Strategic Collaboration in Public and Nonprofit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach to Solving Shared Problems

Market disruptions, climate change, and health pandemics lead the growing list of challenges faced by today’s leaders. These issues, along with countless others that do not make the daily news, require novel thinking and collaborative action to find workable solutions. However, many administrators stumble into collaboration without a strategic orientation. Using a practitioner-oriented style, Strategic Collaboration in Public and Nonprofit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach to Solving Shared Problems provides guidance on how to collaborate more effectively, with less frustration and better results.

The authors articulate an approach that takes advantage of windows of opportunity for real problem solving; brings multi-disciplinary participants to the table to engage more systematically in planning, analysis, decision making, and implementation; breaks down barriers to change; and ultimately, lays the foundation for new thinking and acting. They incorporate knowledge gained from organization and collaboration management research and personal experience to create a fresh approach to collaboration practice that highlights:


Collaboration Lifecycle Model
Metric for determining why and when to collaborate
Set of principles that distinguish Strategic Collaboration Practice
Overall Framework of Strategic Collaboration
Linking collaboration theory to effective practice, this book offers essential advice that fosters shared understanding, creative answers, and transformation results through strategic collaborative action. With an emphasis on application, it uses scenarios, real-world cases, tables, figures, tools, and checklists to highlight key points. The appendix includes supplemental resources such as collaboration operating guidelines, a meeting checklist, and a collaboration literature review to help public and nonprofit managers successfully convene, administer, and lead collaboration. The book presents a framework for engaging in collaboration in a way that stretches current thinking and advances public service practice.

Table of Contents
The Promise of Strategic Collaboration. A New Lens: The Life Cycle Model of Collaboration. Assessing Collaborative Readiness: The Missing Strategic Step. Strategic Collaboration in Action: Six Principles. Attending to the Forgotten: The Elderly, Collaborative Practice, and Evacuation. Running out of Classrooms! Solving Overcrowding through Collaborative School Planning. Moving Beyond Hierarchies: Creating Effective Collaboration Networks for West Nile Virus Biosurveillance in Oregon. Information Stewardship and Collaboration: Advancing Evidence-Based Public Policy Decision Making. Choices and Challenges Sustaining a Rural Health Network When Funding Vanishes. Collaboration, Citizen Participation, and Environmental Protection in the Marine Oil Trade of Alaska. Paving the Way for Public Transportation in Texas through Public Collaboration. Cape Fear Healthy Carolinians: Taking Risks, Crossing Boundaries. Building a Community–Higher Education Collaboration to Meet the Needs of the Local Nonprofit Sector. The Mastery of Strategic Collaboration Practice. References. Appendices.