The Collaborative Public Manager: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century

4. Partner Selection and the Effectiveness of Interorganizational Collaborations

Chapter 4 Partner Selection and the Effectiveness of Interorganizational Collaborations Elizabeth A. Graddy and Bin Chen Two themes have characterized public management research and practice over the past two decades: an emphasis on interorganizational partnerships and a focus on performance. As governments have faced more complex problems and increased demand for their limited resources, they have turned to external partners for help. In many services and many governments throughout the world, these partnerships of public and private service providers are replacing the traditional model of direct service delivery by public agencies. As a result, the role of public managers has been transformed from direct service providers to facilitators and coordinators of networks and collaboration across public, nonprofit, and even for-profit organizations. Public managers are thus becoming more “collaborative ” than “directive” in their work. The goals of these collaborative ventures are presumably to enhance the effectiveness of public-sector activities. Partnering with others is believed to contribute to increased efficiency and innovation, local adaptation , increased flexibility, and enhanced community ties. And, to the extent this is true, this movement intersects with and supports the increased focus on performance. Governments at all levels have made performance measurement a core component of public-sector reform. Taxpayers, politicians, and program stakeholders have created a mandate for outcome-based performance measurement in public programs to promote more effective, efficient, and responsive service delivery (Heinrich 2003). However, an alternative explanation for the focus on collaboration is ideological. Increased reliance on the private sector to deliver public services was also expected to reduce the size of government. If this is the 54 Why Public Managers Collaborate goal, the expected impacts on effectiveness are less clear. In either case, the costs associated with managing the partnerships may outweigh their benefits. And, in the absence of effective management, any benefits to effectiveness may be lost. It is the connection between partnerships and their effectiveness that we seek to explore. The formation and management costs of such interorganizational structures are high. It is thus important for public managers to understand the consequences of formation decisions and how the collaboration is structured. Despite strong scholarly interest in both collaborations and performance measurement, their interplay has not been widely studied. Collaboration remains a somewhat elusive concept, and we know little about when and how these efforts are likely to be successful . What factors contribute to well-functioning interorganizational partnerships ? The failure rates of strategic alliances have been found to be high (Nilsson 1997; Devlin and Bleackley 1988). Understanding the association between collaboration characteristics and their effectiveness should also enhance the likelihood of their survival. Therefore, empirical work that seeks to understand this relationship is important for public management research and practice. Here, we are interested in the consequences of partner selection on collaborative effectiveness. How do the motivations involved in forming partnerships affect the perceived effectiveness of the resulting relationships ? Effectiveness can be assessed from different perspectives—for example , the community, the partnership, the client (Provan and Milward 2001). We focus here on the partnership—how effective is it perceived to be by its component organizations?1 The resulting insights should enable public managers to more effectively initiate, design, operate, and manage interorganizational collaborations and networks. In the next section, we develop the theoretical connection between partner selection and partnership effectiveness. Then we explore our model with data on the delivery of family preservation services collected in Los Angeles County. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for public management and policy. PARTNER SELECTION Partnerships are inherently risky endeavors. Their integral characteristic is mutual interdependence, and this interdependence implies vulnerability to the behavior of one’s partner (Graddy and Ferris 2006). Therefore, organizations seeking a collaborative partnership must assess the tradeoff between the benefits of cooperation and this vulnerability. This sug- Effectiveness of Interorganizational Collaborations 55 gests that potential partners will be assessed based on both the strategic benefits they bring and the risks associated with their behavior. The latter can be mitigated by selecting partners the organization views as trustworthy . Such trust can be viewed as incorporating both the intentions of a partner and its competence (Das and Teng 2001). Can and will the potential partner behave as expected? The literature suggests two broad categories of benefits that organizations seek from collaborative partners. They may seek a resource that they need for their activities but do not possess (resource exchange), or they may seek...