ABSTRACT
As the world has become increasingly connected over the last few decades, government and public managers have had to adapt from traditional unitary, hierarchical organizations to networked, collaborative, multiorganizational arrangements (O’Leary & Vij, 2012). This changing environ ment and the continued growth of third-party governance have led to an abundance of collaborative public management scholarship (O’Leary & Vij, 2012; Thomson, Perry, & Miller, 2009). Much of this literature is by its nature multidisciplinary, vast, and highly fragmented. While the varying conceptualizations add perspective and depth to the field, this richness also makes it difficult to compare results and communicate across disciplines (Thomson et al., 2009). What this variation produces is not a simple agreed upon definition of the study of collaboration, but an array of wide-ranging theoretical perspectives, definitions, and understandings of collaborative public management (Thomson et al., 2009). Disagreements abound, from process and structure, to distinctions of organizational relationships, all of which have only served to add to the confusion and ambiguity shrouding the field (Morse & Stephens, 2012). To move forward and to build a common language across the multidisciplinary field of study, it is imperative that we heed the advice of prior work in an effort to identify and discuss the core values comprising interorganizational collaboration. This will allow us not only to better understand collaborative elements and processes, but also to gain additional insight into the critical components that help collaboratives to successfully achieve their program goals. The purpose of this chapter is twofold; first, to identify the components critical to collaboration through the literature, and second, to examine the progress made in collaboration theory-building since the Wood and Gray (1991) symposium to see if we are any closer to reaching agreement on what collaboration is. This work, through the review of the Wood and Gray (1991) symposium, and synthesis of the subsequent literature, attempts to bring some clarity to the definitional issue by exploring the
prevailing elements of public-sector collaboration. It is only through definitional clarity that a theory of collaboration will emerge. The chapter begins by reviewing the definitional conundrum plaguing the theoretical development of collaboration scholarship. After discussing wicked problems and the state of the literature, we will then examine the findings of the 1991 symposium article by Wood and Gray before setting out to replicate and expand on their work. We will delineate prevailing elements of collaboration from the multidisciplinary literature, both to gain a better understanding of what makes up collaboration and also to further examine the progress made over the nearly quarter-century since Wood and Gray (1991) first set out to synthesize the literature toward a definition of collaboration. This is followed by the results of our analysis of the collaboration literature, and what amounts to the prevailing elements that make up public-sector collaboration. A summary conclusion will be offered in which the results of our analysis are contrasted with the findings of Wood and Gray (1991) in an effort to examine the progress made over the last few decades in defining and understanding collaboration. Finally, implications of the findings, particularly the framing and definitional concerns for both scholars and practitioners will be discussed as well as a call for future research.
