceived as action and interaction arranged in assignment structures, imply that dyadic role models need to be challenged as generative instruments. In this paper four generic multi-organizational network actor roles are brought forward (end- customer, main actor, co-ordinating actor, and co-producing actor) given meaning in and further instantiated in generic assignment actor roles based on their involvement in different multi-organizational interaction patterns. Thus, patterns of interaction constituting multi-organizational business processes are distinguished creating the necessary conditions for diverse network actors by the identification of their role in the action logic.

This paper addresses collaborative research as an action research approach. Many times action research is described as embracing one research organisation and one business organisation. We are challenging this view by introducing the concept of collaborative practice. A collaborative practice can be seen as a cluster of local practices and researchers working together. In this way, a collaborative practice should enable joint learning between, and joint development efforts for, several business practices as well as contributing to general practice and the scientific body of knowledge. Based on a case study within efficient IT Service Management (ITSM), the concept of collaborative practice and its relation to other adjacent concepts (such as local practice, general practice and scientific body of knowledge) have been characterized. Our results should be viewed as preliminary since they are gathered from an ongoing project.

Business transactions of today often rely on the involvement of several organizations in its preparation and realization. This means that value creation is distributed among several actors and needs to be coordinated. The division of multi-organizational businesses into business processes need to reflect the co-production of value arranged in distributed value production structures. There relies however an unresolved quest of which criteria that should govern such division of business processes. In this paper, business processes for conceiving multi- organizational businesses are identified founded in how customer assignments embed and integrate other assignments through value chains in value networks. Five core process types are identified founded in this assignment structure; development processes, planning processes, provision processes, order fulfilment processes, and evaluation processes. These processes are of both condition creating and realization characteristics to enable an efficient co-ordination of the multi-organizational business.

E-commerce retail companies offer increasingly larger assortments and include products from a large number of suppliers without holding the goods in stock. Having the goods physically located at the supplier increase the need for coordination in the supply chain, implying modified roles of the actors involved and requires information systems to support the exchange processes between collaborating parties. In order for retailers to be competitive and responsive to customer needs there are increasing efforts to combine different supply chain alternatives, thus requiring additional activities of coordination. This paper seeks to identify different possible supply chain alternatives, to describe their characterizations and to perform a comparative analysis of these alternatives based on inductively generated categories. The purpose of the paper is to identify, describe and analyse different supply chain alternatives in the context of e-commerce when the retailing company is not holding stock. The study applied a multi organizational approach, involving representatives from wholesaling, retailing and distribution companies working jointly with the researchers. The empirical material was collected through workshops and complementary interviews and was modelled as action patterns depicting preconditions for, and effects of business actions, organized in patterns of initiative and response. The paper identifies and describes six different supply alternatives: purchase flow; vendor management inventory flow; direct delivery; cross docking; consolidation of packages; and consolidation of goods. Among other things, the analysis shows how the various supply chain alternatives imply divergent requirements on information systems to support these different supply chain processes. In addition to an identification and overview of the different supply chain alternatives, the results may also serve as valuable input for retailers deciding appropriate combinations of supply chain alternatives. The paper also demonstrates how a multi organizational approach can be used in collaborative projects involving business practitioners and researchers.

In this paper the need for a multi-organizational perspective on business processes is outlined and a multi-grounded solution based on double-loop action research approach is proposed. Today, contemporary organizations’ capability to collaborate is an important competitive advantage and aligning in business networks is an increasingly common business model. Such development emphasizes the need for knowledge regarding how collaborative businesses could be characterized and how the constituent business interactions could be structured as several dyadic relationships in a multi-actor setting. The multi-organizational perspective proposed in this paper builds on pragmatic foundations and combines a language/action approach with a coordinative view on business processes, enabling design of complete action patterns.

Contemporary organizations capability to collaborate is an important competitive advantage and aligning in business networks is an increasingly common business model. Therefore, knowledge regarding characterization of collaboration businesses as well as the structure of business interaction that consists of several dyadic relationships in a multi-actor setting is of growing importance. Understanding such multi-organizational collaboration results in knowledge essential for the coordination of actors and actions involved in the realization of the joint business assignment. In this paper a multi-organizational perspective on collaboration processes is outlined as a pragmatic construction.

Verksamheter konstitueras av handlingar. För att effektivisera en verksamhet är det därför lämpligt att studera dess handlingar och hur de kan struktureras i syfte att uppnå handlingskvalitet. Att IT-system kan användas som ett verktyg för att effektivisera en verksamhet är inget anmärkningsvärt påstående. Men för att veta hur ett IT-system kan vara ett verksamhetsmässigt stöd, krävs en grundläggande förståelse för den verksamhet som det ämnar stödja. Oavsett om det är människor eller IT-system som ska utföra verksamhetens handlingar behöver vi förstå, inte bara de enskilda handlingarna, utan också det övergripande mönster som de olika handlingarna är del av. I avhandlingen argumenterar jag för hur en dimension av handlingskvalitet i tredjepartslogistiksamverkan kan uppnås genom kompletta handlingsmönster. Det innebär att vi, för att förstå tredjepartslogistiksamverkan som en form av interorganisatorisk samverkan, behöver betrakta den som en multiorganisatorisk samverkan. Avhandlingens resultat utgörs av designprinciper, i form av råd och riktlinjer, för hur handlingskvalitet kan uppnås och säkerställas genom kompletta handlingsmönster.