Making the Most of Collaboration: Exploring the Relationship Between Partnership Synergy and Partnership Functioning

Abstract

Considering the challenges inherent to collaboration and the time it takes to achieve measurable outcomes, partnerships need a way to determine, at an early stage, whether they are making the most of collaboration. The authors have developed a new measure, partnership synergy, which assesses the degree to which a partnership's collaborative process successfully combines its participants' perspectives, knowledge, and skills. This article reports the results of a national study designed to examine the relationship between partnership synergy and six dimensions of partnership functioning: leadership, administration and management, partnership efficiency, nonfinancial resources, partner involvement challenges, and community-related challenges. Data were collected from 815 informants in 63 partnerships. Results of regression analysis conducted with partnership-level data indicated that partnership synergy was most closely related to leadership effectiveness and partnership efficiency. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Broadening Participation in Community Problem Solving: a Multidisciplinary Model to Support Collaborative Practice and Research

“…They found that the ability of partnerships to achieve a high level of synergy is related to the sufficiency of the partnership's nonfinancial resources (i.e., knowledge, skills, and expertise; perceptual, observational, and statistical information; connections to people, organizations, and groups; legitimacy and credibility; convening power). 105 Partnerships with many different kinds of participants have a greater variety of nonfinancial resources with which to create synergy than partnerships with a few homogeneous partners.…”

“…26,95,112 In empirical work, leadership and certain aspects of management have been shown to be correlated closely with the ability of collaborations to create synergy and to solve community-level problems. 105,112 The process characteristics in the model explain how leadership and management affect these outcomes. Moreover, they provide a useful lens for identifying important attributes of leadership and management.…”

“…Rather than having one person "run the show," successful community collaborations often involve a variety of people in the provision of leadership, in both formal and informal capacities. 105,112 Going further, the people who seem to be most successful do not function as traditional leaders and administrators, who tend to have a narrow range of expertise, are used to being in control, have their own vision of what should be done, and relate to the people they work with as subordinates rather than as peers. Instead, community collaborations appear to benefit from having leaders and staff who believe deeply in the capacity of diverse people and organizations to work together to identify, understand, and solve community problems.…”

“…Valid measures have already been developed for a number of the variables in the model, including aspects of leadership and management, individual empowerment, and synergy. 49,105 Widely used measures of social networks and social support provide a basis for the measurement of social ties. 122,123 The model facilitates the development of additional measures by clarifying and operationalizing certain concepts and by providing a framework for identifying and leveraging relevant conceptual work.…”

The South West Local Health Integration Network Behavioural Supports Ontario Experience

“…In the summer of 2012 and 2015, Geriatric Cooperative members completed the Partnership Self-Assessment Tool (PSAT; http://www.lmgforhealth.org), a standardized tool that identifies effectiveness related to synergy, leadership, efficiency and sufficiency of resources (Lasker et al 2001;Wiess et al 2002). In addition, experience-based design (EBD) (Bate and Robert 2006) methodology was used to gather personal stories from individuals with responsive behaviours, their caregivers and staff that described the emotional touch points associated with healthcare journeys.…”