Collaboration and Performance: Perspectives From Public Managers and NGO Leaders

This article reports on exploratory, mixed-method research using three different datasets to provide a qualitative comparison describing how U.S. local public managers, U.S. federal public managers, and U.S.-based transnational NGO leaders understand the links between collaboration and performance. We augment a growing literature within the field of public administration, which has rarely undertaken comparative cross-sectoral examinations of collaboration and performance, and has largely neglected the perspectives of transnational NGO leaders. Insights are compiled from multiple waves of surveys and interviews with leaders from the U.S. federal Senior Executive Service (n = 305), the International City/County Management Association (n = 1,417), and U.S.-based transnational NGOs (n = 152). Mixed-method analysis reveals that for all three groups of respondents, the perceived positive link between collaboration and performance is the main catalyst for engaging in collaboration as a management strategy. The results also identify specific concerns about the cost of collaboration in terms of power, time, conflict, stress, process, suboptimal outcomes, and resources.