**5. Discussion**

*Occupational Wellbeing*

*4.1.1.1 Social proximity: the challenge*

lead to collaboration none achieve knowledge sharing.

edge sharing process during the set-up projects phases.

*4.1.2 The set-up' project phase: the role of meso level*

*4.1.2.1 Institutional orientation*

Participants' statements such as «it's because I have good relation», «he's a nice guy», «we look at affinities», «the research is between friends» and «if the chemistry is not there it does not work!» have been widely given as an answer to explain their choice of projects partners. Facilitated by the geographic proximity, the social proximity is shown as a foster for the emergence of collaborative project and an important determinant for the knowledge sharing process. According to our results, social capital is dependent on past experiences, friendship and affinities between actors. Those relationships are consolidated by the trust that people develop among themselves through their previous experiences and their evolution over time. Specifically, partners develop their trust in each other based on knowledge, trustworthiness and friendship. This is reflected in the comments of one of our respondents: «we create a certain trust between the players through the relationship» and «the social aspect is an important element that I had underestimated! That's where trust comes in! ». However, curiously, despite the importance of social proximity during the initiation phase of the project, our results throughout the progress of project, the social proximity does not play an important role. Social proximity facilitates the emergence of collaborative project, but it does not always mean it that

The set-up project' phases highlight the importance of meso level in the knowledge sharing process. According to most of informants, the team project partners and the organisation' implication played an important role to facilitate the knowl-

The research results highlight the crucial role of institutional orientation of the firm and how it affects the goal of collaborative project and consequently the knowledge sharing process. Indeed, for most of our informants the involvement of the industrial firm in the CRIAQ project is seen rather as a response to a social mission, political pressure and a need for visibility. It is therefore not surprising that the organization' interest in the CRIAQ project is sometimes low and questionable. Consequently, it is obvious that the availability of team members on these projects is compromised. One of informants explained: *«So it limits the frequency of meetings, the availability of industrial very much limits the frequency of meetings ... Then if people are not available, also sometimes it puts frustrations when we want to settle things and then there is no availability».* The lack of availability affects deeply the purpose of collaboration and knowledge sharing process between partners. As the team partners do not have the availability needed to the project progress, they do not necessarily absorb and integrate in time the information and new knowledge generated by the project. In these cases, the challenge is to take advantage of this information before it becomes obsolete. This informant summarized this issue: *«So often, we will absorb the information in detail a few years later. Because when the project starts, we do not have the resources, we do not have the right resources. We follow the project, but how can I say.. with a certain distance, we are not equipped, and we do not do it from day to day».* However, the lack of project interest showed two different explanations from informant. In one hand, informants stated that the "bottom up" approach of these collaborative project does not lead necessarily to knowledge sharing process and in other hand, others informant explained that this lack in

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The purpose of this paper was to gain an in depth understanding the factors that impede and foster the inter-organizational knowledge sharing within a collaborative project. The results highlight how social proximity, which is considerate as a facilitator to collaboration and interactive learning, is needed to initiate the collaborative project but neither fosters collaboration nor facilitates the knowledge sharing process in a lack of other factors. Our finding suggests that throughout the project' progress, the lack of leadership and interest in the project tracked a failure to achieve a knowledge sharing between partners. Indeed, open innovation requires leadership [59]. Overall, more specifically, our results highlighted the existence of deep tensions and frustrations between the collaborative project' partners especially between academia and industry. As explained by open innovation and ecosystem research, the need of complementary knowledge is more and more needed through a cross-boundary collaborations. These interorganizational collaboration implies partners with different background and culture working interdependently across

disciplines arises challenges and makes knowledge sharing between partners more complex.
