Making Collaboratives Work

How Complex Organizational Partnerships Succeed

Susan Meyers Chandler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351016056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Most contemporary public managers will work in some type of collaborative or networked arrangement at some time in their professional careers. More and more work in public administration and policy is now being done in collaborative formats, and while there are many studies, articles, and cases describing successful endeavors, a good deal of confusion persists about what, exactly, makes them work. What are the best practices? This book focuses on the processes, protocols, and incentives needed for successful collaborative endeavors. Moving beyond new public governance theories and the limits of new public management, Chandler uniquely focuses on the facilitative skills and tools that members and facilitators need for success in collaborative work.

Written by an author with both academic and practical experience in organizing, developing, leading, and facilitating public-private collaboratives, this book has both an academic thrust and an action focus, drawing on case studies from the fields of health and human services to highlight important theoretical and/or practice points. Making Collaboratives Work is required reading for undergraduate and graduate public-administration students of collaborative management, nonprofit administration, organizational theory and practice, communications, public policy, and leadership. The book is also ideally suited to public administrators and nonprofit managers asked to work in public-private partnerships and collaboratives to solve complex problems.

1 What are Collaboratives? Historical Trends

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

William James

Collaboration, Coalitions and Public–Private Partnerships

We all have an intuitive idea about what collaboration is. It is an extremely positive sounding concept and most would like to be seen as collaborative, willing to work collaboratively in groups and particularly to be a collaborative leader (Kettle, 2006; O’Leary & Blomgren, 2009; O’Toole, 2014). At its most basic, collaboration means working together. In the realm of community or public-focused problem solving, a collaborative is most often defined as an entity involving two or more organizations getting together and agreeing to share information, coordinate their efforts and programs, and conduct some joint planning and/or activity (Chandler, 2016). These groups are often time-limited, not necessarily very formalized, but having a shared and specific goal (Bryson, Ackermann, & Eden, 2016). A coalition is also a group of people or organizations that come together for a specific issue or to achieve a specific goal. The organizations inside the coalition share information and some responsibilities and are focused on a social issue; however, coalitions usually disband after achieving their limited goal (or after failing to do so). Coalitions are usually formed to bring broad attention to an issue or concern and they act on issues that may affect many stakeholders. Coalitions are common in the realm of political action, often formed to pass or block a piece of legislation, or to put pressure on an organization to do, or not do, something. Key characteristics of coalitions are that they include many organizations, are short lived, can include both public and private members, are limited in time, may vary in their levels of formalization, and have a specific, usually a single, goal. Hodge, Greve, and Biygautane (2018) note that there have been multiple definitions of the generic term public–private partnership (PPP), which has been around for several decades. Van Ham and Koppenjan (2001) define PPPs as public- and private-sector organizations cooperating in ways such that they jointly develop products and services, and share risks, costs, and resources. They note that the common characteristics of such partnerships include a preference for private financing, complex and bundled contracting arrangements, detailed accountability and evaluative mechanisms, and different governance assumptions and structures. Others note that these types of partnerships are usually long-term and the private sector usually provides the management and operating expertise as well as putting some of their own financing at risk (Margerum, 2011; Sorensen & Torfing, 2012).

What are Collaboratives and Collaborative Strategies?

Ansell and Gash (2008), in their seminal article, defined a collaborative as “A governing arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs assets” (p. 544). Governance is crucial to understanding collaborative work (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015). Definitions of collaborative governance usually require membership and participation by non-state stakeholders (i.e. citizens), and these stakeholders must be engaged in all stages of the decision-making, not just as non-influential respondents. A good collaborative must have a formal and explicit strategy for obtaining, organizing, and utilizing their input. It moves these stakeholders into multilateral and consensus-oriented decision processes. The goal is to move from adversarial relationships to more cooperative ones, and decisions are expected to be consensus-oriented. Collaborative governance is more than a public–private partnership, because these collaboratives intend to do more than improve the delivery of services or create better policies – they intend to change the way decisions affecting public affairs are made (Norris-Tirrell & Clay, 2010). The stakeholders must be highly interdependent and understand that if there were another way to solve these problems, they would have pursued their goals unilaterally. It is this knowledge that provides the incentive for participants to engage and want to work together.

Collaborative Strategies as the Core of American Government

Koliba, Meek, and Asim (2011) suggest that our entire system of U.S. government, based on the U.S. Constitution developed in the mid-1700s, is actually structured by interdependent, multiple, and collaborating sector nodes and the organization of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government being required to collaborate and work together in order to achieve meaningful action. The checks and balances built into the U.S. Constitution insure that no one branch has too much power and, while each has autonomy, it is also interdependent from the others and must find ways to work collaboratively to succeed. This balancing act among the states and the federal government also shows the need for collaboration in order to make progress. Koliba et al. (2011) note that the framers of our Constitution were attempting to solve the problem of excessive concentration of power (as structured by the English monarchy) and form a democracy for and on behalf of the people. Their design was to establish three separate institutions with equal levels of authority (the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government) that must work together to accomplish desired tasks. These activities must also reflect the wishes of the elected politicians’ constituencies and stakeholders, since if they were to wander too far from these stakeholders’ wishes, they would not be re-elected. Recently, this structure of checks and balances, particularly at the federal level, has often led to gridlock resulting in very little Congressional action taking place. Nonetheless, the structure of the separation of powers and the interdependency of each branch of government is considered to be the genius of American democracy. Only those with the skills to work within this complex inter-organizational morass will achieve success.

Each branch of government must defer to (read collaborate with) each of the other two. For example, the executive branch may wield significant power and authority over the legislative branch when the President vetoes a law. The legislative branch, however, still has significant power and may override a Presidential veto with a 2/3 vote of the members of Congress. The legislature can impeach a President (or a judge) and remove him or her from office. The judicial branch has significant power and can rule that a law passed by the executive branch is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has the overall responsibility of interpreting laws made by the legislative branch as well as executive orders promulgated by the President. This same interdependent organizational structure is replicated at each state level, and there is also an interdependent relationship between each state and the federal government. Thus, the very democracy that our country is founded upon was built on the need for cross-boundary and cross-organizational relationships. Public administrators, nonprofit leaders, and business executives who work in and with all of these branches and at the many levels of government, and are responsible for working within and among these structures, must excel at managing these border crossings (Koliba et al., 2011). Thus, working in a collaborative requires mastery of essential skills.

Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers in the 1780s laid out the conundrum of states’ rights versus the power held over them by the federal government. The 10th amendment of the U.S. Constitution reserves powers not delegated to the federal government to the states. The states and the federal government thus are frequently negotiating the definitions and boundaries of these delegated rights. In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions have been tilting more toward protecting individual states’ rights and limiting the authority and power of the federal government. However, other Court rulings have tilted toward federal rights and responsibilities. As mentioned, these inter-governmental relationships and complexities have been influencing public affairs and policies for centuries. Over the last few decades these relationships have become even more fraught with complexity, due to the addition of nonprofit organizations and the business sector becoming crucial partners with the public sector as it conducts it work. The delivery of goods and services previously managed primarily by the public sector is now mostly done in partnerships with the private sector (Worth, 2016). Federal and state governments are now deeply engaged with and dependent on the private sector to get their work done (Chandler & Johansen, 2012). The public sector is seemingly so constrained by laws, legislative processes, and administrative rules that it must partner with others and form collaboratives that are able to more efficiently and effectively conduct the government’s business. How to do this well is the focus of this book.

The Affordable Care Act as a Collaborative Conundrum

The example of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obama Care) is a good example of how a wicked problem affecting millions of people without health insurance needed participants from across several sectors of government and the private sector to come together and pass legislation attempting to provide universal health-insurance coverage for all Americans. The legislative strategy described below outlines the interdependency of the House, Senate, President’s Office, and the Supreme Court. Managers of the different collaboratives were frequently met with barriers and blockages, both from within their own groups and when working across groups. The leaders needed negotiation skills, facilitative skills, political skills, and collaborative skills to get this piece of legislation passed.

In March 2009, the three chairs of the House of Representatives’ Committees on Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means agreed to coordinate and collaborate in an attempt to avoid turf wars that had previously scuttled many previous health-insurance reform efforts in Congress. An initial discussion draft was agreed upon in June 2009. Hearings were held in the House of Representatives over the summer, and the committee leaders introduced House Bill 3200, called America’s Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. Many conservative Democrats resisted this new approach, primarily due to its cost. It also became clear that there would not be any Republican support for the bill. On October 29, 2009 a new piece of legislation, House Bill 3962, called The Affordable Health Care for America Act was introduced, attempting to assuage the more conservative members of the Democratic caucus and to find new financing mechanisms to make the bill less costly. New provisions included a different tax structure, an exemption for insurance companies from federal antitrust laws, and an excise tax on durable medical equipment and devices. “Deals” were also cut with the pharmaceutical industry, hospital associations, and health-insurance companies to make the bill more palatable to them. These crucial, external stakeholders, along with the American Medical Association, had withheld their support from all of the earlier Congressional health-reform efforts; however, on November 7, 2009, the House Bill was passed and sent to the Senate.

The normal parliamentary procedure would be for the Senate to send the House Bill to the substantive Senate committee (i.e. The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) for consideration and possible amendments and then, after passing that committee, it would be sent to the floor of the Senate for all Senators to review and vote. If changes were made in the committee or on the floor of the Senate, the bill would have to be returned to the House for its consideration, and a compromise would have to be found that was agreeable to a majority of the members in both chambers. An alternative strategy is for the Senate to request that a conference committee with members from the House and Senate be formed to work out the differences, bypassing the Senate committee. If a final draft could be agreed by this joint committee, the leadership of each chamber would then take responsibility for obtaining a majority vote in both houses and the approved bill would be sent to the President for signature. In fact, neither of these commonly used procedures was adopted (Cannan, 2013).

In early spring of 2009, two Senate committees, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) and the Committee on Finance, had begun drafting their own versions of healthcare reform legislation. One significant change was that in the HELP Committee draft there was provision for a public option, the Community Health Insurance Option. This permitted citizens to obtain health insurance run by the federal Department of Health and Human Services and sold on newly designed, purchasing exchanges, which had been described in both the Senate and the House drafts. However, on October 7, 2009 the Senate Finance Committee reported out SB 1796, America’s Health Future Act. This version did not include the public option but did require what was called the individual mandate. Thus, there were several groups working on differing versions of a health-insurance reform bill.

The Individual Mandate: Once Called Responsible, Now Called Tyranny

The individual-mandate provision of the Senate bill required each citizen to document to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that he or she had purchased health insurance through a state exchange, through a private-insurance plan, or was covered through a public-insurance plan such as Medicaid or Medicare. If a person did not provide evidence that s/he had bought health insurance (or was covered in some way), s/he would be liable for a penalty in the form of a fine. The point of this provision was intended to prevent the “free loader” problem, which would occur if someone were to receive healthcare when they needed it, often in an emergency room or community clinic as an “uninsured person,” but that person had not previously bought a health-insurance plan and thus had not paid premiums for an insurance policy. Obviously, this is problem for those who do buy health insurance, since they would have to cover the costs of the uncompensated care provided for people who are uninsured. Premiums go up for everyone who has bought insurance when uninsured people are provided healthcare without paying for a health-insurance plan. Ironically, while most Republicans opposed the individual mandate in this legislative effort, many had supported such a provision previously, calling it a reasonable and sensible personal-responsibility alternative to the publicly funded healthcare plan proposed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. In a collaborative atmosphere or environment in which the members wanted to find a solution to the problem of millions of uninsured Americans, it would seem that a solution or a structured “zone of agreement” could be found. However, no agreement could be found because this was not the external environment – the one side’s goal of significantly increasing the federal government’s role in the provision of health insurance was not acceptable to many on the other side.

Some saw the individual-mandate provision as similar to the requirement imposed in all states to buy automobile insurance – if you drive a car, you must have insurance. Others saw the mandate as an issue to ensure personal responsibility – at some point in your life, you will need medical care, so you should have health-insurance coverage. Due to the policy differences in the two bills, the two Committee reports would now need to be merged if any bill was to get passed. This required collaboration, negotiation, and compromise. Several amendments, changes, and many compromises were made and eventually, on December 24, 2009, a bill called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obama Care) passed out of the Senate. Normally, the House’s and Senate’s pieces of legislation would then be reconciled through a conference-committee process, very much like the structure of a multi-stakeholder collaborative. Even though the members of these committees are all legislators, representing the public sector, they are also influenced by, represent, and are representative of many different constituents (e.g. rural and urban; rich communities and poor ones) and they are also influenced by lobbyists such as the American Hospital Association, AARP, the American Health Care Association, Health Insurance Plans, Physician and Nursing Home Associations, and professional associations such as American Nurses, National Association of Social Workers, and the National Disabilities Rights Network.

Governance and Rules

As is common in collaborative work, issues in the external environment change and impinge on the group negotiations. Just as these negotiations were taking place, a Republican from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, was elected to the Senate to replace Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, a major sponsor of the bill, who had died in August. This unexpected event resulted in shrinking the Democratic majority, such that it was not sufficient to stop a filibuster, which requires 60 votes in the Senate. (A filibuster is an action taken by the minority members in the Senate to delay a vote on a proposed piece of legislation by permitting a speaker to make long speeches and prevent the body from taking a vote.) The easiest solution for passage would be for the House to accept the Senate bill as drafted, but there were many House Democrats who did not like several measures in the Senate’s version. In order to avoid the 60-vote requirement to stop a filibuster, a rule only promulgated in the Senate, the Democrats opted for a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation, which was originally designed as a deficit-control procedure in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Reconciliation is a process by which the Senate can pass legislation germane to budgetary matters, with only a majority of the members voting. Reconciliation rules also limit debate to twenty hour...