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Recommended Readings

  • Recommended Reading

    Making Collaboration Work: Lessons From Innovation In Natural Resource Management

    Wondolleck, J. M. & Yaffee, S. L.

    Across the United States, diverse groups are turning away from confrontation and toward collaboration in an attempt to tackle some of our nation's most intractable environmental problems. Government agencies, community groups, businesses, and private individuals have begun working together to solve common problems, resolve conflicts, and develop forward-thinking strategies for moving in a more sustainable direction. Making Collaboration Work examines those promising efforts.

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    The creative problem solving skills of arts and science students—The two cultures debate revisited

    Williamson, P. K.

    Research, carried out mainly in the period between the 1960s and 1980s, reported significant differences in the thinking styles of science and arts students. At this time university and school teaching was highly specialized and concern was expressed in the ongoing ‘two cultures’ debate (Snow, 1959).

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    Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life

    Varshney, A.

    This timely book, updated for the paperback edition, examines how civic ties between Hindus and Muslims in different Indian cities serve to contain, or even prevent, ethnic violence. It is of interest not only to South Asian scholars and policymakers but also to those studying multiethnic societies in other areas of the world.

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    Citizen, Customer, Partner: Engaging the Public in Public Management: Engaging the Public in Public Management

    Thomas, J. C.

    For almost fifty years, scholars and practitioners have debated what the connections should be between public administration and the public. Does the public serve principally as citizen-owners, those to whom administrators are responsible? Are members of the public more appropriately viewed as the customers of government? Or, in an increasingly networked world, do they serve more as the partners of public administrators in the production of public services?

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    The Consensus Building Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement

    Susskind, L. E., McKearnen, S. & Thomas-Lamar, J.

    This handbook on group decision-making for those wanting to operate in a consensus fashion stresses the advantages of informal, common sense approaches to working together. It describes how any group can put these approaches into practice, and relates numerous examples of situations in which such approaches have been applied.

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    Breaking the impasse: Consensual approaches to resolving public disputes

    Susskind, L. & Cruikshank, J. L.

    Drawing on his experience in the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, a leading mediator and his co-author provide the first jargon-free guide to consensual strategies for resolving public disputes--indispensable to citizen activists and to business and government leaders.

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    Adaptive Governance and Water Conflict: New Institutions for Collaborative Planning

    Scholz, J. T. & Stiftel, B.

    Water policy seems in perpetual crisis. Increasingly, conflicts extend beyond the statutory authority, competence, geographical jurisdictions, and political constituencies of highly specialized governing authorities. While other books address specific policy approaches or the application of adaptive management strategies to specific problems, this is the first book to focus more broadly on adaptive governance, or the evolution of new institutions that attempt to resolve conflicts among competing authorities.

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    Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown

    Safford, S.

    In this book, Sean Safford compares the recent history of Allentown, Pennsylvania, with that of Youngstown, Ohio. Allentown has seen a noticeable rebound over the course of the past twenty years. Facing a collapse of its steel-making firms, its economy has reinvented itself by transforming existing companies, building an entrepreneurial sector, and attracting inward investment.

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    Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy

    Putnam, R.

    Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970 when Italy created new governments for each of its regions.

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    Do networks really work? A framework for evaluating public‐sector organizational networks

    Provan, K. G. & Milward, H. B.

    Although cooperative, interorganizational networks have become a common mechanism for delivery of public services, evaluating their effectiveness is extremely complex and has generally been neglected. To help resolve this problem, we discuss the evaluation of networks of community‐based, mostly publicly funded health, human service, and public welfare organizations. Consistent with pressures to perform effectively from a broad range of key stakeholders, we argue that networks must be evaluated at three levels of analysis: community, network, and organization/participant levels.

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    Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness

    Provan, K. G. & Kenis, P.

    This article examines the governance of organizational networks and the impact of governance on network effectiveness. Three basic models, or forms, of network governance are developed focusing on their distinct structural properties. Propositions are formulated examining conditions for the effectiveness of each form. The tensions inherent in each form are then discussed, followed by the role that management may play in addressing these tensions. Finally, the evolution of governance is explored.

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    Managing for results across agencies: Building collaborative capacity in the human services

    Page, S.

    Public managers collaborating across organizational lines face two fundamental dilemmas. The first is a problem of collective action-catalyzing joint work across different organizational missions, mind-sets, and bases of authority. The second is one of accountability, or ensuring that collaborators work together in ways that accord with the intent of the voters and public officials who authorize their joint efforts.

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    Entrepreneurial strategies for managing interagency collaboration

    Page, S.

    Public administration increasingly entails interagency collaboration, contracting, and other interorganizational arrangements. These loosely coupled alternatives to unified hierarchy alter the nature of managerial work. This article explores how the entrepreneurial strategies that managers find useful in hierarchical agencies apply in collaborative settings where formal authority is lacking and sustaining cooperation among partners is critical for performance.

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    Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action

    Ostrom, E.

    The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr.

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    Collaboration across boundaries: Insights and Tips from Federal Senior Executive

    O’Leary, R. & Gerard, C.

    This report provides valuable insights into how federal senior executives view collaboration. Based on survey responses from over 300 members of the federal Senior Executive Service, O’Leary and Gerard found that nearly all those surveyed report using collaboration as a management strategy. Survey respondents clearly recognize that the job of senior executives today involves collaboration within their agency, their department, and the federal government, as well as with key external partners and stakeholders.

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  • Recommended Reading

    The Skill Set of the Successful Collaborator

    O’Leary, R., Choi, Y. & Gerard, C. M.

    In this article, the authors focus on members of the U.S. Senior Executive Service who choose collaboration as a management strategy to increase performance and, in particular, their views of the skill set of a successful collaborator. Based on the current literature on collaboration and networks, these executives might be expected to identify strategic thinking and strategic management as the most important skills.

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  • Recommended Reading

    A manager’s guide to resolving conflicts in collaborative networks

    O’Leary, R. & Bingham, L. B.

    Collaboration continues to grow in importance, and public managers are increasingly using collaborative networks as a tool to accomplish public outcomes. Previous IBM Center reports on collaboration include “Leveraging Networks: A Guide for Public Managers Working Across Organizations” by Robert Agranoff, which describes the critical success factors for using networks to achieve important results. Another report, “A Manager’s Guide to Choosing and Using Collaborative Networks” by H. Brinton Milward and Keith G.

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    Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone

    Nieto, L., Boyer, M. F., Goodwin, L., Johnson, G. R. & Smith, L. C.

    Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment, by Leticia Nieto Psy.D., and co-authors, brings a long-awaited breakthrough to the fields of liberation and cultural studies. Nieto offers a powerful analysis of the psychological dynamics of oppression and privilege, and shows readers how to develop the skills that can promote social justice for themselves and those around them. A key metaphor in Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment is the rank system. It can be used to analyze hidden and unconscious influences of oppression on people's behavior.

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    Public participation for 21st century democracy

    Nabatchi, T. & Leighninger, M.

    Written by two leaders in the field, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy explores the theory and practice of public participation in decision-making and problem-solving. It examines how public participation developed over time to include myriad thick, thin, and conventional opportunities, occurring in both face-to-face meetings and online settings. The book explores the use of participation in various arenas, including education, health, land use, and state and federal government.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Teaching Collaborative Governance: Phases, Competencies, and Case-Based Learning

    Morse, R. S. & Stephens, J. B.

    Collaborative governance is becoming a primary motif in public administration research and practice. There is widespread recognition of the need to develop leaders for collaborative governance, yet clear guidelines or standard operating procedures are elusive. However, while the literature is varied, a broad model of collaboration phases is distinguishable and core competencies are emerging. This article outlines a four-phase model of collaborative governance and corresponding competencies to help ground education and training for collaborative governance.

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    Developing public leaders in an age of collaborative governance

    Morse, R. S.

    Leadership development in the public sector needs more of an emphasis on collaboration. Today's public leaders must be effective boundary-crossers, working in partnership with organizations across jurisdictional and sectoral boundaries. This paper identifies some key competencies of collaborative leadership that go beyond those already identified for organizational leadership. The purpose is to offer a starting point for discussions of how public leadership development efforts should be augmented in order to reflect the reality of collaborative governance.

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  • Recommended Reading

    How to Be an Antiracist

    Kendi, I. X.

    From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a bracingly original approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society--and in ourselves.  "The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it--and then dismantle it."  Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America--but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other.

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    Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

    Eberhardt, J. L.

    From one of the world's leading experts on unconscious racial bias come stories, science, and strategies to address one of the central controversies of our time: How do we talk about bias? How do we address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those inequities? What role do we play? With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we need to face one of the biggest and most troubling issues of our time.

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    Collaborative Public Management: Assessing What We Know and How We Know It

    McGuire, M.

    Collaborative public management research is flourishing. A great deal of attention is being paid to the process and impact of collaboration in the public sector, and the results are promising. This article reviews the literature on collaborative public management by synthesizing what we know from recent research and what we’ve known for quite some time. It addresses the prevalence of collaboration (both recently and historically), the components of emerging collaborative structures, the types of skills that are unique to collaborative management, and the effects of collaboration.

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    Thinking in Systems: A Prime

    Meadows, Donella

    Meadows' newly released manuscript, Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Beyond consensus: Improving collaborative planning and managemen

    Margerum, R. D.

    In Beyond Consensus, Richard Margerum examines the full range of collaborative enterprises in natural resource management, urban planning, and environmental policy. He explains the pros and cons of collaborative approaches, develops methods to test their effectiveness, and identifies ways to improve their implementation and results. Drawing on extensive case studies of collabo-rations in the United States and Australia, Margerum shows that collaboration is not just about developing a strategy but also about creating and sustaining arrangements that can support collaborative implementation.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Collaborative planning: Building consensus and building a distinct model for practice

    Margerum, R. D.

    Collaborative planning is an interactive process of consensus building and implementation using stakeholder and public involvement. Based on research of twenty case studies in the United States and Australia, the author explores some of the most common obstacles that have confronted stakeholder groups in their effort to build consensus, including contextual, compositional, operational, organizational, ideological, and power and capacity.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Leading Across Boundaries: Creating Collaborative Agencies in a Networked World

    Linden, R. M.

    Linden illustrates the importance of collaboration, but drives further into issues of networks to teach us valuable lessons about core interests, trust, leadership, and success. This book is a resource for practitioners who seek to produce more value from effective collaboration.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Weaving Complexity and Business: Engaging the Soul at Work

    Lewin, R. & Regine, B.

    Weaving Complexity and Business brings business people a new way of thinking about and working in the new economy, one that draws on the new science of complexity, which recognizes that business organizations are complex adaptive systems, in which people are crucial but unpredictable factors in their development. It offers managers and companies a deeper understanding of the organizational dynamics of today’s fast-paced/changing business environment both within companies and among them.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Collaborative Public Management and Democracy: Evidence from Western Watershed Partnerships

    Leach, W. D.

    This article provides a framework for assessing the democratic merits of collaborative public management in terms of seven normative ideals: inclusiveness, representativeness, impartiality, transparency, deliberativeness, lawfulness, and empowerment. The framework is used to analyze a random sample of 76 watershed partnerships in California and Washington State. The study reveals the exclusionary nature of some partnerships and suggests that critical stakeholders are missing from many partnerships. However, representation was generally balanced.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Respect: An Exploration

    Lawrence-Lightfoot, S.

    Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is a sociologist and Professor of Education at Harvard University. She is the author of many works on education and related matters and is a recipient of various academic awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Prize. This latest contribution brings together various themes found in her other works. It is written for an educated audience of nonspecialists and would therefore be helpful in undergraduate ethics courses, especially as she always connects abstract principles to concrete people, stories, and actions.

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    Governance network performance: A complex adaptive systems approach

    Koliba, C.

    If we are to assess the performance of networks within a public administration and policy context, we must regard them as tangible, observable structures comprised of nodes (or agents) and ties that formally or informally, tightly or loosely, couple two or more nodes together. The kind of “network logic” that accompanies the study of networks bears a significant impact on our understandings of network performance.

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    Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making

    Kaner, S.

    The third edition of this ground-breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well-facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole.

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    Planning with complexity: An introduction to collaborative rationality for public policy

    Innes, Judith E. & Booher, D. E.

    Analyzing emerging practices of collaboration in planning and public policy to overcome the challenges complexity, fragmentation and uncertainty, the authors present a new theory of collaborative rationality, to help make sense of the new practices. They enquire in detail into how collaborative rationality works, the theories that inform it, and the potential and pitfalls for democracy in the twenty-first century.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems

    Innes, Judith E. & Booher, D. E.

    Consensus building and other forms of collaborative planning are increasingly used for dealing with social and political fragmentation, shared power, and conflicting values. The authors contend that to evaluate this emergent set of practices, a new framework is required modeled on a view of self-organizing, complex adaptive systems rather than on a mechanical Newtonian world. Consensus building processes are not only about producing agreements and plans but also about experimentation, learning, change, and building shared meaning.

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    Theorizing collaboration practice

    Huxham, C.

    This article provides an overview of the theory of collaborative advantage. This is a practice-oriented theory concerned with enhancing practical understanding of the management issues involved in joint working across organizations. Two contrasting concepts are central to it: collaborative advantage which is concerned with the potential for synergy from working collaboratively; and, collaborative inertia which relates to the often disappointing output in reality.

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    Collaborating: Finding common ground for multiparty problems

    Gray, B.

    Veteran mediator Barbara Gray presents an innovative approach to successfully mediating multi-party disputes. A superb resource for managers, public officials and others working to solve complex problems such as labor disputes, disposal of toxic wastes, racial integration, and the use of biotechnology.

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    The Promise and Performance of Collaborative Governance

    Gerlak, A. K., Heikkila, T. & Lubell, M.

    This article analyzes the promises and potential pitfalls of collaborative governance. It first summarizes the origins and evolution of collaborative governance and then compares the claims of the proponents and opponents. It then reviews what is known and what is still uncertain from the growing body of empirical research studying collaborative environmental governance. The conclusion speculates on the future of collaborative governance for both research and practice.

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    The deliberative democracy handbook: Strategies for effective civic engagement in the twenty-first century

    Gastil, J. & Levine, P.

    The Deliberative Democracy Handbook is a resource for democratic practitioners and theorists alike. It combines rich case material from many cities and types of institutional settings with careful reflection on core principles. It generates hope for a renewed democracy, tempered with critical scholarship and political realism. Most important, this handbook opens a spacious window on the innovativeness of citizens in the U.S. (and around the world) and shows how the varied practices of deliberative democracy are part of a larger civic renewal movement.

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    Implementing cross-agency collaboration: A guide for federal managers

    Fountain, J.

    Federal agencies and academics have long discussed the importance of cross-agency collaboration. But recent changes in law and advances in technology have led to a new environment that makes cross-agency management far more achievable. The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 requires the development of government-wide priority goals and greater coordination among agencies. This report provides useful insights into how the government can proceed in creating effective cross-agency collaborations that can improve outcomes significantly.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

    Fisher, R., Ury, W. L & Patton, B.

    Everyone who ever has to deal with other people would benefit from reading this. (In other words, everyone.) It explains how to separate people issues from the problem, focus on interests rather than positions, and work together to create options that satisfy all parties. Though my work as a business analyst doesn't typically require this sort of opposed negotiation, I found a lot in here that will be useful in discussions with stakeholders over their needs and priorities. I'll also want to read it again the next time I'm considering the purchase of a home or car.

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  • Recommended Reading

    UNCG guide to collaborative competencies

    Emerson, K. & Smutko, L.S.

    In 2011, the University Network for Collaborative Governance and PCI jointly published this guide to help build collaborative competencies within the private, public and civic sectors. Co-authored by the University of Wyoming's Dr. Steven Smutko and the University of Arizona's Kirk Emerson, the 28 page UNCG Guide to Collaborative Competencies is intended primarily for use by public officials and managers who are seeking to improve their own or their staff's collaborative competence through continuing education and training.

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    An Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance

    Emerson, K., Nabatchi, T. & Balogh, S.

    Collaborative governance draws from diverse realms of practice and research in public administration. This article synthesizes and extends a suite of conceptual frameworks, research findings, and practice-based knowledge into an integrative framework for collaborative governance. The framework specifies a set of nested dimensions that encompass a larger system context, a collaborative governance regime, and its internal collaborative dynamics and actions that can generate impacts and adaptations across the systems.

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    Collaborative Governance Regimes

    Emerson, K. & Nabatchi, T.

    Whether the goal is building a local park or developing disaster response models, collaborative governance is changing the way public agencies at the local, regional, and national levels are working with each other and with key partners in the nonprofit and private sectors. While the academic literature has spawned numerous case studies and context- or policy-specific models for collaboration, the growth of these innovative collaborative governance systems has outpaced the scholarship needed to define it.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Public participation in environmental assessment and decision making

    Dietz, T. & Stern, P. C.

    Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions. Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it.

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    Failing into cross-sector collaboration successfully

    Crosby, B. C. & Bryson, J. M.

    In the United States and elsewhere, collaboration among government agencies, businesses, and nonprofits to handle community or societal needs has become commonplace. Unfortunately, at the present time the use of cross-sector collaborations is proceeding at a faster pace than our research ability to understand what contributes to the formation of cross-sector collaboration and to its effective or ineffective operation.

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    The paradoxical nature of collaboration

    Connelly, D. R., Zhang, J. & Faerman, S.

    In the past two decades, there has been an increasing use of intra-and interorganizational collaborations across organizations in the public, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors.

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    Managing Public Disputes: A Practical Guide to Handling Conflict and Reaching Agreements (1st Edition)

    Carpenter, S. L. & Kennedy, W.J.D.

    Disputing parties are often not aware of the predictable patterns of behavior in conflict situations, and they cannot usually identify options available for resolving differences. The resulting conflict often escalates and requires third-party professional mediators. Part One provides an overview of public controversies not limited to labor and management disputes where stakeholders are easily identified. Conflict management strategies are discussed. Part Two presents the steps necessary for managing disputes including the final steps of reaching and carrying out agreements.

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    A Practical Guide to Collaborative Governance

    Carlson, C.

    The Practical Guide was developed and written by Chris Carlson, founding director of the Policy Consensus Initiative (now Kitchen Table Democracy) and a leading authority on consensus building, and by Jim Arthur, a long-time facilitator and consultant in the use of dispute resolution to address policy conflicts. The Practical Guide to Consensus will help officials and agencies design the most appropriate, and effective, uses of consensus processes, with "Before, During, and After" instructions on how to:

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    Designing and implementing cross‐sector collaborations: Needed and challenging

    Bryson, J. M., Crosby, B. C. & Stone, M. M.

    Theoretical and empirical work on collaboration has proliferated in the last decade. The authors’ 2006 article on designing and implementing cross‐sector collaborations was a part of, and helped stimulate, this growth. This article reviews the authors’ and others’ important theoretical frameworks from the last decade, along with key empirical results. Research indicates how complicated and challenging collaboration can be, even though it may be needed now more than ever.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Big Ideas in Collaborative Public Management

    Bingham, L. B. & O’Leary, R.

    The world of public management is changing dramatically, fueled by technological innovations such as the Internet, globalism that permits us to outsource functions anywhere in the world, new ideas from network theory, and more. Public managers no longer are unitary leaders of unitary organizations - instead, they often find themselves convening, negotiating, mediating, and collaborating across borders. "Big Ideas in Collaborative Public Management" brings together a rich variety of big picture perspectives on collaborative public management.

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    The new governance: Practices and processes for stakeholder and citizen participation in the work of government

    Bingham, L. B., Nabatchi, T. & O’Leary, R.

    Leaders in public affairs identify tools and instruments for the new governance through networks of public, private, and nonprofit organizations. We argue the new governance also involves people—the tool makers and tool users—and the processes through which they participate in the work of government.

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  • Recommended Reading

    Democracy in practice: Public participation in environmental decisions

    Beierle, T. & Cayford, J.

    Democracy in Practice brings together, for the first time, the collected experience of 30 years of public involvement in environmental decisionmaking. Using data from 239 cases, the authors evaluate the success of public participation and the contextual and procedural factors that lead to it.

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    Developmental Dynamics: Interagency Collaboration as an Emergent Phenomenon

    Bardach, E

    Developmental dynamics are everywhere, from legislative coalition formation to the evolution of interorganizational cooperation to intraorganizational renewal. It is extremely hard to analyze such developmental processes.

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    A ladder of citizen participation

    Arnstein, S. R.

    The heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control”, and “maximum feasible involvement of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms.

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    Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice

    Ansell, C. & Gash, A

    Over the past few decades, a new form of governance has emerged to replace adversarial and managerial modes of policy making and implementation. Collaborative governance, as it has come to be known, brings public and private stakeholders together in collective forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a contingency model of collaborative governance.

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    Collaborating to Manage: A Primer for the Public Sector

    Agranoff, R

    Collaborating to Manage captures the basic ideas and approaches to public management in an era where government must partner with external organizations as well as other agencies to work together to solve difficult public problems.

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