Collaboration, strategic plans, and government performance: the case of efforts to reduce homelessness

ABSTRACT

Practice has outpaced our empirical knowledge of the role and impact of collaboration on the design and effect of strategic plans. It is this lack of awareness and understanding of the phenomenon that motivates the research presented in this paper. We explore empirically the linkage between collaboratively developed strategic plans and governmental effort to ameliorate a public problem through a mixed-method approach using panel data analysis. The findings demonstrate that the existence of a collaborative strategic plan and the presence of various components of a plan’s design increase the number of beds made available for homeless individuals in the US. Homelessness is one of the most intractable social and economic problems in the US, but our analysis demonstrates that a collaborative plan design can be one mechanism to help address the problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• strategic plans
• homelessness
• mixed methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Lee

David Lee is a visiting lecturer in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, where he earned a Ph.D. in Public Affairs. His research interests focus on intergovernmental and interorganizational collaboration, strategic planning, and human resource management in the public sector.

Michael McGuire

Michael McGuire is a professor and executive associate dean in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has expertise in public management and intergovernmental relations, focusing on how public managers operate and lead collaborative networks of organizations. He has won numerous awards for his published scholarship and teaching. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Jong Ho Kim

Jong Ho Kim is a professor of Department of Public Administration at Kyung Hee University in South Korea. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His research areas cover policymaking and evaluation, policy networks, and citizen participation in the policymaking process.