Big Ideas in Collaborative Public Management

Lisa Blomgren Bingham, Rosemary O'Leary

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317475965
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Forecasting
• Index: Business

The world of public management is changing dramatically, fueled by technological innovations such as the Internet, globalism that permits us to outsource functions anywhere in the world, new ideas from network theory, and more. Public managers no longer are unitary leaders of unitary organizations - instead, they often find themselves convening, negotiating, mediating, and collaborating across borders."Big Ideas in Collaborative Public Management" brings together a rich variety of big picture perspectives on collaborative public management. The chapters are all original and written by distinguished experts. Designed for practical application, they range from examinations of under what conditions collaborative public management occurs to what it means to be a collaborative leader.The contributors address tough issues such as legitimacy building in networks, and discuss ways to engage citizens in collaboration. They examine the design of collaborative networks and the outcomes of collaboration. Detailed introductory and concluding chapters by the editors summarize and critique the chapters, and frame them as a reflection of the state of collaborative public management today.

CHAPTER 1

Frameshifting Lateral Thinking for Collaborative Public Management

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LISA BLOMGREN BINGHAM, ROSEMARY O’LEARY, AND CHRISTINE CARLSON

We titled this book Big Ideas in Collaborative Public Management because we wanted to encourage our contributors and our readers to think outside their usual frame. The phrase “lateral thinking” is used to describe creativity that stems from taking knowledge from one substantive context or discipline and seeing how useful it is in an entirely different one. For example, Da Vinci’s genius stems from his mastery of lateral thinking; he moved fluidly from art to science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, architecture, and beyond, finding universal rules of nature manifest in widely varying contexts (Riding 2006). He dissected the human arm and a bird’s wing, and then tried to engineer a machine to enable people to fly; in this way, he applied what he learned from human physiology and natural science to engineering.

“Collaborative public management” has become a catchphrase for an increasingly rich body of knowledge. We adapted the following definition from the work of Agranoff and McGuire (2003):

Collaborative public management is a concept that describes the process of facilitating and operating in multiorganizational arrangements to solve problems that cannot be solved or easily solved by single organizations. Collaborative means to co-labor, to achieve common goals, often working across boundaries and in multisector and multiactor relationships. Collaboration is based on the value of reciprocity.

In our view, collaborative public management must encompass not only collaboration between and among organizations but also the role of the public and citizens in governance. Henton and others (2005) review emerging forms of collaboration in governance, specifically forms in which government engages not only with other organizational partners and stakeholders but also with citizens. They describe participatory governance as the active involvement of citizens in government decision making. The term governance is generally viewed as steering the process that influences decisions and actions within the private, public, and civic sectors (O’Leary, Gerard, and Bingham 2006a).

In order to take what we have learned about collaborative public management and governance to the next level, we need to apply lateral thinking. We need to view collaboration in a broader frame and examine what we can learn from other literatures. This book resulted from a conference sponsored by the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and held at its facility in Washington, DC, known as Greenberg House. Approximately forty leading scholars and practitioners attended. We intentionally combined scholars and practitioners of public management with those of participatory democracy and conflict resolution. As a result of this exercise in lateral thinking, we concluded that

• We need better conceptualizations of collaboration;

• We need a more comprehensive vision of antecedents, processes, and outcomes from collaboration;

• We need to do a better job in making connections for practice such as design of collaborative structures; and

• We need to make new and broader connections with other disciplines for theory.

In this book, our authors review the evolving literature on collaboration in management and governance and contribute new theoretical and empirical frames for future research. In this chapter, we introduce collaboration and leadership and provide an overview of some of the connections our authors make.

COLLABORATION AND PUBLIC LEADERSHIP

There is a growing role for collaboration in public leadership. According to Van Wart (2003), scholars’ thinking about leadership has evolved radically over the years. Prior to 1900, the literature focused on “great man” theories of leadership. As Van Wart summarized, from 1900 to 1948, theories moved to discussing individual physical, personal, motivational, and aptitude traits. From 1948 to the 1980s, contingency theories abounded, largely emphasizing situation variables with which leaders must deal.

From 1978 to the present, both transformational and servant theories have been popular. Transformational theories emphasize the need to create deep change in organization structures, processes, and culture. Servant theories emphasize service to followers, citizens, and democracy.

Transformational and servant theories, while still popular today, have been joined by theories that Van Wart labels “multifaceted.” Multifaceted approaches integrate the major ideas and approaches concerning leadership and acknowledge what some call situational leadership. Situational leadership says that one’s leadership strategy and style will change as determined by the situation. There is a time to lead and a time to follow. At some times there is a need for top-down authority, at other times there is a need to enable others to achieve what needs to be done; and at still other times there is a need for both approaches simultaneously. There are times leaders need to be directive, and there are times leaders need to be collaborative.

Gerzon likens old leadership theories to a carpenter’s toolbox filled with only hammers and nothing else. In his presentations on leadership, Gerzon shows up with a toolbox and pulls out one hammer after the other, asking workshop participants,” How would you feel if a handyman came to your house to do home repairs with a toolbox containing nothing but hammers?” (2006, 5). Here are the answers he typically receives:

“Our house would be a wreck….”

“He’d never finish the job….”

“I would lose confidence in him right away….”

“Unless he promised to invest in new tools and learned how to use them … I would fire him.” (ibid.)

Gerzon then goes on to overview some new approaches to leadership—including collaboration.

It is interesting to note that while this example powerfully “hammers home” (pun intended) the need for a wide variety of leadership tools and approaches that include collaboration, there is only one handyman who is expected to fix the house. Even Van Wart’s depiction of a “contemporary” model of leadership seems to overemphasizes the actions of a single leader. First, the leader assesses organization, environment, and constraints, Van Wart explains, then the leader sets personal and organizational goals. Next, the leader uses his or her traits and skills within a varied style range. Following this the leader acts in three areas relating to task, people, and organization. Finally the leader evaluates personal and organizational effectiveness (Van Wart 2003, 216).

Yet public managers now find themselves not as unitary leaders of unitary organizations. The prevalence of network management, contracting out, and greater collaboration with citizens has altered the dynamics of public administration, public management, and what it means to be a leader. There is a growing interest in “integrative leadership”: working across boundaries, diverse individuals, organization functions, levels, geography, sectors, and borders. Managers find themselves convening, facilitating, negotiating, mediating, and collaborating with a multitude of partners. Connelly, Zhang, and Faerman (chapter 2) conclude that in today’s “shared power world” (Crosby and Bryson 2005), good leadership demands collaboration.

CHANGING VIEWS OF MANAGEMENT

Similarly, twentieth-century approaches to government grew out of the experience of the industrial age and were based on command and control structures and mechanisms. The scope of the problems and the means for addressing them used to be within the capacity of a particular government’s authority and jurisdiction. Powerful forces have altered the conventional approaches to addressing public issues. Increasing demands on public and private resources contribute to the complexity of today’s problems and require new approaches if we, as a society, are to meet our challenges. These factors are compounded by the fact that there is no longer a constituency for expanding the role of government to address current problems.

This is not a matter of governmental reform, but of finding better governance mechanisms that combine the efforts of leaders, public and private institutions, and citizens to solve problems with innovation, fairness, and integrity. Particularly at the local level, people are demanding a greater role in the decision-making process.

Beginning in the 1970s in response to these challenges, there has been an increasing array of experiments and demonstrations, many of them ad hoc, with cross-sector collaborations, public-private partnerships, and more direct forms of public engagement in policy setting. From these efforts, ongoing networks for service delivery and other kinds of more or less permanent institutional arrangements have evolved. A variety of descriptors have emerged for these phenomena, including collaborative public management, collaborative governance, privatization, devolution, decentralized governance, the new governance, and participatory governance. However, central to all of them is government’s effort to collaborate with others in accomplishing its work, rather than exercise authority in a top-down hierarchy.

A driving force behind this increased use of collaboration has been the dramatic evolution of information technology. The advent of inexpensive instant means of communication has reduced the transaction costs of collaborating. Moreover, this web of communication has contributed to the accelerated integration of collaborative structures across national boundaries known as globalization. Hierarchy continues to be the most common way to organize the public’s work. Moreover, there has always been some collaboration across sectors to achieve policy goals. The significant and accelerating change is in the extent of collaboration in public management.

WE NEED BETTER CONCEPTUALIZATIONS AND DEFINITIONS OF COLLABORATION

Our contributors concluded that we need better conceptualizations and definitions of collaboration. They offer a variety of definitions. Bryson and Crosby (chapter 4) distinguish among cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. Cooperation is the absence of conflict; it is less formal, involves sharing information, may be short term, and presents little risk (Winer and Ray 1994, 22). Coordination is the orchestration of people toward a particular goal; it involves more formal and longer-term interaction, increased risk, and shared rewards (ibid.). Collaboration, however, suggests a closer relationship; we use ...