Collaboration Processes and Institutional Structure: Reexamining the Black Box

Abstract

Building on previous models of collaboration processes, this article expands and revises the antecedent-process-outcome framework used to explain collaboration. The article discusses why this framework needs to be expanded to include the element of institutional structure. We propose a modified framework to explain collaboration that includes a typology of citizen-based, agency-based, and mixed partnerships. Furthermore, the article draws from the expansive body of literature on watershed collaboration to propose additional antecedents that influence institutional structures and, in turn, alter the process patterns in the collaboration “black box.”

Keywords:

• collaboration
• institutional structure
• partnerships
• watershed

Notes

¹ The US Coast Guard is a prime example of this kind of mandate. In order to accomplish its many missions, the Coast Guard must collaborate with state and local governments, other federal agencies, private companies, and individual citizens and citizen groups. The collaboration partners are generally not required to collaborate; they do so because they see benefit to collaboration with the Coast Guard. See McNamara and Morris (2014).