Inter-Organizational Collaboration: Addressing the Challenge

9/11 and Hurricane Katrina exposed the United States' vulnerabilities within and across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. A number of breakdowns in collaboration were evident: a lack of information sharing among agencies, confused inter-organizational relationships, competing roles and responsibilities, and shortcomings in leadership.In response to these inadequacies in collaboration, scholars have engaged in theoretical and empirical work in hopes of preventing another 9/11 and enhancing overall national security. Studies about the need to collaborate have been the most prevalent. Less prevalent are studies about the "how" of collaboration. To address the "how" of collaboration, we wanted to better understand the enablers and barriers to effective inter-agency collaboration. To address this question, we queried and conducted surveys with homeland security managers across a broad range of organizations and agencies to find out what factors contribute to effective collaboration and what factors inhibit collaboration. The resulting model of collaborative capacity is presented here.Inter-Organizational Collaborative Capacity (ICC) ModelThe response planning and prevention for both man-made and natural disasters are complex problems that require the capabilities of many disciplines that have both aligned and competing interests and usually function without an over-arching command authority. Because of the lack of an integrating hierarchy, organization theory would define this as an "under-designed system." As such, it requires leadership engagement to guide, motivate, and structure the collaborations needed to be successful in the complex homeland security environment.We define Inter-organizational Collaborative Capacity (ICC) as "the capability of organizations (or a set of organizations) to enter into, develop, and sustain inter-organizational systems in pursuit of collective outcomes."1Figure 1: Organizations in a Common Problem Space2Figure 1 illustrates the simplest image of a collaborative context with two participating organizations and an inter-agency organization that share an interest in a problem space. The inter-agency organization can be a temporary task force, convened for a specific time-limited purpose, or a more formally established structure such as an intelligence fusion center. All three organizations depicted have a collaborative capacity that impacts how effectively the problem is addressed. A key assumption of this model is that building collaborative capacity requires deliberate leadership attention and the alignment of organizational design elements toward collaboration. The ICC model provides a mechanism to assess different factors that contribute to an organization's capacity to collaborate with other organizations. It can serve as a framework to diagnose current collaborative capabilities and provide data to guide organizational changes to improve those capabilities. The model is comprised of five organizational domains: Purpose and Strategy, Structure, Rewards and Incentives, People, and Lateral Mechanisms. There are thirteen factors measured by the ICC diagnostic survey that are distributed across the domains of the organizational system as illustrated in Figure 2.Figure 2: Inter-Organizational Collaborative Capacity Model: Domains and FactorsThe ICC model has three factors in the domain of Purpose and Strategy: Felt Need is the organization's recognition of interdependence with others and the acknowledged need to collaborate in order to effectively accomplish its mission and goals. Felt Need can be derived from a perceived threat or problem and thus emphasizes response capabilities; or it can be motivated by opportunity for pro-action or prevention. Strategic Actions include goals for collaboration, demonstrated senior leadership commitment, and the willingness to consider other organizations' interests in planning. …