Organizational Collaboration In Nonprofit Organizations

Organizational collaboration is a prevalent method of sharing knowledge and resources across organizational sectors. Collaboration between different organizations has been used a commonplace alternative, rather than a single organization providing assistance and funds to accomplish their goals. Organizational collaboration has served to be a successful method in many areas of public policy, and the process continues to be replicated in various organizations. While organizational collaboration has been widely studied among government and private agencies, the collaborative leadership of nonprofit organizations is lacking. The article I analyzed argues that nonprofit organizations hold a strong position to take on additional leading roles in …show more content…
There are vast amounts of research on the benefits of collaborating with nonprofits, especially in the public sector. Eikenberry and Kluver (2004) find that public managers can play a significant role in enhancing nonprofit organizations’ ability to add to society by supporting collaborative and cooperative efforts among nonprofit organizations rather than promoting competition (Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004). When nonprofit organizations work together, they empower themselves to retain their unique values, focus on service and advocacy, and maintain civic involvement (Semel, 2000). Eikenberry & Kluver use the City of Omaha’s Continuum of Care for the Homeless as an example of how public managers can play a role in assembling collaborative efforts. Initiated by the Omaha City Planning Department, this cooperative effort connects local public and nonprofit housing and support service providers to form an effective and accountable Continuum of Care (Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004). While this is an example of the public sector taking on the leading role, collaboration with nonprofits enables providing assistance and social capital to their community. According to Jang & Feiock (2007), government and public stakeholders have strong incentives to collaborate with nonprofit organizations. According to their research, nonprofit organizations engage in public sector collaborations to gain resources and to build their organizational influence. While there are vast amounts of research on the benefits of collaborating with nonprofit agencies, there is scarce research exploring nonprofit organizational leadership. Valero and Jang (2016) use their research in this article to investigate a trend that is largely