Building the Foundations of Collaboration: From Housing Development to Community Renewal

The Relationship between Pre-Collaboration and Community Resiliency: A Case of Housing Renewal Project in New Zealand

“…While there is little literature that suggests building a foundation for collaboration, some scholars clearly acknowledge that collaborative initiatives often involve a history of antagonism, conflict and distrust between actors (Andranovich, 1995;Ansell & Gash, 2008;Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015;Emerson, Nabatchi, & Balogh, 2012;Gray, 1989;Gunton & Day, 2003;Karaminejad et al, 2020;Margerum, 2002;O'Flynn & Wanna, 2008;Warner, 2006). For example, where there is already distrust between a local community and government agencies because of agencies former top-down plans and projects in that community, marginalisation and community exclusion.…”

“…The context and history of antagonism can present real challenges for practitioners. Moreover, other scholars have highlighted a history of power and capability imbalance between actors who are intending to collaborate and work together (Ansell & Gash, 2008;Emerson et al, 2012;Karaminejad et al, 2020). For example, when collaboration begins officials and stakeholders from well-established groups may already have a mandate, experience, information and a wealth of other resources.…”

“…Consequently, in the real world, the context may not be ready for actors to work together and, in spite of that, most theories and scholars who write about collaboration, often define it as a process that starts directly with sitting around the table and working together (often formally) to address an important issue that is often called public affairs. In response to this dilemma, in our earlier work Karaminejad, Vallance & Montgomery (2020), we highlighted the importance of addressing the issues of pre-existing conflicts, power and capability imbalances between participants before, rather than during, formal negotiations or by actual collaboration to address a key issue. We suggested sufficient attention being given to what is called the "pre-collaboration" phase where a "foundation" is built before more formal processes.…”

“…While the projects were initially initiated to focus on housing renewal, before doing any work related to housing, the public agencies patiently spent a considerable amount of time and money on building trust and relationships with the local communities, building community leadership, community capability and collective mobilization, building a mandate (Memorandum of Understanding), and letting the public define the key issues or projects. Accordingly, we Karaminejad, Vallance & Montgomery (2020) claimed that these factors are critical "pre-conditions" that build a "foundation" for any sort of collaborative activity where local communities are a type of "stakeholder". This foundational phase or pre-collaboration stage makes the actors and the context collaborative-ready and this can be achieved through addressing small problems that may be seen to be in a tangent to the larger project but build trust, relationships, leadership, capacity and capability (Karaminejad et al, 2020).…”

“…In this paper, we question why bother trying to meet these qualities as they have been heavily criticized as difficult to achieve in the real world. More importantly, in the earlier research Karaminejad, Vallance & Montgomery (2020), criticized the collaboration theory for giving less attention to the context, history and future of collaboration. We argued that collaboration happens over different stages, so different outcomes are achieved over different timescales.…”