The Effect of Collaboration on Performance in Public Management: Evidence from Community Policing

Abstract

Practitioners and academics expect collaboration to matter in public management. Both treat it as an imperative to goal accomplishment and view collaboration as fundamental in community policing. However, existing research seems to study the elements of collaboration such as pre-conditions/antecedents, processes, and outcomes, either individually or with two of the three aspects in conjunction. This approach leaves one portion or the other in a “black box” because there is no comprehensive perspective evaluating all three together. Therefore, this dissertation uses mixed methods and a non-linear approach that tests the impact of collaboration capacity on performance outcomes as mediated by collaborative behavior in the context of community policing. This allows a study of all three elements simultaneously. Results from testing cross-sectional and longitudinal data via mediation analysis indicate a causal mechanism in which individual collaborative behaviors of police mediate the impact of organizational collaborative capacity on performance over shorter time spans, but only partially transmit that impact over longer time spans. Further, qualitative research based on this finding indicates that other potential reasons, such as institutional factors, may provide the additional mediation variables as the proximate cause for collaboration capacity to transmit its effect over longer time spans. This study contributes toward collaboration theory by opening its black box and explaining how the internal gears of the collaborative process are contingent and turn in either direction to positively or negatively affect performance outcomes depending on a multitude of factors. It offers an empirical approach that investigates at the phenomena of collaboration from a non-linear perspective, at multiple levels. Lastly, it offers normative contributions by presenting a compelling institutional perspective that practitioners should account for in their daily practice and academics should consider as they design future research on collaboration.