Collaboration Literature

by Kirk Emerson, Tina Nabatchi, & Stephen Balogh

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Abstract: Collaborative governance draws from diverse realms of practice and research in public administration. This article synthesizes and extends a suite of conceptual frameworks, research findings, and practice-based knowledge into an integrative framework for collaborative governance. The framework specifies a set of nested dimensions that encompass a larger system context, a collaborative governance regime, and its internal collaborative dynamics and actions that can generate impacts and adaptations across the systems. The framework provides a broad conceptual map for situating and exploring components of cross-boundary governance systems that range from policy or programbased intergovernmental cooperation to place-based regional collaboration with nongovernmental stakeholders to public-private partnerships. The framework integrates knowledge about individual incentives and barriers to collection action, collaborative social learning and conflict resolution processes, and institutional arrangements for cross-boundary collaboration. It is presented as a general framework that might be applied to analyses at different scales, in different policy arenas, and varying levels of complexity. The article also offers 10 propositions about the dynamic interactions among components within the framework and concludes with a discussion about the implications of the framework for theory, research, evaluation, and practice.

by John M. Bryson, Barbara C. Crosby, & Melissa Middleton Stone

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Abstract: People who want to tackle tough social problems and achieve beneficial community outcomes are beginning to understand that multiple sectors of a democratic society—business, nonprofits and philanthropies, the media, the community, and government—must collaborate to deal effectively and humanely with the challenges. This article focuses on cross-sector collaboration that is required to remedy complex public problems. Based on an extensive review of the literature on collaboration, the article presents a propositional inventory organized around the initial conditions affecting collaboration formation, process, structural and governance components, constraints and contingencies, outcomes, and accountability issues.

by Stephanie Bultema

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Abstract: A person’s health is mostly attributable to social factors like public policies, education, access to affordable housing, and social norms. This means that health clinics, hospitals, public health departments, and managed care plans cannot by themselves create and maintain healthy communities. Instead, they must work across boundaries by partnering with community-based organizations, schools, businesses, government agencies, and tribal nations to create community health systems that address the whole person needs of the populations served. Yet cross-boundary collaboration is complex, challenging, and not well understood. Little is known about how to best structure collaborative processes—or collaboration dynamics—to increase the chances of achieving collective outcomes like improved health equity. This dissertation aims to illuminate the murky pathways of collaboration dynamics using concurrent mixed methods and the integrative framework for collaborative governance to investigate how and why collaboration dynamics influence the outcomes of positive systems change, improved equity, and collaborative sustainability. The study population includes 22 ACHs in California and Washington and uses data drawn from surveys (n = 596), interviews (n = 85), focus groups (n = 6), meeting observations (n = 12), documents (n = 1,796), websites, and secondary data sources. Quantitative data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Qualitative data were analyzed using theory-testing process tracing. Results show that specific collaboration dynamics can be leveraged to improve different outcomes. Specifically, findings suggest that systems change is positively influenced by the vision definition element of principled engagement, the mutual understanding element of shared motivation, and the knowledge and procedural and institutional arrangements elements of capacity for joint action; improved equity is positively influenced by the diverse inclusion element of principled engagement and the trust element of shared motivation; and sustainability is positively influenced by the data and procedural and institutional arrangements elements of capacity for joint action. Furthermore, process tracing shows how collaboration dynamics interact to produce causal chains leading to collaborative outcomes. Research findings present implications for collaborative governance theory and practice, since they pinpoint specific dynamics that can be leveraged to influence the CGR outcomes of positive systems change, improved equity, and collaborative sustainability.