Joining Forces for Better Care: The Implications of Logic Multiplicity in Multisectoral Partnerships

Confronted with grand challenges, multisectoral partnerships (MSPs) are an increasingly employed organizational approach to gather actors from various societal sectors. While the hope is that joining forces will allow us to address these challenges, MSPs are established in institutionally complex environments, which institutional theory has identified as a driver for conflicts within organizations. However, few studies have investigated the implications of logic multiplicity in MSPs. Drawing on an in-depth revelatory case study of an MSP for the development of 3D printing in healthcare, we provide rich data from the early years of development and compare qualitative and quantitative approaches to capture institutional logics. We build on logic compatibility and logic centrality to capture the implications of logic multiplicity for conflicts in an MSP. We find that both qualitative and quantitative approaches can capture institutional logics in MSPs and that a quantitative approach can be used to explore degrees of conflict in MSPs. These findings contribute to the institutional logics literature by illustrating how institutional logics can be used to study MSPs and how researchers can study logics through quantitative surveys. The findings contribute to management practice by exemplifying how managers could scan their MSPs for logics and level of conflict.