Is the public sector ready to collaborate? Human resource implications of collaborative Arrangements

Relational governance arrangements across agencies and sectors have become prevalent as a means for government to become more responsive and effective in addressing complex, large scale or ‘wicked’ problems. The primary characteristic of such ‘collaborative’ arrangements is the utilisation of the joint capacities of multiple organisations to achieve collaborative advantage, which Huxham (1993) defines as the attainment of creative outcomes that are beyond the ability of single agencies to achieve. Attaining collaborative advantage requires organisations to develop collaborative capabilities that prepare organisations for collaborative practice (Huxham, 1993b). Further, collaborations require considerable investment of staff effort that could potentially be used beneficially elsewhere by both the government and non-government organisations involved in collaboration (Keast and Mandell, 2010). Collaborative arrangements to deliver services therefore requires a reconsideration of the way in which resources, including human resources, are conceptualised and deployed as well as changes to both the structure of public service agencies and the systems and processes by which they operate (Keast, forthcoming). A main aim of academic research and theorising has been to explore and define the requisite characteristics to achieve collaborative advantage. Such research has tended to focus on definitional, structural (Turrini, Cristofoli, Frosini, & Nasi, 2009) and organisational (Huxham, 1993) aspects and less on the roles government plays within cross-organisational or cross-sectoral arrangements. Ferlie and Steane (2002) note that there has been a general trend towards management led reforms of public agencies including the HRM practices utilised. Such trends have been significantly influenced by New Public Management (NPM) ideology with limited consideration to the implications for HRM practice in collaborative, rather than market contexts. Utilising case study data of a suite of collaborative efforts in Queensland, Australia, collected over a decade, this paper presents an examination of the network roles government agencies undertake. Implications for HRM in public sector agencies working within networked arrangements are drawn and implications for job design, recruitment, deployment and staff development are presented. The paper also makes theoretical advances in our understanding of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) in network settings. While networks form part of the strategic armoury of government, networks operate to achieve collaborative advantage. SHRM with its focus on competitive advantage is argued to be appropriate in market situations, however is not an ideal conceptualisation in network situations. Commencing with an overview of literature on networks and network effectiveness, the paper presents the case studies and methodology; provides findings from the case studies in regard to the roles of government to achieve collaborative advantage and implications for HRM practice are presented. Implications for SHRM are considered.

Helping undergraduate students across disciplines and cultures actively engage and collaborate as equal members of a community of scholars : peer review within an e-learning environment

At the international level, the higher education sector is currently being subjected to increased calls for public accountability and the current move by the OECD to rank universities based on the quality of their teaching and learning outcomes. At the national level, Australian universities and their teaching staff face numerous challenges including financial restrictions, increasing student numbers and the reality of an increasingly diverse student population. The Australian higher education response to these competing policy and accreditation demands focuses on precise explicit systems and procedures which are inflexible and conservative and which ignore the fact that assessment is the single biggest influence on how students approach their learning. By seriously neglecting the quality of student learning outcomes, assessment tasks are often failing to engage students or reflect the tasks students will face in the world of practice. Innovative assessment design, which includes new paradigms of student engagement and learning and pedagogically based technologies have the capacity to provide some measure of relief from these internal and external tensions by significantly enhancing the learning experience for an increasingly time-poor population of students. That is, the assessment process has the ability to deliver program objectives and active learning through a knowledge transfer process which increases student participation and engagement. This social constructivist view highlights the importance of peer review in assisting students to participate and collaborate as equal members of a community of scholars with both their peers and academic staff members. As a result of increasing the student’s desire to learn, peer review leads to more confident, independent and reflective learners who also become more skilled at making independent judgements of their own and others' work. Within this context, in Case Study One of this project, a summative, peer-assessed, weekly, assessment task was introduced in the first “serious” accounting subject offered as part of an undergraduate degree. The positive outcomes achieved included: student failure rates declined 15%; tutorial participation increased fourfold; tutorial engagement increased six-fold; and there was a 100% student-based approval rating for the retention of the assessment task. However, in stark contrast to the positive student response, staff issues related to the loss of research time associated with the administration of the peer-review process threatened its survival. This paper contributes to the core conference topics of new trends and experiences in undergraduate assessment education and in terms of innovative, on-line, learning and teaching practices, by elaborating the Case Study Two “solution” generated to this dilemma. At the heart of the resolution is an e-Learning, peer-review process conducted in conjunction with the University of Melbourne which seeks to both create a virtual sense of belonging and to efficiently and effectively meet academic learning objectives with minimum staff involvement. In outlining the significant level of success achieved, student-based qualitative and quantitative data will be highlighted along with staff views in a comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages to both students and staff of the staff-led, peer review process versus its on-line counterpart.

Why Australian and Indian researchers should collaborate to advance wound management innovation

In 2011, 366 million people suffered from diabetes worldwide, resulting in 4.6 million deaths at a cost of US$465 billion in direct healthcare expenditures1. India has the world’s second largest diabetic population at 61.8 million (8.3% of total population)1, while in Australia 8.1% of the population have been diagnosed with diabetes1. Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) affect up to 25% of diabetic patients, precipitating 85% of all diabetic amputations2,3. DFUs have significant social and economic impacts associated with increased hospitalisation rates, cost of care, and the reduced capacity of patients and carers to work. In isolated regions of Australia and India the incidence of DFU and associated infection is substantially increased, resulting in hospitalisation rates up to 4- fold that of major cities...

Investigating how designers collaborate and respond to sustainable design criteria

This research provides a critical link to ensure designers remain at the forefront of developing safe, sustainable and innovative products and services in the future. The four key findings of this research contribute to the advancement of knowledge and provide an understanding of the relationships between designers' co-evolution approach and their use of analogy. The behavioural relationships between sketching and gesture were investigated. The outcome of this research is a Design Activity Framework. This framework demonstrates a novel understanding how designers design by concentrating on co-evolution, problem-framing and solution seeking.

The open parliament in the age of the internet : can the people now collaborate with legislatures in lawmaking?

This work seeks to address those questions and evaluate other international experiences and experiments designed to achieve the same ends. The book is based on a study of two particular cases where parliamentary bodies designed and implemented participatory digital processes, namely, the e-Democracy Program developed by the Brazilian House of Representatives, and the Virtual Senator Program developed by the Chilean Senate. The text unfolds in the form of a systematic analysis of institutional aspects embracing political and organizational elements as well as the social aspects associated to the application of digital democracy in parliaments. The investigation shows that at the stage they found themselves in 2010 those projects had only brought in very incipient results in regard to the aspects of enhancing representativity in decision making processes, aggregating collective intelligence to the legislative process or transparency to parliamentary performances, even though all of those are precious components of any democracy that deems itself to be participatory and deliberative. Nevertheless, such experiences have had the merit of contributing towards the gradual construction of more effective participatory mechanisms, complementary to the political representation system in place.

Create, Share & Collaborate

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Patient and public involvement in healthcare quality improvement: how organizations can help patients and professionals to collaborate

Citizens across the world are increasingly called upon to participate in healthcare improvement. It is often unclear how this can be made to work in practice. This 4- year ethnography of a UK healthcare improvement initiative showed that patients used elements of organizational culture as resources to help them collaborate with healthcare professionals. The four elements were: (1) organizational emphasis on nonhierarchical, multidisciplinary collaboration; (2) organizational staff ability to model desired behaviours of recognition and respect; (3) commitment to rapid action, including quick translation of research into practice; and (4) the constant data collection and reflection process facilitated by improvement methods.

Virtual Office Hours Using Blackboard Collaborate

Virtual Office Hours are a possibility that any professor can take advantage of using Blackboard Collaborate. Why not cater to your online students by allowing them to have live chats with you as if you were face to face during regular office hours? Come learn about this innovative way to use Blackboard Collaborate with your students.

Let’s collaborate, but I will be the first author! Exploring the importance of the first authorship for IS researchers

Collaboration among researchers is typically seen as the quintessence of academic excellence, leading to improvements in the research quality, capitalization on the diversity of perspectives and gains in productivity. Despite these benefits, many research teams find themselves torn by competition, antagonism and resentment. Desire to be the first author and resultant underperformance of non-first co-authors is often at the root of these conflicts. At the same time little is known about what motivates researchers in general and IS researchers in particular to engage as first authors. To fill this gap, this study uses survey methodology to explore the attitudes of IS researchers and their resulting behavior when it comes to authors order. Qualitative and quantitative evidence collected from 398 IS researchers is used to support our analysis. We find that researchers’ desire to be the first authors is mainly driven by such determinants as career aspirations, visibility, leadership and sense of ownership, and less so by the desire to satisfy their self-esteem and self-actualization needs. In addition, the value placed on being the first author appears to be the function of researchers’ career level, with Ph.D. students attaching significantly higher value to it than senior scholars.

Stop, Collaborate & Listen: How the Librarian/Publisher Relationship Can Facilitate the Development of the Information Literacy Curriculum

A librarian from the Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) and the Library Communications Manager at Taylor & Francis Group partnered to launch a collaborative information literacy pilot program focusing on assisting FGCU students and faculty navigate and understand the scholarly publishing process. This article describes how the idea was created, as well as steps involved in developing the publishing toolkit to help FGCU patrons. An overview of the pilot program was presented during the 2015 Charleston Conference as a poster session.

Networks of learning : how motorsport companies collaborate and share knowledge:evidence from the UK and Italian motorsport industries

The motorsport industry is a high value-added and highly innovative business sector. The UK’s leading racing car manufacturers are world class centres of research, development and engineering. However, individual firms in the sector do not have the range and depth of capabilities to compete independently in motorsport’s dynamic and competitive environment. Industry attention has therefore progressively focused on how networks of collaborating firms can work together to develop new products, improve business processes and reduce costs. This report presents findings from a three year Cardiff Business School study which examined the ways in which firms collaborate as part of wider networks. The research involved gathering data from over 120 firms in the UK and Italian motorsport sectors.