Connecting the composition of collaborative governance structure to community‐level performance in homeless services

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Saerim Kim,Andrew Sullivan
• Date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13632

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Connecting the composition of collaborative

governance structure to community-level performance in

homeless services

Saerim Kim

1

|Andrew Sullivan

2

1

Institute for Public Service, Suffolk University,

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

2

School of Public Administration, University of

Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

Correspondence

Saerim Kim, Institute for Public Service, Suffolk

University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Email: saerim.kim@suffolk.edu

Abstract

Collaborativegovernance has become prevalent in public service provision as both

government and nonprofit sectors face pressure to solve multidimensional social

problems in communities while improving performance. Drawingon collaborative

governance and homeless services literature, this article explores how providing ser-

vices in a collaborative governance network through government and nonprofit ser-

vice providers differentially relates to multiple dimensions of performance—

effectiveness, internal efficiency, social efficiency, and service heterogeneity—at the

community level. By using a two-way fixed effects estimator and a unique nonprofit

and homeless services dataset,the findings indicate that collaborative governance

between government and nonprofit service providers relates to increased effective-

ness (e.g., less homelessness), and mixed results for service heterogeneity relative to

using one sector. The composition of collaborative governance networks matters for

performance, but its precise relationship with community-level performance

depends on the specific aspect of performance.

Evidence for practice

•The composition of collaborative governance networks matters for performance,

but its precise relationship with community-level performance depends on the

specific aspect of performance.

•Joint government-nonprofit service delivery relates to increased effectiveness–

less homelessness.

•Providing homeless services through both government and nonprofit sectors

relates to increased beds for victims of domestic violence.

Service provision has increasingly moved to a collabora-

tive governance framework, using multiple actors across

sectors to collectively make decisions and address wicked

problems (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Emerson et al., 2012). In

seeking to improve community-level outcomes by mak-

ing use of each sector’s comparative advantage, the com-

position of collaborative governance networks has

increasingly involved service delivery through both govern-

ment and nonprofit providers, with actions including joint

planning, coordinating, information sharing, and budgeting

by organizations (Provan & Kenis, 2008;Sowaetal.,2004).

Governments no longer only fund charitable organizations

to provide services, but actively invoke their participation in

collaborative governance (Mosley & Park, 2022). As a deter-

minant of the collaborative governance structure’sperfor-

mance, the composition of the network—delivering

services through either governments, nonprofits, or both—

can alter community-level performance (Smith, 2020).

Building on these theories of the composition of collabora-

tive governance networks and their performance, we ask

how the compositionof collaborative governance net-

works affects different dimensions of community-level

performance.

Communities have often used collaborative gover-

nance to address multidimensional and wicked problems

that require collective efforts from multiple sectors, such

as homelessness, food insecurity, and climate change

[Correction added on 2 May 2023, after first online publication: the affiliation of

Saerim Kim has been corrected.]

Received: 8 April 2022Revised: 22 February 2023Accepted: 1 March 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13632

734 © 2023 American Society for Public Administration.Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:734–749.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

(Andrews & Entwistle, 2010; Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015).

Communities often lack control over the severity of

wicked problems given factors outside of their control,

including environment and resource munificence

(Milward & Provan, 2003; Sullivan et al., 2021). Taking the

case of homelessness, homeless service providers typi-

cally only help people who have already entered home-

lessness and can do little to prevent homelessness in the

community. As such, a community’s rate of homelessness

often depends on external factors, such as the poverty

rate, housing costs, demographic composition, the federal

safety net, and even climate (Fargo et al., 2013). Collabo-

rative governance can potentially moderate these factors

to achieve greater performance in the community,

depending on its structure and processes. However, com-

munities typically have multiple goals related to perfor-

mance, including effectiveness, efficiency, and meeting

heterogeneous demands.

Following the literature on collaborative governance,

we ask how delivering services through both the govern-

ment and nonprofit sectors affects multiple dimensions

of community-level performance. We study the context of

homeless services as communities provide services

through a collaborative governance regime called Contin-

uums of Care (CoC). A CoC is a local service delivery and

funding structure that includes various government enti-

ties and charitable service providers jointly addressing

homelessness. CoCs provide an appropriate context as

they vary in service provision structure with respect to

government-nonprofit service delivery and have multiple,

measurable performance indicators at the CoC level.

Several studies have emphasized the importance of

multidimensional performance measures in collaborative

governance but focus predominantly on fragmentary per-

formance perspectives or provide inconsistent findings.

For instance, Andrews and Entwistle (2010) studied multi-

dimensional performance in cross-sectoral partnerships,

including three measures: effectiveness, internal effi-

ciency, and equity. However, they only theorized how

public-nonprofit partnerships can improve performance

through equity. This approach can neglect how charitable

and public service providers’unique missions, priorities,

and abilities can holistically accumulate to shift the

actions and performance of service providers among mul-

tiple dimensions of performance (Andrews &

Entwistle, 2010; Cheng, 2019). Mosley and Park (2022)

explored how collaborative governance in homeless ser-

vices affects one of HUD’s policy outcomes—reducing

homelessness—by using administrative data and survey

data of CoCs. They analyzed the processes of collabora-

tive networks and how they reduce chronic homeless-

ness. Their study raises another question of how aspects

of collaborative governance relate to other performance

factors in homeless services, such as internal and social

efficiency, as well as service diversity at the community

level. We extend this literature to see whether composi-

tion differentially relates to dimensions of performance.

This article makes several theoretical and methodo-

logical contributions to the literature on collaborative

governance and multidimensional performance. Situated

in the context of homeless services in 367 CoCs, this arti-

cle connects the composition of collaborative governance

between government and nonprofit homeless service

providers to multiple measures of community-level per-

formance. In doing so, this article contributes to the litera-

ture by studying which sectoral composition should

deliver services to improve the performance of collabora-

tive governance at the community level.

Second, this article broadens the diverse dimensions

of collaborative governance performance by integrating

effectiveness, internal efficiency, social efficiency, and ser-

vice heterogeneity into community-level performance.

This article argues that a multidimensional understanding

of performance is essential for evaluating performance in

a collaborative setting. Lastly, by relaxing the linearity

assumption, this article estimates a nonlinear model to

generate a more nuanced understanding of government-

nonprofit service delivery and its relation to community-

level performance. We test hypotheses by estimating

two-way fixed effects estimators, controlling for bias from

observed and unobserved characteristics. We also use a

novel panel dataset, coding over 16,000 homeless service

providers by sector from 2012 to 2019. Results indicate

the composition of a collaborative governance network

matters, although its precise relationship with

community-level performance depends on measurement

of performance. Providing services through both govern-

ment and nonprofit organizations relates to improved

effectiveness. However, it does not relate to internal or

social efficiency and has a mixed relationship with service

heterogeneity. The findings contribute to the existing lit-

erature on government-nonprofit service delivery and

inform current policy and management discussions of

alternative ways of providing homeless services.

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: HOMELESS

COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE IN THE US

Homelessness provides a useful context to study the

composition of collaborative governance networks and

performance as the federal government has historically

used government-nonprofit service delivery to help peo-

ple experiencing homelessness (Kim & Sullivan, 2021;

Mosley, 2021). The Department of Housing and Urban

Development (HUD) requires each community to create a

local planning body, a Continuum of Care (CoC), to pre-

vent and reduce homelessness. CoCs coordinate local

homeless service providers within their geographic bor-

ders. Homeless services include housing services with var-

ious levels of intended length of support, ranging from

days to years. In 2017, around 380 CoCs covered the

entire US without overlapping areas, typically being a

concentrated metro/urban area or a broad rural area.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW735