Collaborative capability: An intra‐organizational perspective on collaborative advantage

Abstract

Government policies (of which the introduction of ‘One‐Stop Shops’ for business advice is a recent example) have highlighted the need for public services to manage relationships between organizations as well as within them. This article focuses on one hind of inter‐organizational relationship: collaboration. Based on experience from a public sector project, it is argued that internal structures and processes are important factors in determining whether, when and how collaboration can successfully be developed. A new concept, collaborative capability’, is introduced to describe the capacity and readiness of an organization to collaborate and an initial model of the dimensions of the concept is suggested. The author argues that, in the light of differences in collaborative capabilities, any approach to the development and implementation of a joint strategy is likely to be contingent and incremental.