public administration COLLABORATION

Student name Student number Tutor`s name Subject name Subject number Date PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND COLLABORATION PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION-Collaboration Introduction Collaboration refers to the process of shared discovery that creates or enhances value as a result of altering the way of doing something. It has a transformational aspect to it too; the participants in a collaboration process experience a change because they give a part of themselves and fill up that void with something new. In a collaborative process, all the parties involved present something on the table. This can be in the form of expertise, financial resources, knowledge and any other resource that might be of importance to the larger goal. After putting what they have brought to the table, they hand over the control and manipulation of these items to the team that is tasked with ensuring the process is a success. (Thompson & Perrey, 2006) Anne Marie Thompson and James Perry (n.d.) propose that public managers can benefit greatly if they get to understand what collaboration is. Much research on the collaboration process is sourced from studies that have been carried out outside the field of public administration. Such information often highlights knowledge important to such managers. Secondly, collaboration can only be well managed if the managers have a concise understanding on what collaboration is. They also put forward the argument that collaboration doesn`t have an "either/or" kind of definition. To elaborate on this argument they point public administrators to a ‘black box of collaboration processes`. In this black box of collaboration processes, there is a complex configuration of five variable dimensions. Public managers are hereby advised to ensure they have a grasp of these variables. After understanding them, the managers should make a conscious effort to manipulate them in subsequent collaboration processes which they will be part of. The five variables found in the black box are governance, administration, organizational autonomy, mutuality and lastly norms of trust and reciprocity. Within the black box, the process of collaboration occurs through repetitive processes of negotiating, coming up with commitments and the translation of these commitments into actions. These stages of collaboration don`t randomly occur. They take place in a predetermined loop thus giving collaboration its cyclic nature. In 1994, Ring and Van de Ven (1975) came up with a practical framework that illustrated the collaboration process. The first stage is Negotiation. At this stage both formal interactions take place in form of bargaining as well as more informal forms such as convincing. The second stage is commitment and at this stage, parties involved pledge to meet certain...