Multi-organizational collaborations involving the industry, academia, and government have become prevalent in developing knowledge to address complex societal problems. These fluid and loosely coupled forms of collaboration, known as knowledge ecosystems, provide the necessary organizing elements for the search and creation of new knowledge. While the literature acknowledges the prevalence of knowledge ecosystems, it remains relatively silent on how their organization develops over time. This lacuna in our understanding is problematic, given the challenge of governance voids for cross-sectoral knowledge collaborations, which lead to difficulties in mobilizing action, securing resources, and ultimately achieving the knowledge-related goals of these collaborations. To address this gap, we theorize knowledge ecosystems as meta-organizations, examining how they gradually develop organizing elements that bridge the initial governance void. Empirically, we draw on an in-depth field case study of the High-Capacity Transport ecosystem in Sweden, demonstrating how three interrelated organizational elements—participation, identity, and actorhood—emerge through an iterative, yet broadly sequential process to resolve governance void challenges in resourcing, belonging, and collective action. Furthermore, we identify discursive and performative meta-organizational practices that enable the actors to collectively enact the aforementioned organizational elements and to engage in knowledge search. We further demonstrate how the organization of knowledge ecosystems is never ‘complete’ and the governance void remains only partially resolved, given the underdefined nature of new knowledge as the ecosystem's shared goal. Overall, our process model contributes to the theory, practice, and policy of knowledge ecosystem emergence and organizing.

A core problem in sustainability transitions is to ensure that actors come together and work on a common goal. Earlier research has argued that developing a project-oriented agency is essential to ensure transitions. By examining two contrasting cases, the Sustainable Transportation program and the Sustainable Hospital program, we identify two distinct types of project-oriented agency: (1) emergent and (2) induced. The former showcases an inclusive approach emphasizing open collaboration and resource mobilization, flexible goals, whereas the latter encompasses prescribed resource mobilization, contractual objectives, and deadlines. Beyond bottom-up vs. topdown dichotomies, these project-oriented agency types highlight different shaping contexts and logics of how actors mobilize projects for change. Our analysis identifies the nuanced dimensions of project-oriented agency and the impetuses, practices, and temporal structures through which they shape transition outcomes. The paper enriches the current understanding of how targeted projects and programs can bridge experimental niches with mainstream regime transformation, thereby enabling system-wide sustainability transitions.

Grand challenges call for innovation and collaboration across sectors. Yet, many cross-sector and multi-stakeholder initiatives often fall short of achieving their intended goals, and creating the expected value. Addressing this issue requires a better understanding of how to develop and design emergent multi-stakeholder programs with actual societal value. This article leverages an in-depth case study of Sweden's High-Capacity Transport program to develop a process model that demonstrates how three interconnected value pathways-goal gearing, participatory engagement, and program leveraging-ensured the gradual expansion of program goals and of interest among diverse participants who enhanced collective value creation and contributed to the success of this multi-stakeholder collaboration.

In engineering education, as well as in the society at large, there is an increasing focus on sustainability and sustainable development. The CDIO Standards and the CDIO Syllabus has been substantially updated to meet and drive these changes. Progressive engineering programs have by now made substantial progress in integrating environmental aspects of sustainability and sustainable development into the curriculum. However, the integration of social aspects is generally considered to be more difficult and is therefore lagging behind. This explorative research paper provides insights in efforts to integrate elements of gender equality, diversity and equal conditions (GDE) in three courses on bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral level. The focus is on the development and implementation of reflective assignments, where a theoretical framework is used for characterizing different levels of reflection. The work has been performed by use of an action research approach that has involved close dialogue and collaboration between researchers, pedagogic developers, teachers, students, and education leaders. The paper hereby contributes with multiple perspectives on GDE integration, and significant challenges are discussed. The paper also contributes with concrete examples of reflective assignments, learning activities, and literature that can be useful also in other contexts.

Heeding recent calls for more studies on the relationship between projects and institutions, this paper reports on a collaborative case study to shed light on the recursive relations of large-scale projects and their institutional fields. Given the industry as the field-level institution, this study explores how two project organizations experienced the industry changes, its influence on the arrangement of large-scale projects, and the management response used to legitimize these arrangements. The qualitative secondary data analysis of two High-Speed rail projects in Spain and The Netherlands is based on semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis. This paper provides the institutional fields’ contextual detail and deepens our understanding of temporal institutional complexity that bound large-scale project arrangements. The findings suggest that in both cases the management responses altered across time and evolved depending on the salience of the institutional pressure, through the interplay with 1) regulative, 2) normative, and 3) dynamic cultural-cognitive forces, resulting in cycles of project legitimacy.

This paper addresses the interplay between organization designs and value processes in the context of programs. Building upon the findings from a longitudinal case study of a complex multi-partner program within Sweden's transportation sector, we argue that different value processes over the program lifecycle require different program management arrangements. Specifically, the paper explores how three distinct value processes, namely value definition, value creation and value capture, were related to specific program organization design dimensions, including overall organizational form, program boundaries, organizational control modes, program protagonist and sources of funding. The paper explicates the dynamics of alignment between organization design and value processes and shows how the external context shaped the process of alignment. Thus, the study contributes to the literature by reporting a rich, longitudinal empirical case, identifying organizational preconditions for different value processes in programs and highlighting the dynamics of these processes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of lock-in in large-scale projects. Although large-scale projects have been studied for decades, most studies have applied economic or psychological perspectives to emphasize decision-making processes at the project front-end. Of those studies, some have focused on poor decision-making due to lock-in and the escalating commitments of decision-makers to ineffective courses of action. However, little is known about the way that project decisions are affected by organizational and inter-organizational contexts and the actors involved. Understanding decisions from a process viewpoint with a long-term (inter-) organizational perspective will lead to a better understanding of lock-in and the overall performance of large-scale projects. This qualitative research is based on a case study. The research setting is the multi-actor Madrid-Barcelona High-Speed rail Line (HSL) project in Spain. Through observations, interviews, several project documents, and report analysis, we explore the processual nature of the choices made during the course of the project. We consider the contextual conditions that give rise or support the emergence of lock-in in relation to pre- and post-project effects, institutional influences, and management practices that create action spaces at the project level. Our findings suggest that lock-in emergence requires the recognition of the long-term (inter-) organizational perspective regarding mechanisms and effects rather than confining decisions to the individual or single actor control in the front-end of projects. Based on organizational theory, the main contribution of this paper is to enrich our understanding of the emergence of lock-in using process theories.

Due to various influences of a dynamic context of universities and society there are many changes that are required in education and many goals to relate to. For example: new pedagogical knowledge, didactics and technology for learning, tougher requirements for throughput, new rules for examination and goals, new societal demands for equality and sustainability, requirements for goal related grading. Together this has resulted in that it is increasingly complex to make changes, develop, design, improve and validate education programs. If education programs are likened to systems, and the task of changing them likened with engineering tasks, then tools and models in systems engineering could be applied to support development also of education programs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate systems engineering processes and models to support development for education programs. The method for investigation has been to relate and reflect our own experiences to the framework from systems theories and systems engineering and where applicable apply this to education programs and the challenges encountered in a highly dynamic context in universities and in society. The methodology in this paper is based on practice of the authors. The authors are both researcher and teacher at KTH as well as assigned roles which requires program development. In this paper we continue to follow the development and implementation of education programs presented at INTED2017. To increase system thinking and system views is something we require in our engineering education, in accordance to CDIO. That this is not a common language in our own work and development is a weakness. This initial paper will help communicating the need for this and also present ways of working with our peers and students. In the end extended work on this will support developers in academia to support the transformation of resources, the organization of skill and technologies that enables delivery of education as well as the organization of people to make the education program function, or work, as intended.

The literature elaborating on the agile process is extensive, but there is still little research discussing the challenges established firms face when implementing agile practices. Therefore,in this paper we discuss the challenges two large multinational telecommunication firmsface when changing how they organize their product development work, transitioning from the waterfall approachto agile practices.The purpose of both case studies was exploratory, i.e. to gain experience and raise issues for further research onthe implementation of agile practices.The focus of the study was to delve into how they managed and organized their product development, and if and when they adopted an agile approach.Our findings emphasize that in both cases it was the company ́s need to beable to quickly develop products based on newtechnical opportunities, as well asrecruit competent staffthat were the driving forces behind the implementation of agile practices.Based on our findings, we can conclude that there are some extensive challenges that arise due to the actual change process, and also several lesser challenges that occur because of change from sequential, to an agile way of working. 

This continuous research within Nordic engineering institutions targets the contexts and possibilities for leadership among engineering education program directors. The IFP-model, developed based on analysis of interviews with program leaders in these institutions, visualizes the program director's informal and formal power. The model is presented as a tool for starting a shared discussion on the complexities of the leadership of engineering program development. The authors liken program development to hunting in teams. Each individual expert in the program is needed, and all experts will need to work and collaborate for the same target. This calls for strategic and long-term thinking of engineering education development. Institutions should support the development of both formal structures as well as informal leadership skills among their program directors, but never fall for the temptation to see the program director as the only actor on the stage.