Collaborating Externally: Inter-organizational Collaboration

Dr. Salmons

Partnerships, alliances, or special projects can bring together multiple players from the private and public sectors. Dr. Wilson, can you help us understand some of the particular issues for leaders to guide or participate in inter-organizational collaboration?

Dr. Wilson

The personal example I am going to discuss is about an inter-organizational collaboration together with challenges inherent in other boundary crossing interactions. My collaboration is also inter-cultural, because we are dealing with urban and westernized cultures, together with rural and ethnic entities. Also our collaboration has representatives from different organizational cultures. Governmental, non-governmental organizations, and project companies. As I tell you my story, think on these things, what cultures might be represented in your own collaboration? Mine is also multinational, developed country and developing country collaborators. Are you dealing with multinational collaborations?

As I give my example, consider how the types of the inter-organizational issues that I face may relate to your arenas. I conceived out and framed a consortium from my point of view as a non-profit organization, in teaming up with a private company, a publisher partner, that in itself is one type of inter-organizational collaboration. One between an NGO and a private company. We jointly agreed upon a mission to support interdisciplinary efforts that embeds sustainability, human health, climate change, and public policy perspectives, in order to effectively address population health concerns. This collaboration spans disciplines, geographic regions and cultures, knowledge perspectives, and it represents a theoretical to practical application continuum.

The organization as a consortium involves research teams built from representatives from universities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, based in both developing and developed countries. These teams bring different knowledge bases. People are trained in different ways that shape how they view the world, and when those view points come together, what counts as knowledge maybe different. Business, has a more practical view, and the scientists want to know what the scientific method was used, and how it was observed. And the non-profit wants to see how -- what is happening in the consortium as applied within their community?

What counts as knowledge has to be negotiated among individuals who are representatives of their organizations, of their sectors, and of their cultures simultaneously. Next, it is critical to look at what we are going to do within this collaboration through a synchronous and asynchronous online discourse, and interactive geographic information system mapping. Participants who actively evaluate with others in their group, current accepted baseline climate and health information and data, together with their assumptions from the relative societies. Data as well as process, will emerge throughout the collaboration. Ah, perhaps this is an emergent collaboration.

Some information will be procured to available datasets, some through ongoing work, and some postulated as a product of participating in this form, interactive GIS at the work group level will be followed by a combined effort, which will combine and provide maps of project efforts and structure for self analysis of the outcomes of the consortium by the participants.

I mentioned this might be an emergent collaboration, but what starts an emergent process may morph into a strategic collaboration. Teams may change, combine, or even split. We openly encourage new groups to form and to create new projects. These new projects maybe sponsored, grants maybe procured that may require different partners. One current group is challenged to get a private party as part of their organization, because otherwise they are all universities, and they did not want to have to operate under the sponsorship of the requirements of university participation.

When you were introduced to emergent, strategic, or sponsored, these types of collaborations, you may have thought they were discreet processes. As you can see, often there is a lot of interplay, especially in an interdisciplinary collaboration, where actions are frequently tied to larger goals. So what kinds of collaborations might you want to encourage as you develop your work? And how can you avoid painting yourself into a corner?

Here are some of the things I have found to be important in staying out of that corner. First it is important to attract the most appropriate participants or what is in it for us, what is in it for them. For us, they had to know their topics, be willing to work in a virtual environment, and adhere to the philosophy behind the project. Of these, the deal breaker for us is a social mission, which is to find creative and new potential solutions at the nexus of climate change adaption and human health with special emphasis on at-risk populations, children, seniors, people in geographically vulnerable regions. For them, they got to book chapter in an international project and intellectually stimulating real life interdisciplinary problem to work on new partners they would not otherwise need.

The process culminates with an in-person conference to spur further collaborations. So what we have done is carefully plan selection criteria, so that we can negotiate the boundaries upfront. The consortium composition spans disciplines, geographic regions and cultures, knowledge perspectives, and that theoretical to practical continuum.

Therefore, the best opportunities for participation will be for those who have a documented research in the field, an advance degree, interdisciplinary interests, know how to work online, and understand that their work has global implications, even what they are doing is on a local or a regional scale.

So what kinds of questions would you need to ask yourself in order to keep yourself from being painted into a corner?

Balancing flexibility and structure is important to allow us to deliver on our promise while the members of the collaboration are allowed to develop new knowledge. To do this, we use tools for organizing an analysis, to assist in that effort such as GIS and decision support tools.
But keeping the collaboration flexible and structured means, integrating as expertise from multi-disciplines, engaging the participants in creating and sustaining a process that keeps it relevant for the individuals and for their organizations, and allowing for an encouraging self-organization.
They need to analyze potential adaptive responses within the process, as well as decision options, and we need to be conscious that we create new options through interdisciplinary and inter-cultural synergies that we will develop during the course of the process.

Finally, we are producing a set of research agendas that identify and prioritize key knowledge gaps, which gives the participant something to look forward to beyond the collaboration at hand. How might these ideas impact your complex inter-organizational collaborations, and what leadership skills do you believe you need to help you best navigate this trend?

Dr. Salmons

As you have described, our digitally connected global economy and society creates lead for 21st century leaders who can cross all kinds of boundaries. As you have discussed, when businesses may have to work with governments, NGOs, community organizations, or other stakeholders, depending on the work they need to achieve.

So as you move forward with the assignments for this unit, think about some of the ways leaders can support complex multi-party collaborations.