COLLABORATIVE CAPACITY AND STRATEGIES IN AREA‐BASED INITIATIVES
| Author | ELIZABETH MATKA,HELEN SULLIVAN,MARIAN BARNES |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00003.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (289–310)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148 USA.
COLLABORATIVE CAPACITY AND STRATEGIES
IN AREA-BASED INITIATIVES
HELEN SULLIVAN , MARIAN BARNES AND ELIZABETH MATKA
Despite considerable evaluator investment in examining partnership activity in UK
public policy initiatives, little attention has been paid to the role of strategy in sup-
porting the generation and harnessing of the resources necessary to collaborate
effectively. This paper focuses on one of the fi rst New Labour initiatives – Health
Action Zones (HAZ) – and draws on national evaluation fi ndings to delineate local
strategies, assess their application in practice and refl ect on their contribution to col-
laborative action.
The paper argues that even within nationally constrained policy initiatives there
is suffi cient fl exibility for local actors to select strategies to steer collaborative effort,
but these strategies are informed by their operating context and are liable to change
in response to experience and changes in context. In addition, the evaluation fi nd-
ings suggest that effective strategies are those which harness collaborative capacity
across a range of dimensions. The paper concludes by identifying implications for
theory, policy and evaluation.
INTRODUCTION
Considerable signifi cance has been attached to the use of ‘ partnership ’ in the
achievement of UK public policy goals post 1997 (see Sullivan and Skelcher
2002 ). The focus on partnerships is apparent in a number of spheres but is
manifest most clearly in New Labour ’ s use of Area Based Initiatives (ABIs)
as vehicles for change. Targeting specifi c geographical areas for ‘ improve-
ment ’ is an approach that has waxed and waned in popularity but is
evidenced in a range of government programmes in the latter part of the
twentieth century. Once in government, New Labour extended the use of
ABIs to embrace a number of policy areas under the umbrella of social inclu-
sion. These included ‘ action zones ’ such as Health Action Zones (HAZ) that
were established from 1998.
All these initiatives were predicated upon the application of some form of
joint action between actors from different sectors to achieve their goals in an
increasingly complex governance environment. By the 1990s the term ‘ part-
nership ’ was commonly used by government to characterize these collective
endeavours. From the 1990s, government-funded national evaluations of
these initiatives also became commonplace and these formed part of a body
Helen Sullivan is Professor of Urban Governance, Cities Research Centre, University of the West of
England. Marian Barnes is Professor of Social Research, Institute of Applied Social Studies, University
of Birmingham. Elizabeth Matka is Research Fellow, Institute of Applied Social Studies, University of
Birmingham.
290 HELEN SULLIVAN, MARIAN BARNES AND ELIZABETH MATKA
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006 Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (289–310)
of academic and other research into ‘ partnership working ’ (see, for example,
Russell et al. 1996; Brenna et al. 1998; Lawless 2002; Rhodes et al. 2002 ).
However, such evaluations of early ABIs were limited in two ways: their
focus on the mechanics of the partnership, such as the composition and
structure of the partnership board, neglected the human or relationship as-
pects of partnership working; and their emphasis on the contribution made
by the partnership to programme outcomes limited opportunities for learn-
ing about how to improve cross-sector working (for a similar point, see
Dabinett et al. 2001 ).
One evaluation that explicitly sought to do something different was
Stewart et al. ’ s, study into the co-ordination of multiple ABIs operating in
the same geographical area. This evaluation was an important one since its
focus was not on ‘ partnership ’ but on ‘ collaboration ’ , suggesting a recogni-
tion of the need to go beyond the formal partnership mechanisms in order
to understand the dimensions of ‘ joint ’ or ‘ shared ’ action. This was an
action-research project and its fi ndings highlighted what ‘ made collabora-
tion work ’ and emphasized the need to pay attention to ‘ partnering behav-
iours ’ and ‘ a culture of successful action ’ as well as ‘ partnership structures
and membership ’ ( Stewart et al. 2002 , pp. 88 − 9).
This focus on collaboration rather than partnership has been more evident
in research that has taken place parallel to national evaluation activity (see,
for example, Lowndes and Skelcher 1998; Wilkinson and Applebee 1999 ) and
both researchers and evaluators have devoted attention to exploring the dif-
ferent attributes and behaviours that contribute to successful collaborations
(see Sullivan and Skelcher 2002 for a review). However, there remains little
systematic description and discussion of the ways in which ABIs have sought
to galvanize these different resources or capacities and combine them suc-
cessfully to achieve their goals. While the issue of capacity has been the
subject of much concern amongst policy makers, academics and practitio-
ners, the UK focus has been primarily on the development of community
capacity, and to a far lesser extent private sector capacity to participate in
partnership working, rather than an examination of the wholesale gener-
ation of collaborative capacity (across all sectors and levels) within the ABI
(House of Commons Environment Committee Report 1995; Brenna et al.
1998 ).
The purpose of this article is to examine the role of strategy in the gen-
eration and harnessing of collaborative capacity. It focuses on the experi-
ences of actors in one of the fi rst New Labour ABIs − Health Action Zones
(HAZs). Drawing on the fi ndings of the recent national HAZ evaluation, the
article will identify the various strategies developed, assess their application
in practice and refl ect on their potential future contribution to collaborative
action. It will argue that even within nationally constrained ABIs such as
HAZ there is suffi cient fl exibility for local actors to select strategies to steer
collaborative effort but that these strategies are informed by the context
within which they operate and are liable to change in response to experience
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