Leveraging expertise in interorganizational teaming: Exploring the intertwined roles of goal awareness and expertise awareness

Abstract

Background Past work on interorganizational health care alliances suggests that the effectiveness of these collaborations hinges on members both pooling expertise toward the collaboration's joint goal and leveraging expertise for their own independent goals. Yet, prior research on knowledge transfer does not explain how opportunities for such leveraging are recognized. Purposes The aim of this research was to better understand the mechanisms through which members of interorganizational collaborations can uncover where there is expertise that could be leveraged toward their independent goals. Methodology/Approach We conducted a multisource qualitative study of a successful interorganizational health care alliance. We inductively analyzed 21 semistructured interviews with representatives from the alliance's 10 member centers and triangulated our findings using 7 years of archival data. Results We discover that the expertise needed for leveraging toward independent goals is often not pertinent to the alliance's joint goal, such that members must attend to others' independent goals and related expertise to uncover something that could be leveraged toward their own independent goals. Our findings point to the role of membership stability and interpersonal relationships in facilitating expertise leveraging. Conclusion We highlight the critical role of membership stability in enabling the relationships that foster knowledge transfer and point to several mechanisms that can mitigate the challenges that accompany fluid participation in interorganizational collaborations. Practice Implications Practices that foster stability and the development of interpersonal relationships within interorganizational collaborations may enhance knowledge transfer. When representative stability cannot be preserved, intraorganizational handoffs may be useful for mitigating information loss. Furthermore, systems to keep track of expertise and goals (e.g., dashboards, repositories, routines) could also prove useful in fostering knowledge leveraging.