The Social Psychology of Organizations.

Social science research contains a wealth of knowledge for people seeking to understand collaboration processes. The authors argue that public managers should look inside the “black box” of collaboration processes. Inside, they will find a complex construct of five variable dimensions: governance, administration, organizational autonomy, mutuality, and norms. Public managers must know these five dimensions and manage them intentionally in order to collaborate effectively.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4096567.pdf

Collaboration Processes: Inside the Black Box

Collaborative public management research is flourishing. A great deal of attention is being paid to the process and impact of collaboration in the public sector, and the results are promising. This article reviews the literature on collaborative public management by synthesizing what we know from recent research and what we’ve known for quite some time. It addresses the prevalence of collaboration (both recently and historically), the components of emerging collaborative structures, the types of skills that are unique to collaborative management, and the effects of collaboration. Collaborative public management research offers a set of findings that contribute to an emerging knowledge base that supplements established public management theory.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4096568.pdf

Collaborative Public Management: Assessing What We Know and How We Know It

Both practitioners and scholars are increasingly interested in the idea of public value as a way of understanding government activity, informing policy-making and constructing service delivery. In part this represents a response to the concerns about ‘new public management’, but it also provides an interesting way of viewing what public sector organisations and public managers actually do. The purpose of this article is to examine this emerging approach by reviewing new public management and contrasting this with a public value paradigm. This provides the basis for a conceptual discussion of differences in approach, but also for pointing to some practical implications for both public sector management and public sector managers.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2007.00545.x

From New Public Management to Public Value: Paradigmatic Change and Managerial Implications

Because they are victims of short-term economic pressures and "parochial politics", most American companies critically lack the one factor proven effective in winning competitive advantage: leadership. Thus argues John P. Kotter in this, his third large-scale work on leadership, which continues and complements the work begun in his influential "The General Managers" and "Power and Influence". With compelling evidence, Kotter demonstrates why most American firms do not have the leadership capacity they currently need and explains what they must do to correct this damaging problem. Using comprehensive data from 900 senior executives in 100 American corporations, as well as in-depth interviews with 150 top managers in fifteen successful companies, including General Electric, Citicorp, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Coca-Cola, Kotter singles out the practices that develop superior leadership. He identifies both the specific personal attributes and general leadership qualities needed in today's corporations. And, with the spotlight on such individuals as Lee Iacocca at Chrysler and teams like the top management at Johnson & Johnson, he vividly illustrates the four factors that create outstanding leadership in both private and public sector senior and middle level managers. Professor Kotter underscores his argument with glaring examples of managerial failures in firms like ITT, providing eye-opening evidence of damage-- inability to control sagging productivity and poor records in customer service, quality control, and the development of new products-- caused primarily not be poor R&D or labor problems, but by a weak leadership capacity. Filled with dozens of case histories, "The Leadership Factor" reveals an all-too-common picture of companies which, unable to recognize or develop leadership talent and utilize it, create a pervasive gap in corporate planning and personal management. Progress has been made in improving quality management, but is has been limited. Kotter is hard-hitting in his assessment that even American companies which achieve a superior level of success in the leadership area-- IBM, DuPont, Dow Jones, Hewlett-Packard, and Anheuser-Busch, for example, must do even better to match efforts of foreign competitors. In showing how leaders are made, not born, he provides a realistic program structured to help attract, retain, and motivate dynamic, capable leaders in executive and middle management positions. Following Kotter's advice, companies can build strong managerial teams necessary not only for growth-- but also for survival itself.

The Leadership Factor

Inter-organizational frameworks of intervention dominate the resolution of complex societal problems facing the UK and many other countries. Strategic alliances, joint working arrangements, networks, partnerships and many other forms of collaboration across sectoral and organizational boundaries currently proliferate across the policy landscape. However, the discourse is positioned at an institutional and organizational level, and comparatively little attention is accorded to the pivotal role of individual actors in the management of inter-organizational relationships. This paper attempts to redress this balance by focusing on the skills, competencies and behaviour of boundary spanners. A critical review of the relevant literature, both from an institutional and relational perspective, is undertaken. This is complemented by some new empirical research that involves an engagement with groups of particular types of boundary spanner using a combination of surveys and in-depth interviews. Finally, a discussion makes connections between the existing literature and the research findings and offers suggestions for future areas of enquiry.

The Competent Boundary Spanner

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to discuss the roles and competencies of boundary spanners in the context of collaboration. It aims to examine the problematic nature of these roles, and to consider the communalities between different types of boundary spanner. It then seeks to interrogate the extent to then seeks which managing in collaboration is different from managing in single organizations, and to question whether it should be undertaken by a dedicated cadre of actors or mainstreamed into all professional, leadership and management practice. Design/methodology/approach – This is an exploratory paper that draws both on a critical review of the literature and contemporary research by the author. Findings – The paper suggests that there are different types of boundary spanner pursuing different roles, but argues that there is a considerable degree of communality between them and the competencies required to undertake them especially in relation to reticulism, communication, co-ordination and entrepre...

We are all boundary spanners now

‘Leadership’ and ‘collaboration’ are integral to twenty-first century governance and management but, despite a growing literature, understanding about leadership for collaboration is hampered by a lack of specificity and nuance in theory and empirical research. This article responds to these limitations by working within an interpretive framework and employing Q-method to uncover different interpretations of leadership for collaboration operant among public managers in Wales. The article uses the concept of situated agency to explain why public managers offer diverse interpretations of leadership for collaboration despite working within the same governance framework, and to identify challenges to public managers in determining appropriate leadership for collaboration.

Leadership for Collaboration: Situated agency in practice

Theme: Two central themes permeate this paper—the interplay between structure and agency in integration processes and the extent to which this is mediated through sensemaking by individual actors. Case study: The empirical base for the paper is provided by case study research from Wales which draws on examples of different types of integration in health and social care. The individual case studies highlight different interpretations of integration set against a background of the resources involved, processes employed and outcomes achieved. Discussion: A wide ranging discussion exposes the complex interplay and dynamics between structural factors and the manner in which they enable or constrain integration, and individual actors realising their potential agency through leadership, professionalism and boundary spanning to influence outcomes. The importance of structure and agency complementing each other to determine effective integration is emphasised, together with the scope that is available for interpretation and meaning by individual actors within the contested discourse of integration.

Faces of integration

New legislation places a statutory duty on all local authorities in England and Wales to prepare ‘community strategies’ for promoting the economic, social and environmental well-being of their areas, and contributing to the achievement of sustainable development in the U.K. This paper suggests that community strategies herald the demise of the frequently marginalized Local Agenda 21 strategies and offers the prospect of mainstreaming the principles of sustainable development into the core of local governance.



However, the author argues that community strategies are unlikely to be effective if their preparation is grounded on the use of the rational or classical model of strategic management. A critical review is undertaken of this model and attention is especially drawn to a number of key inherent fallacies including spurious rationality, linear as opposed to nonlinear thinking, over-formalization and a separation of the planning and operational elements of the process. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the potential contribution of alternative strategic management paradigms, and their implications for the preparation of community strategies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment

Paul Williams

Papers

The Competent Boundary Spanner

We are all boundary spanners now

Leadership for Collaboration: Situated agency in practice

Faces of integration

Community strategies: mainstreaming sustainable development and strategic planning?