Local Government Collaboration for a New Decade: Risk,Trust,and Effectiveness

Local government collaboration, in which efforts and responsibility are shared across organizations, is an increasingly pervasive approach to addressing community challenges. It has evolved from interlocal, bilateral and targeted cooperative arrangements to include complex relationships involving multiple partners and various sectors focused on achieving long-term outcomes. The increasing prevalence and complexity of collaboration is the result of broad financial, competitive, practical and political pressures, yet successful collaboration is often impeded by countervailing structural, societal, process and leadership barriers. Overcoming these barriers requires particular approaches to leadership and the use of replicable organizing processes and strategies aimed at building the mutual trust that enables collaborative action to flourish.