As most of the collaboration literature focuses on what makes successful partnerships, and not necessarily on what makes successful collaborative strategic management, the first step was to determine what the phases of collaborative strategic management are. While in practice some strategic management processes might be deliberate and linear, others might be emergent, evolutionary, have their phases intertwined, or even have some steps reversed. Still, there is value in teasing apart the phases when considering success factors. The five phases used for this literature review are: collaborative alliance formation, collaborative strategic plan formulation, deliberate & emergent collaborative strategy implementation per organization, deliberate & emergent collaborative strategy implementation, and outcomes achieved.

Below is a summary of both the structural and interpersonal factors per phase and the factors ongoing throughout the entire process. These factors update the 1985 article by Gray [3] where she outlines facilitating conditions for each of three collaboration phases. It is interesting that the partnership formation phase has most of the same factors considered in 1985, with a few revisions from more recent studies, but the implementation phases are almost entirely new content from the last 22 years; some of which has been considered in the collaboration literature, but most of which this review extrapolated to the collaborative level from the organizational strategy literature.

Collaborative Alliance Formation Factors:

§          Convener’s Legitimacy, Power & Resources: A convener’s role is to identify and bring stakeholders together. For this to succeed, they need legitimate authority to organize, and the power and resources to do so.

§          Legitimacy of Organizations & Issues: The organizations involved must have a legitimate stake in the problem (from the perspective of the other partner organizations), and the issue itself must be believed to be important for organizations to want to engage.

§          Multi-Sectoral Stakeholder Involvement: The organizational partners need to reflect the diversity of the social problem, which in many cases is multi-sectoral. The partners’ perception of the value and effectiveness of engaging will affect involvement.

Ongoing Factors (throughout all phases):

§          Individual Organization (and its Representative’s) Leadership & Commitment: It takes commitment and leadership from the individual partner organization to become involved in the partnership and to participate in the strategy formulation, but also to contribute to the implementation. The importance of individual champions can not be overstated.

§          Collective Leadership & Trust: The collective leadership stems from the participants, structure and process. Trust-building between organizations and organizational types begins when potential partners start to define their involvement in the partnership, and from past inter-actions.

§          Communication and Roles: Role definition is critical, as it is one aspect of clear communication between partners. One role that should also be considered is that of external support organizations.

§          Situational Factors: Situational factors are outside the problem issue and organizational partners, but may still affect the success of the initiative. These include regime type of the government, legal framework and regulations, and level of organization already existing within the problem domain.

Collaborative Strategic Plan Formulation Factors:

§          Negotiation Type: When formulating a collaborative strategic plan, negotiation between partners exists, whether it be formal or not. This is generally done through repeated interactions so that trust may be built, and the topic and roles understood. The process must allow for all partners to engage and fulfill their roles regardless of capacity. It must also allow for individual representatives to secure organizational commitments.

§          Values, Understanding & Collective Identity: Shared values, common appreciation of the problem, common goals, common vision, and collective identity take time to develop, but improve the success of the collaboration.

§          Comprehensive Content: Depending on the purpose of the partnership, the level of detail that will be needed in the collaborative strategic plan.

Deliberate &Emergent Strategy Implementation per Organization Factors:

§          Strategy Coherence & Project Plans: For organizations to individually aid in the implementation, their own policies, plans and/or programs must be coherent with the collective strategic direction, which may require internal changes.

§          Control Mechanisms: Control mechanisms within the partner organization may include budgeting for resource allocation, personnel performance appraisal, monitoring and feedback on the program achievements, and reporting.

§          Learning & Diffusion: For the organizational change due to the new collective strategy, diffusion of the new content and organizational learning are needed. Part of this is developing shared understanding of (and belief in) the new content.

Deliberate & Emergent Collaborative Strategy Implementation Factors:

§          Sustained Interest: Over time, with turn-over in individual representatives, also perhaps in partners, sustaining interest may be kept by expanding the original strategy.

§          Collective Structure & Resources: Structure drives the way agendas are implemented, and collective resources encourage partners to stay involved. This may result in a new organization whose role it is to manage the collaboration implementation.

§          Collective Evaluation Mechanisms: Includes collective evaluation controls and reinforcement initiatives.

§          Corrective Action & Emergent Solutions: Key to any strategic management process is to allow for corrective action and emergent solutions.

This list of factors is likely to be inter-correlated and each factor ranges in significance depending on the specific partnership. They are also developed from both conceptual and empirically-based academic literature. It is worth noting that the collaborations considered in the literature varied widely in their purpose and outcome types. The outcome types discussed included: plan outcomes related to the social problem itself; action outcomes of what responses were taken (such as public information sessions held); collaboration process outcomes; organizational learning outcomes, and personal outcomes for the representatives. The factors that will most affect the overall success will depend on which type of outcome is of most interest to the partner. In general, this literature review contributes to the development of theory about collaborative strategic management by conceptually suggesting process phases and factors per phase.

References:

1.       Clarke, A. and A. Erfan, Regional Sustainability Strategies: A Comparison of Eight Canadian Approaches. Plan Canada, (forthcoming in 2007).

2.       Clarke, A. Furthering Collaborative Strategic Management Theory: Process Model and Factors Per Phase. Paper presented at: Academy of Management. 2007. Philadelphia, USA.

3.       Gray, B., Conditions Facilitating Interorganizational Collaboration. Human Relations, 1985. 38(10): pp 911-936.