Meaning is what we want. Understanding is what we need. Choices are what we make. Relationships are what we
have.
1. Five Transformational Leaders Discuss What They’ve Learned
Sam Kaner
With warmth, candor, and humility, five chief executives trade insights
and share war stores as they discuss their guiding principles and strategies
for putting participatory values into practice.
PART ONE: THE BASES OF COLLABORATION
2. Renewing Social Capital:
The Role of Civil Dialogue
James M. Campbell
This chapter explores the relationship among social capital, social
trust, confidence, and civil dialogue. It demonstrates the need for
facilitated processes to ensure effective civil dialogue.
3. The Development of Cross-Sector Collaborations
in a Social Context of Low Trust
Mladen Koljatic, Mónica Silva, Eduardo Valenzuela
This chapter addresses the obstacles that need to be overcome in
societies characterized by low social confidence in order to establish
successful cross-sector collaborative endeavors.
4. Exploring the Dynamics of Collaboration in
Interorganizational Settings
Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano
Using system dynamics modeling in a group setting provides unique
insights into structural factors of the dynamics of collaboration in
interorganizational settings.
5. Equity, Diversity, and Interdependence:
A New Driver for Societal Transformation
Michael Murray, Brendan Murtagh
Collaborative conversations that address equity, diversity, and
interdependence are profoundly relevant for societies struggling to emerge
from conflict, racism, and social separation.
6. What Keeps It Together:
Collaborative Tensility in Interorganizational Learning
Hilary Bradbury, Darren Good, Linda Robson
This chapter explores the ability of organizational partners to exhibit
collaborative tensility—to bend and remain flexible under pressure so that
their work can maintain momentum despite instability and challenges.
7. Make-or-Break Roles in Collaboration Leadership
Mirja P. Hanson
Collaborative problem solving succeeds if three key players—participants,
facilitators and sponsors—contribute formally and informally to tackling the
quest for “win-win” solutions.
PART TWO: APPROACHES TO COLLABORATION
8. Sense Making and the Problems of Learning from Experience:
Barriers and Requirements for Creating Cultures of Collaboration
Gervase R. Bushe
The chapter explains how interpersonal mush makes it impossible for
well-intentioned people to create cultures of collaboration and how to
overcome that.
9. Metaphors at Work:
Building Multiagency Collaboration Through a Five-Stage Process
Carol Sherriff, Simon Wilson
How to harness the power of metaphors for compelling collaboration and
effective change.
10. Utilizing Uncertainty
Kim Sander Wright
This chapter explores how uncertainty and certainty affect stakeholder
attachment to viewpoint and engagement in conflict during collaboration.
11. Sustainable Cooperative Processes in Organizations
Dale Hunter
This chapter explores cooperative processes in organizations and their
sustainability and investigates the social and ecological context and
development cycles of groups.
12. Is Your Organization an Obstacle Course or a Relay Team? A Meaning-Centered Approach to Creating a Collaborative Culture
Paul T. P. Wong
This chapter reveals the distinction between toxic and healthy cultures
and introduces a meaning-centered approach for creating a collaborative
culture.
13. Practical Dialogue:
Emergent Approaches for Effective Collaboration
Rosa Zubizarreta
Three dialogic methods for facilitating practical creativity in working
groups illustrate a nonlinear approach for transforming polarization, with
applications in both the private and public sectors.
14. Using the Facilitative Leader Approach to Create
an Organizational Culture of Collaboration
Roger Schwarz
This chapter describes how organizational leaders undermine collaborative
cultures and how they can create the cultures they say they want.
15. Use of Self in Creating a Culture of Collaboration
Ante Glavas, Claudy Jules, Ellen Van Oosten
This chapter describes theory and various approaches as to how
practitioners can learn to use perhaps the most important aspect of a
successful intervention: themselves.
PART THREE: COLLABORATION IN ACTION
16. Collaboration for Social Change:
A Theory and a Case Study
Cynthia Silva Parker, Linda N. Guinee, J. Courtney Bourns,
Jennifer Fischer-Mueller, Marianne Hughes, Andria Winther
This chapter illustrates how the creation of collaborative culture can
facilitate social change. A case study describing a systemwide effort to
eliminate a racial achievement gap demonstrates these principles.
17. Theory in Action:
Building Collaboration in a County Public Agency
Jamie O. Harris, David Straus
This chapter relates how a five-pronged approach to building
collaborative cultures was applied in the public works department of a county
agency.
18. Leadership for the Common Good
John M. Bryson, Barbara C. Crosby
This chapter explains how collaborative leaders bring diverse
stakeholders together to tackle complex social problems or challenges.
19. Using Deliberative Democracy to Facilitate a Local Culture of Collaboration: The Penn’s Landing Project
William J. Ball
Philadelphia’s Penn’s Landing project provides an important cautionary
tale of the difficulties of creating a culture of collaboration in urban
planning.
20. Avoiding Ghettos of Like-Minded People:
Random Selection and Organizational Collaboration
Lyn Carson
Random selection of participants can help create a culture of
collaboration in elite, research-intensive universities. This chapter
explains how one Australian university has succeeded.
21. Involving Multiple Stakeholders in Large-Scale
Collaborative Projects
Tasos Sioukas, Marilyn Sweet
This chapter reviews best practices and step-by-steps tools for
systematically involving multiple stakeholders aimed at significantly
enhancing the success of largescale projects at complex organizations.
Creating a Culture of Collaboration:
The International Association of Facilitators Handbook
