Navigating the Complexities of Collaboration

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12193
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Date: 01 March 2014

Book Reviews 281

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 2, pp. 281–283. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12193.

Marc Esteve is a lecturer in the School

of Public Policy, University College London.

His primary research interests focus on

understanding how individual characteris-

tics inf‌l uence decision making, specif‌i cally

in interorganizational collaborations. He

is currently delving more deeply into the

mechanisms and effects of personality

in the context of collaboration by using

experimental designs.

E-mail: marc.esteve@ucl.ac.uk

A major problem when studying collaboration is the

many def‌i nitions of‌f ered in the literature. Some are

narrow, while others are broad. In this regard, the

author takes a broad approach, focusing not just on

one type of collaboration but instead addressing the

management of relational arrangements such as grants

and regulations, purchase-of-service contracting,

networking, and other sorts of partnerships. Table

1.1 in chapter 1, in which the author describes the

continuum of collaboration, is a very useful refer-

ence tool.  e existing literature does not strictly

def‌i ne terms such as collaborations, partnerships, and

networks, and sometimes they connote very dif‌f erent

types of interactions between organizations. Agranof‌f

of‌f ers detailed explanations of the dif‌f erent types

of collaborations that currently occur.  e author’s

ef‌f orts to dif‌f erentiate the elements of the collabora-

tion continuum make this, in my opinion, one of the

most interesting insights of the book.

In chapter 1, “To Manage Is to Collaborate,” Agranof‌f

argues that no public organization falls outside

the collaborative arena, and this frames the entire

book by showing what this means in the reality of

public organizations. Currently, an array of public

policies are delivered within diverse cross-sectoral

arrangements, presenting management with new

complexities that must be carefully considered.  e

author highlights the types of complex problems that

must be solved through collaboration by of‌f ering

examples on several policy areas such as rural devel-

opment, transportation planning, and emergency

management.

 e chapters in the book are not linked particularly

tightly, but each one of‌f ers valuable insights into the

management of collaborations, taking up six themes

that draw on several dimensions of collaboration.

 e second chapter, “Intergovernmentalization and

Collaborative Public Management,” expands on the

importance of the legal framework in the develop-

ment of collaborations and uses the case of how to

integrate people with disabilities through collabora-

tion among multiple public organizations and non-

governmental organizations. An interesting claim is

Robert Agranof‌f , Collaborating to Manage: A Primer

for the Public Sector (Washington, DC: Georgetown

University Press, 2012). 288 pp. $29.95 (paper),

ISBN: 9781589019164; $29.95 (eBook), ISBN:

9781589019171.

Collaboration has been def‌i ned as an impera-

tive within public organizations, whether they

operate at the local, regional, or national level

(O’Leary and Blomgren 2009).  e complexity of the

challenges that today’s managers must address is such

that they can no longer solve them alone, and so they

f‌i nd themselves working in collaboration with other

organizations from the public, private, and nonprof‌i t

sectors (Bryson, Crosby, and Stone 2006).  e reasons

for this new imperative are many. As  omson and

Perry state, “devolution, rapid technological change,

scarce resources, and rising organizational interde-

pendencies are driving increasing levels of collabora-

tion” (2006, 20). Despite extensive research on why

governments should collaborate, we still know little

regarding how to successfully manage such ventures.

More importantly, the little we know is dispersed and

fragmented into multiple outlets and venues, making

it hard for the neophyte as well as the mature scholar

to know where to start looking for insights and how

to discern what is helpful.

Robert Agranof‌f ’s book Collaborating to Manage: A

Primer for the Public Sector provides, in a single venue

and with great elegance, an integrated overview of

the unique public management challenges of work-

ing with other organizations. In doing so, Agranof‌f

helps answer the question of how to successfully

develop collaborations in the complex environment

that public managers face. Agranof‌f is one of the

most distinguished scholars of interorganizational

collaboration in the literature of public management.

His new book wonderfully condenses many years of

experience and knowledge in this f‌i eld. It successfully

identif‌i es the basics of collaborative management by

of‌f ering a comprehensive and compact overview of the

theory and practice of collaboration.  is book, then,

represents a successful attempt to identify the basics of

collaborative management.

Navigating the Complexities of Collaboration

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Marc Esteve

University College London, United Kingdom