Eugene Bardach, Getting Agencies to Work Together: The Theory and Practice of Managerial Craftsmanship. 1998, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

✍ Scribed by Steve Guoppra

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 35 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0749-6753
• DOI: 10.1002/hpm.623

✦ Synopsis

Interagency collaboration, especially where agencies are located in different sectors, is a tough managerial task. It is also a critical part of effective managerial work as `partnership' becomes a global fashion. In the UK, partnership is a policy watchword: in developing countries, the adoption by donor agencies of Sector Wide Approaches to Planning is added to longstanding requirements for cooperation between voluntary and public services and interests. This book is based on research into innovations arising from and dependent on interagency collaboration in public services and community safety, health and well-being.

Bardach's proposition is that collaboration enables added value and that the critical task is to create an effective capacity to collaborate. Building that capacity requires managerial craftsmanshipÐskillfully, to make the most of the materials at one's disposal. The theory is set out in the foundation chapter 2. Chapter 3 gives a variety of case examples of the development of interagency collaborative capa-cityÐschool, family, children's and youth services, ecosystem management, antitobacco legislation and so forth. Chapter 4 considers how resources are transformed collaboratively into products, services and achievements. Chapter 5 asks how collaborative ventures can acquire resources in the ®rst place, and how they can keep resources alive and intact and how they can renew them. Resources include turf', autonomy, money, people, political standing and information. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 then discuss the process of development, change and steerage of the collaborative venture. Here, process choices, collaborative conduct and leadership are given pride of place. Chapter 7 considers the particular way of thinking and acting for joint problem solving and chapter 8 provides a language by which to see and understand change and development over time and problems that bring collaborative ventures to a halt. The ®nal chapter reveals the ambition of the bookÐto provide an analysis of collaboration; to provide help to those engaged in collaboration practice; and to contribute a theoretical and philosophical stance on managerial knowledgeÐcraftsmanship theory. This, then, is not a how to do it' book, nor a series of high achievement case studies: rather it is a scholarly blend of theory and case with a concern to add to practical knowledge.