Consortium on Collaborative Governance Mini-Conference
The Fairmont Miramar Hotel
Santa Monica, California
April 10-12, 2008
Click here for printer-friendly agenda.
Panel 1: Conceptual Dilemmas in the Study of Collaborative Governance
Herranz, Joaquín. "Multisectoral Network Adaptation" (Reader: Callahan)
This paper examines how multisectoral (i.e., governmental, nonprofit, for-profit) networks adapt to exogenous changes in the policy and economic environment. This paper extends Ebers’ (1997) concept of network change by contributing an empirically-based theoretical framework that conceptualizes how three different network coordination strategies relate to three dimensions of interorganizaitonal adaptation: network resources (e.g., formal and informal contract agreements); network expectations (formal and informal business plans); and network information (e.g., formal or informal communications). This analysis is based on a quasi-natural experiment of three workforce development networks operating between 1997 and 2002 in Boston. Analysis is based on multi-year data collection involving semi-annual waves of key informant interviews and review of yearly administrative documents.
Tang, Shui Yan and Daniel A. Mazmanian. "An Agenda for the Study of Collaborative Governance" (Reader: Gugerty)
Collaborative governance has been defined as the process of establishing, steering, facilitating, operating, and monitoring cross-sectoral organizational arrangements to address public policy problems that cannot be easily addressed by a single organization or the public sector alone. Understanding the key dimensions and implications of this new and evolving form of managing in the public sector is important to the future of the public management field. This paper develops an agenda for the study of collaborative governance by focusing on several analytical issues—comparative institutional analysis, multiple levels of analysis, processes and developmental dynamics, and political and ideological drivers. Then it examines as examples how five theoretical perspectives—the institutional analysis and development framework, transaction cost analysis, structural choice politics, network analysis, and sociological institutionalism—may address each of the five analytical issues. Research on collaborative governance opens up opportunities for public management scholars to collaborate with those from other social science fields and disciplines.
Greenwald, Howard. "Challenges in Cross-Sectoral Partnerships: An Organizational Perspective" (Reader: Provan)
The purpose of this paper is to identify challenges to cross-sectoral collaboration based on principals in current organization theory regarding organizational boundaries. The boundary-maintenance function enables organizations to maintain sufficient stability and focus for goal attainment. Organizations periodically adjust their boundaries for tactical and strategic purposes, making participation in cross-sectoral partnerships possible and influencing the manner in which participation will take place. Because collaboration places boundary maintenance at risk, organizations generally appear unlikely to participate except when collaboration is based on loose and terminable linkages and cooperation of a temporary nature. These principles suggest that advocates of cross-sectoral collaboration today risk setting unrealistic goals for such arrangements. Examination of several foundation-funded initiatives illustrates limitations in the ability of organizations to compromise boundary maintenance in the interests of cross-sectoral collaboration.
More optimistically, this paper aims at combining organization theory, evaluation, and action research to produce practical suggestions for promotion of successful cross-sectoral partnerships. Suggestions derived from theory and case studies conducted throughout the United States include: recruiting and empowering leadership committed to cross-sectoral collaboration; ensuring the presence of appropriately mandated, supervised, and paid staff; providing limited access by outsiders to privileged data and decision-making processes, and respecting the integrity of participant organizations’ core commitments and resources. As in the case of foundation-funded initiatives, external forces may prove essential to the initiation and sustainability of cross-sectoral collaboration.
Panel 2: Collaborative Governance in Public Health and Security
Callahan, Richard, Dan M. Haverty and Ross Clayton. "Networks in Public Health for Homeland Security Response: California’s Network Experience" (Reader: Smith)
This report is intended to help public managers successfully develop inter-organizational networks to address their emergency management challenges. A set of recommendations emerge for public managers to facilitate the following:
- alignment of needed response networks with existing organizational structures;
- leverage of training exercises to improve network development;
- adaptation of existing networks to new challenges.
This report provides specific examples of how California’s state government has facilitated network development in emergency management, homeland security and public health responses. California’s extensive experience with natural and man-made disasters, its trillion dollar plus economy, and a population of over 36 million people offer experience on a scale and scope that is potentially instructive for other states and the federal government.
Demchak, Chris. "Thickening Governance and Resilience in Collaborative ‘Knowledge Nexus’: Emergent Sociotechnical Structures Across Security Organizations facing Chronic Violent Threats" (Reader: Graddy)
Between the three main domains of a nation’s security agencies lies a policy consultation space that is historically empty – the knowledge nexus. With the formation of the modern state, military, national intelligence, and police agencies routinely operate with few incentives to consult with each other on future action. Does the need to counter terrorism impose sufficient and unmet knowledge demands to motivate agencies in one domain to seek and slowly formalize social and/or technical boundary-spanning contacts with other agencies? This paper shows that the answer is a qualified yes in a natural experiment: the state level anti-terrorism squads (ATSs) emerging as a counterterrorism knowledge nexus in India.
Please contact author for presentation slides.
Panel 3: The Nonprofit Role in Collaborative Governance
Gugerty, Mary Kay. "Signaling Virtue: Nonprofit Accountability Programs and Private Governance" (Reader: Tang)
The growth in the scale and scope of the nonprofit sector has been accompanied by growing governance challenges that often manifest as agency dilemmas. In particular, nonprofits may have difficulty in demonstrating to key stakeholders, including donors and governments, that they are governing as agreed and delivering as promised. Voluntary programs, defined as private, collaborative, rule-based systems created and sponsored by nongovernmental actors, are one way in which nonprofit actors seek to build collective governance structures that mitigate agency conflict and resolve agency dilemmas. The paper illustrates how nonprofits structure voluntary programs in order to solve collective action problems and create signals of quality for key stakeholders. The paper develops a number of hypotheses about the expected emergence and structure of nonprofit voluntary programs that are examined with data from eighteen voluntary programs.
Suarez, David F. and Hokyu Hwang "Looking Outward: Nonprofits and Interorganizational Collaboration" (Reader: Herranz)
Utilizing data from interviews with a random sample of 200 nonprofit leaders, this study analyzes the factors that influence nonprofit collaboration with government agencies, with businesses, and with other nonprofits. We demonstrate that institutional form mediates collaborative activity, and we find that nonprofits tend to collaborate with organizations in the sector where the leader has most familiarity. By investigating the relationship between nonprofit collaboration with one sector and nonprofit collaboration with other sectors, we also show that partnering can be an important aspect of an organizational repertoire. Finally, the mixed results for funding and resource dependence suggest that nonprofits may collaborate as much from pressure as from strategic choice. Each of these findings contributes to an increasingly nuanced understanding of nonprofit collaboration, and the salience of institutional form highlights the need for a broad organizational focus.
Provan, Keith G. and Kun Huang. "Resource Tangibility and Patterns of Interaction: A Longitudinal Network Analysis" (Reader: Greenwald)
This paper is a longitudinal examination of a publicly funded mental health services network. Building on a recently published study using cross-sectional data, we focus on changes in the patterns of interaction in five resource-based sub-networks. We argue that the structure of network relationships can be explained by the nature of the resources that are at the source of the interaction. Our findings support this contention, based on data collected shortly after the network was first formed and again, after it had matured four years later.
Please contact the author for presentation slides.
Panel 4: Firms and Philanthropy in Collaborative Governance
Mosley, Jennifer E. and Joseph Galaskiewicz. "The Role of Foundations in Shaping Social Welfare Policy and Services: The Case of Welfare Reform" (Reader: Cooper)
This research describes what U.S. foundations did before and after the historic Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Foundations were not passive by-standers either prior to the passage of the welfare reform act or afterwards. For the most part foundations acted as social entrepreneurs, promoting particular policies, supporting demonstration programs, and funding influential think tanks and opinion-makers. However, foundations did not increase support services to needy households. Only workforce development funding increased in response to the policy shift. Safety net, child day care and family service funding went largely unchanged during the welfare reform era.
Please contact the authors for presentation slides.
Ferris, James M. "Foundation-Government Relations in Public Problem Solving: The Unexamined Link in Collaborative Governance" (Reader: Thomas)
Philanthropic foundations have been inextricably linked to government throughout their history in the United States. Yet, there has been woefully inadequate attention to the nature, complexity and diversity of the relations between foundations and governments in the context of intersectoral arrangements, particularly for tackling pressing public problems. This paper examines the relative advantages of both foundations and governments from an institutional perspective; identifies a range of models of foundation-government relations for public problem solving, with a particular focus on the factors that encourage foundations to seek such arrangements; and explores the conditions that are most likely to result in the emergence of such arrangements.
Carboni, Julia and Brint Milward. "The Substitute State: Provision and Integration of Public Programs by Private Firms" (Reader: Page)
Can deviant organizations survive and prosper in highly institutionalized fields? In this research design, we attempt to move beyond institutional theory and rational choice accounts by drawing on concepts from economic sociology literature as a way of understanding deviant organizations.
The empirical base of our research is Providence Service Corporation. PSC defies the institutional logic of the field in that it is a for-profit, publicly traded company that solely provides government funded social services. Since its inception, it has continued to grow at an extraordinary pace while rejecting the dominant logic of the field- that nonprofits should provide social services.
Poster Session
Destler, Kate. "Broadening Oversight for System Performance: Collaborative Approaches to Charter School Management" (Reader: Mosley)
Charter schools represent a regulatory shift from upfront process mandates to outcome accountability. Yet their quality and growth have been constrained by service complexity and a weak supply base. Governments may need to “manage the market” to sustain competition and build supplier loyalty. However, driven by both practical constraints and philosophical objections, charter school authorizers have resisted that role.
This paper explores how third-party organizations in eight U.S. cities help recruit and provide support services to charter schools. Collaboration between government agencies and third-party organizations has the potential to expand oversight capacity and maintain clear accountability. However, collaboration also requires upfront investment and may entail risk to both parties.
Destler, Kate and Ashley Watson. "Improving School Quality through Collaborative Governance: Lessons from Abroad" (Reader: Mazmanian)
United States policymakers rely on a limited set of tools for managing performance and improving school quality despite concerns about educational performance. Contested notions of quality, team production, insufficient organizational capacity, norms of autonomy and school heterogeneity undermine traditional quality improvement strategies—top-down regulation of inputs and market and hierarchical accountability.
This paper draws from other sectors and from school systems overseas to suggest alternate quality improvement strategies. Two tools—self review and collaborative networks— show the greatest promise for overcoming traditional barriers to reform. Neither is a panacea, however. Quality improvement efforts must be coupled with incentives so schools develop both the will and the capacity to learn.
Ju, Chang Bum. "Patterns of Government Funding of NGOs in Korea in 2006: Are Network Ties a Factor?" (Reader: Bryer)
This study examines the patterns of government funding of environmental NGOs in Seoul, Korea in 2006. One account found in economics theory of why governments fund NGOs is to enhance efficiency. This paper offers an alternative account, based on institutional theory’s emphasis on the legitimacy-seeking behavior of organizations. A multi-dimensional model of organizational legitimacy is developed and operationalized using network analysis. Board interlocks, not organizational expertise and managerial capacity, were found to make a difference in the patterns of government funding. Institutional linkages with government agencies were also an important factor in securing government funds.
Keagy, Judith. "Brokered Network Governance Models: An Evaluation of Contingencies Related to Effectiveness in Child Health Networks" (Reader: Gugerty)
A Research Proposal – Drawing on streams of research on the effects of the ”hollow state” in the public policy arena; the problems of access, integration, and service coordination for vulnerable populations with complex chronic social, behavioral and health care needs in the health and social services domains; and network organizational theory, this research will evaluate the application of recent theoretical work regarding modes of governance to the two large mandated regional organizational networks providing health and related support services to children with special health care needs (CSHCN) under the auspices of Arizona’s Title V Children’s Rehabilitative Services (CRS) program in Tucson and Phoenix.
Lee, Hyung-Woo and Peter Robertson. "An Empirical Investigation of Trusting Relationships in an Interorganizational Network" (Reader: Varda)
Trust is a critical driver in the developmental process of cohesive working relationship. As trust develops, actors can perform a joint action which entails high risk and requires considerable commitment. In the context of the network of community-based organizations collaborating for community capacity building, understanding the role of trust among organizations help practitioners and scholars to better understand the dynamics between the organizations: what types of partnership activities are taking place; how and why the forms of partnership evolve over time. This study is designed to demonstrate that the partnership among organizations evolves contingent on the level of trust accrued in those relationships. We will develop a model of partnership evolution. In this model, we will, first, identify several important activities relevant to the collaborative network for community capacity building, second, we will argue that partnership evolves from simple transaction to commitment based interactions, and we place each activity on a continuum: at the front end, simple information sharing activity as initial phase of partnership; and at the back end, joint policy advocacy as activity at advanced stage. There are some exceptions in which organizations jump into joint program without sharing information in advance. This case will also be examined. Finally, a sequential regression result will be reported to demonstrate that the advance to next levels on the partnership continuum is correlated with the level of trust accrued in the relationship.
Yee, Wai-Hang "Henry". "Cross-sector Governance in Solid Waste Management: Making the Most Out of Collaboration and Civic Engagement" (Reader: Little)
For the past 10 years, Hong Kong has been facing a major governing challenge concerning how to manage its growing amount of municipal solid waste. A comprehensive policy framework was successfully formulated based on the general support of policy sectors and its citizens. In the solutions searching process, series institutional governing mechanisms have emerged out of the interaction among the government, for profit and nonprofits organizations, especially the green groups, and the citizen. The paper is going to trace the evolution of institutional mechanisms and developmental dynamic of the interaction process in building consensus in this cross-sectoral governing setting.
Panel 5: Contracting Challenges in Collaborative Governance
Graddy, Elizabeth. "The Structure and Performance of Inter-organizational Relationships within Public Service Delivery Networks" (Reader: Demchak)
A critical and under-studied dimension of inter-organizational relationships is the structure-performance relationship. This paper considers three aspects of this relationship in the operation of lead-organization public service delivery networks -- how governance functions are structured and managed, the nature of inter-organizational interdependencies in service delivery, and the intensity of interactions. Using data on 138 partnerships operating within 26 networks to provide family preservation services in Los Angeles County, we estimate a random-effects model of this relationship. After controlling for partner and network characteristics, we find that service delivery is positively impacted when roles and responsibilities are contractually defined, and by the extent to which decision making, information, and resources are shared. Network relational benefits also accrue when roles are contractually defined, and to the extent information and resources are shared. More sector diversity within the network is associated with less effective service delivery, but with an increase in subsequent ties among network organizations. Finally, group structures were not found to affect performance for any outcome.
Smith, Craig and Deanna Malatesta. "Contract Design Decisions: An Empirical Analysis of Federal Contract Characteristics" (Reader: Suarez)
Few studies in public administration have examined contract heterogeneity. We aim to fill this gap by examining the characteristics of 183 newly awarded contracts from the Environmental Protection Agency. While a considerable amount of research in economics and business has focused on structuring contracts to protect against potential opportunism and aligning incentives, we find empirical support for the proposition that previous relationships and interaction between the parties affect the type of contract awarded and their duration. The implications of these findings are important to public managers and scholars who recognize the increasing need for flexibility in long-term working alliances between public organizations and contractors.
Panel 6: Challenges of Accountability in Collaborative Governance
Bryer, Thomas A, Terry L. Cooper and Ronald Kuramoto. "Exploring the Facilitative Role in Administrator-Citizen Collaboration" (Reader: Galaskiewicz)
This paper examines the role of the facilitator and other group members in a collaborative process called a Learning and Design Forum. In 1999, voters in the city of Los Angeles approved a new city charter that included the creation of a system of neighborhood councils. Researchers at the University of Southern California recognized that the emergence of newly empowered citizens with the neighborhood councils might present a challenge to the dominance of the administrative state and technocratic orientation of city bureaucracies. They thus created a collaborative process model to facilitate interaction between neighborhood council representatives and city agency officials. The role of each actor in this process is explored here; the facilitation tools used across three distinct cases are examined, and the assessment of those tools is explored based on research participant feedback. In conclusion, a set of lessons are offered for successfully facilitating collaboration between government officials and citizens.
Page, Stephen. "Accountability for Public Value: Rethinking the Relationships between Collaborative Governance and the New Public Management" (Reader: Milward)
Collaborative governance and management intrigue and plague practitioners and scholars alike today. Multiple dilemmas arise when multiple stake holders share power in policy design or implementation, making dominant coalitions and clear lines of authority hard to assemble – much less wield efficaciously. Policy processes suffer accordingly: Because stake holders’ preferences diverge, collective choices entail high transaction costs and tend to produce sub-optimal policy designs and organizational structures. Because funding streams and supply chains stretch across levels of government and organizational boundaries, implementation entails considerable coordination costs, veto points, and monitoring challenges.
Both democratic theory and research on conflict resolution suggest that successful collaborative governance depends heavily on the alignment of stake holders’ preferences and behavior around shared interests. Given the differences in stake holders’ preferences, information, and power that pervade so many policy debates, however, such alignment seems quite difficult to achieve.
Research has begun to identify what leaders can do to address these difficulties: Collaborative leaders activate, embrace, empower, and mobilize stake holders; frame and steer policy direction; and track and publicize progress toward joint goals. A critical next step in studying collaborative governance is to understand what constitutes better and worse conduct of these activities – to distinguish ways leaders align stake holders’ preferences and behavior effectively from leadership that is less effective at such alignment.
To that end, this paper proposes measures of four tactics leaders use to enable collaborative governance as well as measures of three types of results that successful collaboration might produce. The tactics include framing an agenda for collaboration, convening stake holders, structuring deliberation among them, and tracking and publicizing progress. The results include political will, civic capacity, and policy performance.
After developing measures of each tactic and result, the paper assesses their potential to distinguish key aspects of collaborative governance by analyzing three civic engagement initiatives from the administration of Seattle Mayor Norman Rice (1990-1998). The initiatives include a city-wide Education Summit, a comprehensive neighborhood planning initiative, and a neighborhood-based law-enforcement program.
The findings demonstrate that the measures usefully distinguish collaborative initiatives in terms of leadership and results. Specifically, the measures of leadership tactics reveal how the three cases of civic engagement in Seattle vary from one another as well as internally over time. The measures of results vary across the three cases and within each case among the different types of results. While the measures themselves do not reflect it, the cases also reveal differing changes in stake holders’ preferences and behavior over time.
The paper concludes by identifying two ways in which the constructs it explores might be used in future research. First, scholars might use the measures to compare the leadership tactics and results of additional cases of collaborative governance to generate and refine hypotheses for future testing. Second, careful measurement of leadership tactics and results might be combined with more detailed data on stake holders’ preferences to draw inferences about the intermediate causal linkages among the tactics leaders use and the political, civic, and policy results of collaboration.
Thomas, Craig. "Evaluating the Performance of Collaborative Environmental Governance" (Reader: Ferris)
Collaboration has increasingly supplemented and other forms of environmental governance, such as centralized planning and command-and-control regulation. Hence, practitioners and academics routinely debate whether collaboration improves the environment over alternative governance systems. But the debate is largely rhetorical and theoretical, because there is little empirical evidence to suggest whether collaboration has a positive or negative impact on the environment. This paper reviews the current state of research on collaborative governance, and suggests ways to design research studies that test the links between collaborative processes and environmental outcomes. The paper also argues that collaborative governance should be held to environmental performance standards, just like other governance systems.