Collaboration through boundary work in strategic partnerships: balancing competing institutional logics

Abstract

Strategic partnerships and related forms of collaborative contracting are increasingly promoted as means to enhance collaboration and long-term value creation in construction. Yet, such arrangements operate in institutional environments characterized by multiple, often competing, institutional logics. The aim of this study is to advance understanding of how inter-organizational collaboration is sustained under these conditions by examining how local actors engage in boundary work in everyday practice. Drawing on an in-depth case study of a strategic partnership in the Danish construction industry, the study shows how everyday collaboration is made workable through ongoing efforts to cope with competing institutional demands. Four recurring boundary work mechanisms—reinforcing, blurring, dissolving, and creating boundaries—are identified as central to coping with logic multiplicity in practice. Rather than resolving situations of institutional complexity through stable organizational settlements or formal governance arrangements, actors continuously manage boundaries to sustain collaboration. The study contributes to construction management research by demonstrating that collaboration in strategic partnerships is sustained through ongoing, situated boundary work, rather than relying solely on contractual design or relational intentions. Theoretically, it advances institutional logics scholarship by conceptualizing boundary work as a situated coping mechanism by offering a practice-oriented account of how institutional complexity is coped with in inter-organizational collaboration.