Inter-organisational activity, whether public and private sector collaborations, university and industry partnerships or joint ventures between businesses, has benefits that range from increased market efficiency to innovative product development. Yet too often such activity can founder under the weight of differing expectations and divergent interests.
How Organisations Connect shows how to avoid the pitfalls and make partnerships work. The contributors, experts from a range of disciplines, demonstrate the importance of developing strategies and establishing infrastructures that enable organisations to connect, and communicate, effectively. Their insights are backed up by case studies that include an investigation of three government and community sector partnerships in Australia, Canada and New Zealand; analysis of what makes a university-industry collaboration successful; an exploration of the changing relations between central banks and governments in Australia and New Zealand throughout the twentieth century; and a study of recent innovative developments in the supply chain networks of some British consumer industries.
Through economic and business theory, historical perspectives and contemporary evidence How Organisations Connect presents both fascinating research findings and practical advice.
About the Author: Gordon Boyce is Professor in Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW. He is author of Information Mediation and Institutional Development, Co-operative Structures in Global Business, The Development of Modern Business (with Simon Ville) and Over Half a Million Careful Owners.

Stuart Macintyre is the Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. His recent books include (with Anna Clark), The History Wars (Melbourne University Press, 2004), and (with Joe Isaac) The New Province for Law and Order: 100 Years of Australian Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration.

Simon Ville is Professor in the School of Economics, University of Wollongong, specialising in the economic and business history of Britain, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. His recent publications include The Rural Entrepreneurs: A History of the Stock and Station Agent Industry in Australia and New Zealand and The Big End of Town: Big Business and Corporate Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia (with G. Fleming and D. Merrett).