Bridge over Troubled Water? Collaboration to Improve Collaboration across the Nonprofit/Government Sectoral Divide Ben Cairns and Margaret Harris Presentation to Birkbeck/IVAR 2007 Seminar Series January 2007

Presentation Outline Builds on the findings of an action research project involving local governmental authorities and local third sector infrastructure organisations Focuses on the theoretical and practical question of how governmental and nonprofit agencies can improve their capacity to work ‘in partnership’ or ‘in collaboration’ across sectoral boundaries Describes a collaborative exercise in which participants from the two sectors themselves worked cross-sectorally to address the shared problem of cross-sectoral partnership working Considers the implications of the project process and findings for practitioners, policy-makers and future research

Research to date has looked at … Policy, ideological, organisational and pragmatic pressures to collaborate across sectoral boundaries The range of mechanisms through which cross-sectoral partnership is achieved Organisational implications for third sector and government organisations Relevant concepts including partnership, power, and inter- organisational relationships But mostly researchers have looked at collaboration from the viewpoint of the two sectors separately

Our Approach We move beyond such approaches to consider the question of cross-sectoral collaboration from a cross-sectoral perspective Builds on the findings of an action research project in which we worked with the Improvement and Development Agency (I&DeA) to engage with local authorities and local third sector infrastructure organisations in eight areas of England Programme of ‘partnership improvement’ workshops in which we encouraged participants to model effective cross-sector working in their discussions by focusing on points of commonality rather than difference and by thinking about possible responses to difficulties which they themselves identified

Theoretical Underpinning of our Research Approach The literature on ‘reconciliation’ activities in which it has been noted how working together to achieve ‘super-ordinate goals’ fosters shared experiences and encourages mutual accommodation between members of hitherto antagonistic groupings (Jeong and Lerche, 2002; Kriesberg, 1999; Wetherall, 1996)

Findings in three areas Pressures to work in partnership across sectors Perceived benefits of working in partnership across sectors Challenges of working across sectors (with planned responses)

Agreed Challenges of Working across Sectors Lack of collaborative capacity - time, money, skills, mutual understanding Multiple partnerships Confused expectations about role of third sector organisations – representation, communication, decision- making Governance of partnerships – meetings, role of individuals, mechanisms

Agreed Planned Responses to Identified Challenges were … Developed alongside identification of challenges Tailored to history and needs of each area (no standardised solutions) Developed in a cross-sectoral planning exercise (a ‘super-ordinate goal’)

Agreed Planned Responses to Identified Challenges included … Skills development Full cost recovery of partnership working costs Rethinking the representative role of third sector participants in partnerships Pre-partnership agreements on structures and processes

Implications for Practitioners in cross-sectoral partnerships Partnerships need governance in their own right Governance structures and mechanisms need to be established at the outset - before conflicts arise Build trust and mutual understanding – do not impose frameworks without these foundations Consider working on shared problems and super-ordinate goals as a means to building trust and understanding

Implications for Public Policy Makers Substantial obstacles to implementation of cross-sectoral partnerships - territorialism, lack of resources, mutual suspicion, lack of collaborative organisational capacity Some practical difficulties attributable to mutual lack of knowledge about distinctive features and challenges faced by the two sectors Heterogeneous nature of third sector must be taken into account – issues of representation, internal communication Local histories and circumstances vary – so no standardised solutions to the challenges of local cross-sectoral partnership

Implications for Future Research on cross-sectoral collaborations Practical and knowledge-building benefits of an action research approach – provides a framework to bring together people working across sectoral boundaries; research process itself can build mutual trust; research process models cross-sectoral working Concept of super-ordinate goals has practical utility in situations of historical antagonism

Implications for Future Research on cross-sectoral collaborations Concept of simultaneous trust and distrust (Lewicki, McAllister and Bies, 1998) may be useful in enabling individual actors in different sectors to co-exist within a context of interests which are convergent, divergent and unrelated Conceptualisation of cross-sectoral partnerships - not so much the sum of individual actors in different sectors, and not so much as curious ‘hybrid’ organizational forms but as sui generis; as phenomena which need to be understood as organisational forms in their own right, demanding their own specialist theoretical developments – ‘governance’? ‘transorganisations’?