Terrence Thomas¹, Cihat Gunden²

(1. Department of Agribusiness, Applied Economics and Agriscience Education,

School of Agriculture and Environmental Science, North Carolina A&T State University, USA;

2. Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, Ege University, Turkey)

 

 

Abstract: Improving the practice of collaboration among public, private and the non-governmental sectors is critical given the urgency, importance and complexity of the problems that need resolving to improve quality of life for everyone. Advancing the practice of collaboration requires a sturdy reciprocal relationship between theory and practice in which theory informs practice and practice informs theory. This study seeks to determine the extent to which theoretically deduced concepts of collaboration actually mesh with empirically derived concepts of collaboration. The study employed a series of listening sessions and a telephone survey to collect data from community-based organizations (CBOs) to identify empirical elements, which COBs consider important in forming successful collaboratives. These elements and the underlying dimensions derived by factor analysis are compared with concepts deduced from a review of the extant literature. Results show that, in general, there is a high degree of convergence between the theory and the practice of collaboration in the sample studied, although there are a few gaps in practice based on the theoretical prescriptions and a few differences in how some concepts are operationalized in practice. Understanding the factors that promote collective action will improve our chances of building collaboratives that can achieve collective impact.

 

 

Key words: community-based organizations; collective Impact; collaborative decision-making; collaboration;

complex problems

 

JEL codes: D70, D71, C38