Strategic Collaboration in Public and Nonprofit Administration

A Practice-Based Approach to Solving Shared Problems

Dorothy Norris-Tirrell, Joy A. Clay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781420088755
• eBook ISBN: 9781351547741
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Market disruptions, climate change, and health pandemics lead the growing list of challenges faced by today's leaders. These issues, along with countless others that do not make the daily news, require novel thinking and collaborative action to find workable solutions. However, many administrators stumble into collaboration without a strategic orientation. Using a practitioner-oriented style, Strategic Collaboration in Public and Nonprofit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach to Solving Shared Problems provides guidance on how to collaborate more effectively, with less frustration and better results.

The authors articulate an approach that takes advantage of windows of opportunity for real problem solving; brings multi-disciplinary participants to the table to engage more systematically in planning, analysis, decision making, and implementation; breaks down barriers to change; and ultimately, lays the foundation for new thinking and acting. They incorporate knowledge gained from organization and collaboration management research and personal experience to create a fresh approach to collaboration practice that highlights:

• Collaboration Lifecycle Model
• Metric for determining why and when to collaborate
• Set of principles that distinguish Strategic Collaboration Practice
• Overall Framework of Strategic Collaboration

Linking collaboration theory to effective practice, this book offers essential advice that fosters shared understanding, creative answers, and transformation results through strategic collaborative action. With an emphasis on application, it uses scenarios, real-world cases, tables, figures, tools, and checklists to highlight key points. The appendix includes supplemental resources such as collaboration operating guidelines, a meeting checklist, and a collaboration literature review to help public and nonprofit managers successfully convene, administer, and lead collaboration. The book presents a framework for engaging in collaboration in a way that stretches current thinking and advances public service practice.

Chapter 1

The Promise of Strategic Collaboration

Dorothy Norris-Tirrell and Clay Joy A.

Contents

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Silo-Oriented Lens

1.3 New Governance—From Silos to Collaborative Activity

1.4 Defining a Strategic Collaboration Approach

1.5 Impacts of Strategic Collaboration

1.5.1 Impact 1: Deliverables and Outcomes

1.5.2 Impact 2: Increased Capacity and Competence

1.5.3 Impact 3: New Resources and Opportunities

1.6 Transferring Organizational Expertise to Collaboration Practice

1.6.1 Expertise Related to Getting Things Done with and through People

1.6.2 Expertise Related to Embracing Analytic Methods

1.6.3 Expertise Related to Boundary-Spanning Activities

1.7 The Translation to Strategic Collaboration Practice

1.8 Purpose of the Book and Overview of Remaining Chapters

Endnotes

1.1 Introduction

Skillfully managing, leading, facilitating, and negotiating collaboration is difficult. Satisfying mixed, and often conflicting, demands for significant innovation and change makes it just that much more complicated and taxing. To be more successful, we must transform our way of thinking—our mind-set—about how we collaborate.¹ This book is for public and nonprofit managers and other community leaders who seek effective collaborative practice. Strategic collaboration is a proactive and concrete approach for policy makers, agency administrators, and providers to engage in collaboration creatively and successfully, across all kinds of boundaries, in a systematic, intentional, and inclusive manner.

Almost any problem today is too complex for individuals or agencies working alone only in their silos.² What in the past would have appeared as a straightforward administrative problem now more than not requires working with other programs, agencies, citizens, and multiple stakeholders across policy arenas. For example, consider a school system with truancy problems. In the past, the expectation would have been for the school system to develop and implement policies in its silo. Today, this same school system might find that the police or sheriff’s departments, parent–teacher organizations, the district attorney’s office, juvenile court judges, youth-focused nonprofit agencies, local foundations interested in education quality, and community advocates vocal about community issues would expect to be involved since changes in truancy policies are recognized to have a ripple effect across the community. Moreover, democratic norms and the political nature of consequential public problems demand the inclusion of and collaboration with concerned and affected stakeholders.³ Funders, agency leaders, and community stakeholders expect to be involved in the analysis and policy design process and press for the authentic inclusion of citizens and advocates.⁴ As a result, public and nonprofit managers find themselves in the middle, safeguarding professional expertise and responding to norms of inclusion while balancing expectations for thoughtful processes with public pressure for expeditious results.⁵

Strategic collaboration is an intentional, collective approach to address public problems or issues through building shared knowledge, designing innovative solutions, and forging consequential change. When used strategically, collaboration produces positive impacts, stakeholders committed to policy or program change, and strengthened capacity of individuals and organizations to effectively work together. Strategic collaboration offers the promise of addressing difficult public problems:

■ Citizens, local government managers, elected officials, business leaders, community development corporations, neighborhood associations, design experts, and environmental advocacy groups can use authentic and inclusive economic development decision-making processes to plan and implement smart growth to assure a sustainable future that has far-reaching impacts across a city, region, or even the globe.

■ Scientists, health providers, school leaders, and employers can work together nationally, locally, or internationally to reduce the spread of a dangerous virus, to protect lives, and to assure economic continuity.

■ Cross-county collaboration among a broad range of criminal justice professionals, administrators, elected officials, and researchers can address growing public safety threats as gangs, opportunistic criminals, and drug cartels quickly respond when crime deterrence and detection are not coordinated regionally.

■ A broad-based effort to prevent child abuse and domestic violence can engage government, nonprofit, and private organizations, the faith-based community, advocates, and professionals to address not just the problem but also the underlying causes of these problems.

■ Collaboration across states and regions can address intergovernmental issues (e.g., water scarcity, air quality, traffic congestion, access to tertiary health care, economic development).

■ Community leaders, medical providers, local foundations, community-based organizations, insurance companies, and researchers can collaborate together to address rising rates of infant mortality, diabetes, obesity, adolescent pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and more.

All of these policy challenges demand a strategic approach to collaboration if they are to have positive outcomes. Working in silos or muddling through will likely fail. Government and nonprofit managers must work together with leaders and citizens more intentionally to collaboratively deliver results and transform public service practice.

1.2 Silo-Oriented Lens

Early in the history of public administration, creating hierarchically structured units to accomplish the tasks of government made sense. Agencies formed around a specific public problem or function allowed employees to specialize and grow needed expertise—including the technical, administrative, legal, and political competencies—germane to the task at hand. For example, faced with growing environmental issues, federal and state governments formed units specifically focused on environmental protection or regulatory programs. Conventional wisdom viewed modern silo-based, hierarchically organized structures as the optimal means of efficiency, effectiveness, and oversight.⁶ Many of these agencies remain dynamic and are recognized centers of expertise in particular problem or issue areas.

Everyday agency responsibilities still require that public and nonprofit managers appropriately work within their agency boundaries. When problems or issues are not sufficiently weighty to warrant the time and effort required by collaboration and the agency has the resources or expertise to satisfactorily address the issue, silo-based approaches remain an effective and efficient approach. Working in silos does not mean that cooperation and coordination are absent. Systems and processes develop to assure both vertical and lateral coordination inside the agency but also with stakeholders outside the agency. Experts within public and nonprofit agency silos build their knowledge not only of program eligibility and requirements but also of the organizations that administer or advocate for relevant programs; likewise, stakeholders outside the agencies build their knowledge of constituent concerns, how relevant programs function, and how to influence decision making.⁷ Clearly, silos play an essential role in structuring how units accomplish their everyday tasks and responsibilities, coordinate, and cooperate across organizational and sector boundaries.

1.3 New Governance — From Silos to Collaborative Activity

The governance system that appeared to work in the 20th century, however, is no longer sufficient; an era of new governance has emerged⁸ as public programs are increasingly more complex and interconnected. Emphasizing tools of coordination and collaboration, new governance is marked by a reliance on a dynamic collection of third parties and governmental units because problems have become too difficult and controversial for the government to act alone:

Today’s problems are “too complex for government to handle on its own, because disagreements exist about the proper ends of public action, and because government increasingly lacks the authority to enforce its will on other crucial actors without giving them a meaningful seat at the table”⁹

An important tool in new governance is collaboration, commonly defined as “a process in which those parties with a stake in the problem actively seek a mutually determined solution.”¹⁰ While Lester Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, agrees that the need for coordination and collaboration is not novel, he convincingly argues that these collaborative approaches must be addressed in a new, more coherent manner.¹¹

Collaborative activity falls on a continuum that integrates the perceived significance of the problem that is “on the table” (or the stake of the issues being considered) with an assessment of the perceived expectations about decision-making processes (or the need for inclusiveness) (Figure 1.1). On the far left of the continuum are pure silo-based activities, where issues are seen as solely and appropriately placed with the agency. As boundary-spanning functions increase in magnitude, the activities move to the right along the collaborative continuum, from simple collaborative activities to full-blown, strategic collaboration. The issues at hand may require only a minimal level of collaboration that is more short term in nature and simpler in its purpose. In contrast, thorny problems that are interconnected with other policy arenas and have high investment on the part of other agencies, sectors, and interests may require a strategic approach to forming and building collaboration.

Figure 1.1 The continuum of co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Contributors
• 1 The Promise of Strategic Collaboration
• 2 A New Lens: The Life Cycle Model of Collaboration
• 3 Assessing Collaborative Readiness: The Missing Strategic Step
• 4 Strategic Collaboration in Action: Six Principles
• 5 Attending to the Forgotten: The Elderly, Collaborative Practice, and Evacuation
• 6 Running Out of Classrooms! Solving Overcrowding through Collaborative School Planning
• 7 Moving beyond Hierarchies: Creating Effective Collaboration Networks for West Nile Virus Biosurveillance in Oregon
• 8 Information Stewardship and Collaboration: Advancing Evidence-Based Public Policy Decision Making
• 9 Choices and Challenges: Sustaining a Rural Health Network when Funding Vanishes
• 10 Collaboration, Citizen Participation, and Environmental Protection in the Marine Oil Trade of Alaska
• 11 Paving the Way for Public Transportation in Texas through Public Collaboration
• 12 Cape Fear Healthy Carolinians: Taking Risks, Crossing Boundaries
• 13 Building a Community–Higher Education Collaboration to Meet the Needs of the Local Nonprofit Sector
• 14 The Mastery of Strategic Collaboration Practice
• Appendix A: Recommended Reading List for Collaborative Practice
• Appendix B: Collaboration Operating Guidelines Sample
• Appendix C: Participant Agreement
• Appendix D: Matrix of Collaboration Participant Roles
• Appendix E: Checklist for Strategic Collaboration Meetings
• Appendix F: Parliamentary Procedure Highlights for Effective Meetings
• Appendix G: Collaborative Analysis of a Contested Policy Issue Checklist
• Appendix H: Recent Collaboration Practice Literature
• References
• Index