Obstacles and Motivators for Partnership Formation in a Multidimensional Environment

Fowler, Luke

doi:10.1111/polp.12293

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Second, most scholars focus on partnerships that successfully form, as compared to partnership that were proposed but never came to fruition. While the latter may be difficult to identify, it may also hold some potentially significant insight to why partnerships form, especially where administrative logic and contextual factors would predict a partnership, but in reality, one never manifested (Fowler, 2019).…”

Section: Review Articlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key Questions for Forming Partnerships: A Review and Research Agenda

Fowler¹

2021

CGN

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Partnerships receive significant attention in public administration scholarship, with the mass of this literature focusing on whether partnerships work, how to make them work, or how they fit into existing institutions (Provan and Milward, 2001; Vigoda, 2002; McGuire, 2006; Thomson and Perry, 2006; Andrews and Entwistle, 2010; McQuaid, 2010; O’Toole, 2015). Although partnership has been used variously by different scholars, in general, partnerships refer to formal arrangements between two or more organizations that are characterized by defined responsibilities, obligations, and/or governance structure, as compared to other forms of cooperative behaviors which may be more informal, unorganized, or involve few obligations. In general, existing scholarship on partnership formation argues that partnerships are a function of resource-exchanges, available partners, or fragmented authorities, and assumes a pragmatic managerial approach to these arrangements (Grady and Chen, 2006; Feiock and Scholz, 2009). However, scholarship is limited in linking these mechanisms together and explaining how organizations go from isolated and autonomous to integrated and interdependent. As such, it is difficult to determine how initial decisions in the partnership process eventually lead to success or failure in collaboration. Furthermore, much of this scholarship is written with a solely academic audience in mind, making difficult for practitioners, non-academics, or non-subject area experts to consume. To remedy this, we use Cohen, March, and Olsen’s (1972) Garbage Can Theory (GCT) of organizational choice as a guiding framework to identify key issues that affect partnerships formation and tie this disjointed set of literature together. We then synthesize these issues into three key questions that can be operationalized by practitioners: 1) is there a problem that cannot be managed unilaterally?; 2) what new capacities are needed?; and 3) what partnership opportunities are there? From this perspective, forming partnerships unfolds in organized anarchies, where decision-makers must sort through ambiguous problems, solutions, and participants in order to determine if partnership is the right choice for their organization. In general, the purpose of this discussion is to identify and examine key issues that likely affect partnership choices made by practitioners and that can provide guidance to those who are considering engaging in collaboration or partnership. Finally, we discuss links between partnership formation and broader understandings of collaborations and networks.

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Section: Review Articlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key Questions for Forming Partnerships: A Review and Research Agenda

Fowler¹

2021

CGN

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“…More specifically, collaboration risks arise when coordinating activities require a loss autonomy in order to centralize decisions, benefits cannot be equitability divided among participants, or where decisions by one participant negatively impact other participants (Feiock, 2013). To this end, previous scholarship indicates risks associated with specific types of partners are a key obstacle to forming collaborative arrangements, even if the benefits are evident (Fowler, 2019; Terman, Feiock, & Youm, 2020). Additionally, transaction costs are associated with the information, bargaining, and enforcement costs of managing collaborations, where externally imposed decisions increase the amount of the overall cost of providing public service.…”

Section: Institutional Collective Action Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the limited jurisdictional controls of most municipalities, and to a lesser extent, states, a primary incentive for cooperation is the capacity to create a comprehensive institutional strategy for managing policy problems through cooperation (Andrews & Entwistle, 2010; Fowler, 2019). In many cases, subnational governments may lack the authority to solve a policy problem, or at least, to find an efficient solution, and national government may lack the implementation resources or expertise to see it enacted.…”

Section: Local Policy Innovation and Vertical Power Conflictsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, there are institutional barriers that tend to complicate vertical cooperation. Most significantly, due to hierarchical controls, federal agencies have a habit of turning state or local governments into compliance managers, forcing them to give up autonomy (Agranoff & McGuire, 2001; Fowler, 2019; Krueger & Bernick, 2010; Scicchitano & Hedge, 1993; Wood & Bohte, 2004). As such, when federal policy regimes fail to solve local problems, subnational governments may find it more advantageous to instead challenge these regimes and develop policies that better fit their communities (Feiock & Scholz, 2009).…”

Section: Local Policy Innovation and Vertical Power Conflictsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Institutional Collective Action on Drugs: Functional and Vertical Dilemmas of Unused Pharmaceuticals

Hubbard

Fowler

2020

Review of Policy Research

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The authors use the Institutional Collective Action Framework to analyze the barriers, opposition, and opportunities for residential pharmaceutical disposal programs in the United States via a case study on a series of take-back programs pioneered in the state of Washington by local and state governments, as well as the corresponding backlash from federal agencies. While successful in some ways, these innovative solutions directly challenged the competing federal policy regimes controlled by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and, to a lesser extent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Findings from case studies suggest that functional dilemmas created by existing institutions with entrenched regulatory regimes are a key challenge to finding efficient solutions to vertical ICA dilemmas. Conclusions, then, connect to the broader ICA research agenda, and implications for multi-level governance issues.

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“…In addition, translating national programmes into local communities requires the creation and maintenance of political coalitions that legitimize and support administrative decisions, so local governments provide political capital to programmes that is essential for success (Reed ). While local agencies are an asset in intergovernmental implementation, they also create uncertainty in how policy is implemented, so there are institutional barriers that constrain how state and local agencies interact (Potoski 1999, 2002; Feiock and Scholz ; Fowler ). As a result, recent scholarship notes an increasing level of policy innovation from local air agencies as they attempt to fill gaps in state and/or federal programmes (Woods and Potoski ; Fowler , ; Fowler and Rabinowitz ).…”

Section: Context Of Air Quality Management In the Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governance, federalism and organizing institutions to manage complex problems

Fowler

2019

Public Administration

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In managing complex policy problems in the federal system, state and local governments are organized into different arrangements for translating policy goals into policy outcomes. Air quality management is used as a test case to understand these variations and their impact on policy outcomes. With data from Clean Air Act implementation plans and a survey of state and local air quality managers, five separate institutional designs are identified: (1) central agencies; (2) top‐down; (3) donor–recipient; (4) regional agencies; and (5) emergent governance. Findings indicate that some arrangements (donor–recipient and emergent governance) result in notably better air quality than others (central agencies, top‐down). Specifically, when designed to allow bargaining between state and local officials, intergovernmental management is still the most effective approach to complex policy problems; but, in absence of this, conventional federalism arrangements are less effective than public agencies self‐organizing around shared policy goals.

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Obstacles and Motivators for Partnership Formation in a Multidimensional Environment

Cited by 6 publications

References 61 publications

Key Questions for Forming Partnerships: A Review and Research Agenda

Key Questions for Forming Partnerships: A Review and Research Agenda

Institutional Collective Action on Drugs: Functional and Vertical Dilemmas of Unused Pharmaceuticals

Governance, federalism and organizing institutions to manage complex problems

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