Linking Collaboration Processes and Outcomes: Foundations for Advancing Empirical Theory

Scholars and practitioners of public and nonprofit management share an interest in understanding the outcomes of the increasingly studied but little understood process called collaboration. That interdependence is the fundamental nature of organizations is nothing new. Resource dependency theory has asserted this reality for a long time That interdependence characterizes collaboration is also hardly new (Graddy and Chen 2006; Thomson and Perry 2006). Unfortunately, collaboration processes manifest a number of key dimensions that complicate our ability as scholars to examine collaboration outcomes (Thomson and Perry 2006). To begin to understand collaboration as a process that yields particular outcomes, it is helpful to start with Gray and Wood's (1991) theoretical framework for studying collaboration. To understand collaboration, they argue, scholars need to examine three areas: antecedents to collaboration, the process of collaboration itself, and the outcomes of that process (13). It is noteworthy, however, that these three categories are rarely modeled clearly in collaboration research. Scholars often simultaneously associate antecedents with collaboration processes and outcomes, for example, and fail to distinguish mediating from outcome variables. The literature spanning interorganizational relations (Ring and Van de Ven 1994), policy implementation (O'Toole 1997), cooperation theory (Axelrod 1984), and collaboration research (Huxham 1996) abound with variables likely to enhance collaborations , but these variables either go unanalyzed or are not systematically modeled. Furthermore, process dimensions of collaboration are frequently presented as outcomes (Wood and Gray 1991). The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how a multidimensional model of col