Collaboration: what does it really mean? (original) (raw)
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Rethinking Perspectives of Power in Collaborative Governance
Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs
Power is an important concept in understanding collaborative governance, however, the existing research is largely dominated by the functional and critical perspectives of power. Aided by a conceptual content analysis of power used in collaborative governance literature in the top public administration journals, we viewed power as a family resemblance concept that should be conceptualized through four perspectives: functional, critical, social construction, and pragmatic. We provide elaboration of each of these four perspectives and propose counterarguments to assumptions that have arisen due to the reliance on a functional or critical perspective of power. We conclude that viewing power as a family resemblance concept with at least four perspectives offers collaborative governance researchers the ability to adopt the best perspective that is the most useful for their analysis and most helpful for public administrators to understand power in their collaborative efforts.
Journal of Management & Governance, 2018
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Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2012
This book, by two professors at Harvard University's Kennedy School, deals with an important question: When and how should governments seek to achieve a broad public goal by engaging in collaborative relationships with businesses, nonprofit organizations, or citizens? In the authors' view, collaboration involves shared discretion (i.e., shared control) over the specific goals to be achieved and the methods for achieving them (p. 11). Their use of the term collaborative governance highlights the collaborating parties' joint engagement in the work of defining ends and means; indeed, the authors assert, "Shared discretion is the defining feature of collaborative governance." (p. 45). Collaboration is thus different from direct government service provision, on the one hand, and simple contracting, on the other hand, in which the government specifies both ends and means via the contract. Despite its title, the book is not about collaborative governance in a general sense, but rather about cross-sector, government-business, or government-nonprofit collaboration for purposes of program, project, or service development, and implementation. The book is in three parts. The first is on "the promise and problems of collaboration." The rationales for, and problems of, collaboration are discussed, along with the questions of just how much discretion to give each party. If the possibility of creating greater public value comes from increasing discretion by nongovernment partners, so does the possibility of public damage. Getting the degree of shared discretion right is the key. The second section explores the four rationales for collaborating (for productivity gains, information, legitimacy, and resources; see below) in more depth. The final section is on the "art of collaboration" and includes chapters on tasks and tools, getting collaboration right, and the future of crosssector collaboration. The book is illustrated with a set of case examples obtained via a convenience sample. While cases come from a broad array of fields, there is no assertion that the cases are representative of the whole realm of collaborative governance. The authors argue that collaboration is most useful for public goods, defined as "those goods and services that, once produced, benefit the whole community" (p. 28). National defense and scientific knowledge are classic examples. One person's benefit does not diminish anyone else's, and payers cannot appropriate all of the benefits. Yet, governments do more than provide public goods. They also provide
ORGANIZATIONAL COLLABORATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: DO CHIEF EXECUTIVES MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
maxwell.syr.edu
Upper echelons theory suggests that the characteristics of chief executives affect the strategic choices of their organizations. In this paper we examine whether the characteristics of top managers make a difference to the extent of inter-organizational collaboration in the public sector. Using survey data from 228 chief executives from Catalonia, we test upper echelons theory, and control for top managers" institutional settings such as the size and the sector of the organization, as well as the socioeconomic context. The empirical results suggest that collaboration is influenced by the characteristics of senior chief executives: in particular, the extent of collaboration is affected positively by their educational qualifications and concern for self development, and negatively by their age.
Collaborative government: meanings, dimensions, drivers and outcomes
Collaborative Governance, 2008
Collaboration means joint working or working in conjunction with others. It implies actors-individuals, groups or organisations-cooperating in some endeavour. The participants are 'co-labouring' with others on terms and conditions that, as we know, can vary enormously. The word 'collaboration' originally came into use in the nineteenth century as industrialisation developed, more complex organisations emerged and the division of labour and tasks increased. It was a fundamental norm of utilitarianism, social liberalism, collectivism, mutual aid and, later, scientific management and human relations organisational theory. 1 Explanations of collaboration could stress the descriptive/pragmatic side focusing on the practical realities of working with or through others, or the normative/intrinsic side emphasising participatory endeavour and the development of trust relations. For the most part, collaboration was portrayed at least as an essential imperative or more ideally as a highly desirable aspect of social, economic and political life.
When Public Officers Take the Lead in Collaborative Governance
2018
Governments are investing considerable time and resources in the field of collaborative governance as it proliferates throughout many sectors, and how public officers choose to respond to these developments therefore becomes an important question. The increased public involvement that collaborative governance brings is often more costly than traditional forms of governance, while the outcomes are highly uncertain. For these reasons, it is important that collaborative governance is only used when really warranted, and the various forms that it can take should be carefully designed. In this study, we apply a typology of collaboration strategies to examine firstly, the circumstances under which leading officers at four county administrative boards in the Swedish mountain region decide to lead collaboration, and secondly what collaboration strategies they then apply. This study is based on 20 interviews with key officers, and 39 interviews with project leaders of public-private collabor...
Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2007
Over the past few decades, a new form of governance has emerged to replace adversarial and managerial modes of policy making and implementation. Collaborative governance, as it has come to be known, brings public and private stakeholders together in collective forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a contingency model of collaborative governance. After reviewing 137 cases of collaborative governance across a range of policy sectors, we identify critical variables that will influence whether or not this mode of governance will produce successful collaboration. These variables include the prior history of conflict or cooperation, the incentives for stakeholders to participate, power and resources imbalances, leadership, and institutional design. We also identify a series of factors that are crucial within the collaborative process itself. These factors include face-to-face dialogue, trust building, and the development of commitment and shared understanding. We found that a virtuous cycle of collaboration tends to develop when collaborative forums focus on ''small wins'' that deepen trust, commitment, and shared understanding. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our contingency model for practitioners and for future research on collaborative governance.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it: When collaborative public management becomes collaborative excess
Public Administration Review, 2023
Collaboration is a commonly prescribed method of public service improvement. If collaboration fails, blame is typically ascribed to transaction costs, organizational inertia, or premature evaluation. However, drawing on a notable case of collaborative failure in England, we show that misdiagnosing public service problems as being of a type likely to be cured by joint working can also generate poor results, and belongs conceptually prior to many "go-to" explanations of failure. Using stacked difference-indifference estimators on 11 years of performance data relating to subnational tax administration, we show that inter-municipal cooperation produced no cost or quality improvements in this service. Supplementary testing attributes this less to governance problems, inertia or precipitate evaluation than to a basic lack of interdependence-the specific "problem" to which collaboration is the "solution"-between partnering councils. Having exhausted scale economies internally, partners experienced no mutual reliance warranting their attempt to further economize through collaborative tax administration.