Licentiate seminar in quality Management with Louise Östberg

Title: Beyond Boundaries: Unleashing the Power of Ideas and through collaborative Improvement and Innovation

Time: 20 Nov 2026, 10-12

Location: Mid Sweden University, Campus Östersund, Room Q221 and digitally via Zoom.

Respondent: PhD student Louise Östberg

Supervisors: Associate Professor Johan Lilja, Mid Sweden University

Opponent: Professor Sofia Kjellström, Jönköping University

Follow the seminar via Zoom 

Abstract: 

Continuous improvement has long been a central part of Quality Management (QM), where organisational improvement and development have mainly been studied within the boundaries of single organisations. Many contemporary societal and organisational challenges require collaboration across organisational boundaries. Improvement in these settings depends on the ability of multiple actors to work together, share knowledge, and develop ideas collectively. Although inter-organisational collaboration has received increasing attention, less is known about how improvement and innovation actually develop across organisational boundaries.

The purpose of this licentiate thesis is to contribute to a deeper understanding of how organisations can work together to improve and innovate across boundaries. This thesis explores how collaborative improvement in organisational ecosystems can strengthen quality by enabling the generation and development of ideas across organisational boundaries. Three research questions guide this thesis. RQ1: What factors enable collaborative improvement across organisational boundaries? RQ2: How does collaboration across organisational boundaries support the generation and development of ideas? Finally, RQ3: How does facilitation influence the generation and development of ideas across organisational boundaries?

This thesis is based on a qualitative multi-method design that consists of three interrelated studies. The first study is a systematic literature review that explores collaborative improvement in inter-organisational contexts. The second study examines co-creation and collaborative improvement in two rural development ecosystems in Sweden. The third study explores how facilitation influences idea generation and development in the context of inter-organisational experiential exchanges within a transnational tourism initiative. Empirical data were collected through interviews, participant observations, and document analysis.

The findings show that collaborative improvement depends on a combination of structural and relational conditions. Trust, shared direction, engagement, facilitation, and opportunities for repeated interaction emerged as particularly important. Rather than being transferred directly between organisations, ideas are shaped through interaction, reflection, and adaptation to local contexts. Facilitation plays a central role in shaping these processes by creating conditions that support participation, interaction, and collective sense-making across organisational boundaries.

This thesis contributes to QM research by extending continuous improvement beyond the level of single organisations and towards ecosystemic and inter-organisational contexts. Collaborative improvement is understood not as a predefined system or structure but rather as an ongoing and interaction-driven process that develops through relationships, co-creation, and facilitation over time.

Keywords: Quality Management, collaborative improvement, collaborative innovation, facilitation, co-creation, continuous improvement, inter-organisational collaboration, idea generation, rural development.