Collaborating for Our Future ― Multistakeholder Partnerships for Solving Complex Problems

Organizations turn to multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) to meet challenges that they cannot handle alone. By tapping the resources of diverse stakeholders, MSPs develop the capability to address complex issues and problems, such as health care delivery, poverty, human rights, watershed management, education, sustainability, and innovation.

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of MSPs, why they are needed, the challenges partners face in working together and how to design them effectively. Through the process of collaboration partners combine their differing strengths, vantage points and expertise to craft innovative responses to pressing societal concerns. The book offers valuable advice for leaders about how to design and scale up effective partnerships and how to address potential obstacles that partners may face.

Drawing on three comprehensive cases and countless shorter examples from around the world, the book offers both practical advice for organization embarking on an MSP as well as a theoretical understanding of how partnerships function. Using an institutional theory lens, it explains how partnerships can effect change in institutional fields by reducing turbulence and negotiating a common set of norms and routines to govern partners' future interactions within the field of concern.

Barbara Gray is Professor and Smeal Executive Programs Faculty Fellow, Emerita, at the Department of Management and Organization, Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University. Professor Gray has studied multiparty conflict, collaboration, power, and institutional processes within and among organizations over 40 years. She has received two life-time achievement awards for her work which has appeared in prestigious management journals. She is widely known for her earlier book, Collaborating: Finding common ground for multiparty problems. She is a principal mediator in An Olive Branch, and has consulted to public, private and non-governmental organizations worldwide. She earned her Ph.D. at Case Western Reserve University, taught at Penn State for 34 years and has held visiting appointments at Harvard Law School University, Utrecht University and University of Hong Kong. In 2016 she received entrustment as a Lay Zen Buddhist teacher in the Soto tradition.

Jill Purdy is a Professor of Management in the Milgard School of Business at the University of Washington Tacoma. She earned her doctorate in Management and Organization from Pennsylvania State University. Her scholarly work focuses on institutional dynamics, collaboration and conflict, and social responsibility. Professor Purdy's research appears in management, public administration, and higher education journals. She has held visiting appointments at Bifrost University in Iceland and Aalto University in Finland. In addition to collaborating with university and community partners in her administrative role, Dr. Purdy consults with business, government and non-profit organizations on strategic planning, governance and managing change.