Currently, collaborations in production industry experience a failure rate of more than 50%. Causal for this is the lack of problem-oriented understanding of the required systems set-up and underlying control mechanisms. Academic research in management science has expanded on models accounting for the individual company as an entity. Complementary approaches to address the characteristics of enterprise-networks are therefore required.
This project will move away from existing approaches to collaboration and targets the interdisciplinary development of a generic model of complexity as basis for a problem-to-system match framework for collaborative systems in production industry. The on-going specialisation and differentiation indicates the need for a more dynamic approach to describe the development of collaborations and their exploitation. Starting point of research is the understanding of collaborative enterprise networks as complex systems that can only assure their viability through adaptation in inter-organisational networks.
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The project’s interdisciplinary research approach is the application of principles of complex systems theory from natural sciences to collaborative enterprise networks as socio-technical systems. Within the scope of the research these contributions have been identified and combined into six themes: dynamic description, coordination possibilities, radical/integrative innovation, path dependency, information sharing, modelling & representation.
This project will expand the available knowledge on the underlying mechanisms of collaborations by the acquisition of knowledge on complexity science (a field of science poorly present in the EU’s scientific base), new perspectives on collaboration avoiding traditional pitfalls (culture, leadership, trust) by using models from natural science, and an integrated approach of science and industry working together.
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