Collaborative Public Management: New Strategies for Local Governments

8. The Future of Public Management and the Challenge of Collaboration

8 The Future of Public Management and the Challenge of Collaboration T he contacts, activities, policy tools, and other connections discovered in this study lead us to conclude that the capacities required to operate successfully in collaborative settings are different from the capacities needed to succeed at managing a single organization. The classical, mostly intraorganizationalinspired management perspective that has guided public administration for more than a century is less directly relevant to multiorganizational , multigovernmental, and multisectoral forms of governing. If collaborative management is a function distinct from that of single-organization, hierarchical management, as our data clearly indicate and many eminent scholars have suggested (Kettl 1996; Milward 1994; O’Toole 1997c), then focused research on and improved conceptualization of this core public activity must be accelerated. However, it is not enough to demonstrate that collaboration exists. Public administration and management is an action field, what some have called a design science (Simon 1981), and research in this field should seek to provide workable knowledge and prescribe action, despite the limitations of doing so (Lindblom 1990). This final chapter addresses such issues. The work being done in cities like Cincinnati and Ithaca suggests that collaborative management is in need of a knowledge base equivalent to the organizational paradigm of bureaucratic management that can both inform and improve practice. Using our empirical research as a guide, we here build on the theoretical approaches introduced in chapter 2 and present a future agenda for developing such a knowledge base for collaborative management. We ask a simple question: What 175 176 / COLLABORATIVE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT does the field need to know to adequately prepare public managers to meet their need to engage in collaboration? First, we consider the types of skills that might be important for collaborative management. Second, we investigate decision making in collaborative settings and speculate how it might differ from decision-making models derived from applied behavioral science models. Third, we consider factors that may help multiple players cohere into a workable structure to design and carry out programs, such as trust and the perception of a common purpose. Fourth, the issue of power, authority, and influence in collaborative settings is addressed. Fifth, the venerable accountability issue is discussed. Sixth, we explore the issue of whether collaboration produces results that would otherwise not have occurred; that is, whether collaboration adds value to the design and delivery of public programs. The light that is ultimately shed on these issues builds on our research. It should contribute to a greater understanding of collaborative management both for scholars considering the role of collaborative institutions in public administration and for public managers who must operate in such settings. Future Research on Collaborative Management Skills for Collaborative Public Management When a public- or private-sector manager—perhaps a full-time director of a city department of economic development or an executive director of a chamber of commerce—is observed operating in his or her ‘‘home’’ organization, we can clearly describe, in the most general sense, what activities are being performed at any given time and, for the most part, why they are being performed. A vocabulary or nomenclature that has developed and has been refined over many decades can be used to describe the manager’s daily activities within the single-organization, bureaucratic structure . Many textbooks devoted to single-organization behavior and public management describe tasks such as planning, organizing, and leading, and suggest time-tested remedies to fix intraorganizational problems. Managers know, for example, that if an organization appears to lack direction, better planning may be the answer; and if communication and coordination are poor across depart- The Future of Public Management / 177 ments within an organization, a reorganization could be in order. To inform the practice of collaborative public management, future research must strive to develop a similar functional and conceptual parallel to traditional management processes. How does a manager determine the right collaborative partners ? Is there an identifiable calculus or set of decision rules that each manager has, or should have? Tapping the skills, knowledge, and resources of participants and stakeholders in the collaborative arrangement is a fundamental managerial act (Gray 1989; Innes and Booher 1999; Lipnack and Stamps 1994). Such players and resources are the integrating mechanisms of managing in collaborative settings. According to Scharpf, selective activation of potential participants in such collaborative arrangements as horizontal networks is ‘‘an essential prerequisite for successful interorganizational policy formation and policy implementation’’ and, if...