Relations, resources, and costs: exploring cross-sectoral collaboration at the local level in a developing country

Abstract

Collaboration across sectors at the local level is seen as beneficial to both non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local governments. Cited benefits are framed by institutional, resource dependence, and transaction cost perspectives and are often examined in a western, developed nation context. This article uses a novel sample of local governments and NGOs in Lebanon to examine whether constructs derived from these dominant theoretical frameworks explain cross-sector collaborative tendencies in the context of a developing country. We conclude that measures related to resource dependence can provide some explanatory power for collaboration behavior, but a better explanation of local government–NGO collaboration in developing countries will require reaching beyond commonly used constructs from existing dominant theories; future research toward that end is a worthwhile endeavor.

Notes

1 Such a practice might be partially due to that fact that the local governments were not functioning until 1996 when the first election took place after the civil war in the country (Haase and Antoun 2015).

2 Respondents were asked to report their organization’s budget sizes as small, medium, or large relative to other organizations within the same sector in the country.

3 Respondents were asked to report their staff size as small, medium, or large relative to other organizations within the same sector in the country.

4 Among the control variables tested but not displayed in Figure 1, means differences are significant for all three location variables, but not for staff size. The estimates in the correlation matrix (Appendix 3) are consistent with expected directions (as in Table 1) for the variables derived from Institutional theory, one of the two derived from Resource Dependence theory, but neither of the two derived from Transaction Cost theory.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M and American University's School of Public Affairs' Excellence with Impact Initiative and Metropolitan Policy Center.

Notes on contributors

Khaldoun AbouAssi

Khaldoun AbouAssi ([email protected]) is an associate professor of public administration and policy in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University. He holds a PhD. in public administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. His primary research focuses on public and nonprofit management, examining organizational capacity, resources, and inter-organizational relations.

Ann O’M. Bowman

Ann O’M. Bowman ([email protected]) is Professor and Hazel Davis and Robert Kennedy Endowed Chair in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Her PhD is in political science from the University of Florida. Her research focuses on intergovernmental relations, in particular, interactions among subnational governments.

Jocelyn M. Johnston

Jocelyn M. Johnston ([email protected]) is Professor of Public Administration and Policy at American University. She earned MPA and PhD degrees in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University after serving for ten years in local government administering intergovernmental programs. Her research focuses on government contracting and third-party service delivery, cross-boundary service collaboration, and intergovernmental programs and policies.

Zachary Bauer

Zachary Bauer ([email protected]) holds a Ph.D. in public administration from American University’s School of Public Affairs. He is a public management scholar and practitioner specializing in collaboration and contracting and has published in premier public administration journals. Bauer is a management consultant for the US Department of Homeland Security.

Long Tran

Long Tran ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University's John Glenn College of Public Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in public administration at the American University's School of Public Affairs. His research examines nonprofit and public management, focusing especially on questions related to cooperation and coordination.