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Mission
The Center for the Study of Collaboration in Work and Society develops the understanding of effective collaboration, both as theory and as practice.
Collaborative projects bring together people with diverse skills and perspectives to pursue common purposes deliberately and cooperatively, engaging the widest possible range of capacities. Examples include (among others) autonomous teams and task forces in industry; stakeholder forums around issues of social responsibility; labor-management partnerships; inter- professional groups in health care and education; and political efforts to reach common ground among diverse citizens and officials.
Collaboration contrasts with three other mindsets and ways of organizing: bureaucratic approaches relying on top-down rational planning and expert knowledge; market approaches maximizing decentralized autonomy; and traditionalist approaches seeking to maintain stable and established values and relations.
Of the four, collaboration is the least well-understood, and it is very hard to implement. But it may be best for solving the kind of complex and ill-structured problems that increasingly challenge modern society. It is particularly good at getting the full value from diverse kinds of knowledge, and at engaging maximum commitment from participants.
Initiatives
Currently the Center is engaged in the following programs:
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The Public School Collaborative has developed a model of collaborative governance of school systems that has spread to 33 districts in New Jersey, and is currently being implemented by the Ministry of Basic Education in South Africa throughout the country. It is also continuing a stream of research in those districts and others throughout the US and South Africa. This work has linked student achievement outcomes to labor management partnerships at the district and school levels as well as teacher collaboration within and between schools.
- We have partnered with Braver Angels in the Citizen-Led Solutions initiative, aimed at developing citizen capacity for collaborative problem-solving in local communities.
Past efforts have included:
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The Program on Collaborative Health Care Delivery conducted research in a set of New Jersey hospitals and has documented improved performance in units with strong cross-disciplinary teams.
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Designing Collaborative Ecosystems explored the practice of building collaborative ecosystems in the healthcare sector and other fields. This event in 2017 partnered with the Sociotechnical Systems Roundtable (STS) and Rutgers SMLR's Center for Work and Health.
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Collaborative community in corporations: held a series of meetings of corporate leaders and consultants over five years that culminated in the book The Firm as a Collaborative Community.
Selected publications and working papers
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Democracy and Reform in Public Schools: the case for collaborative partnerships. (Rubinstein, Saul Heckscher, Charles, and McCarthy, John). Harvard University Press, 2024
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“The Future of US Public School Reform: Elevating Teacher Voice.” (Rubinstein, Saul A., and John E. McCarthy.) In Revaluing Work(ers): Toward a Democratic and Sustainable Future, edited by Tobias Schulze-Cleven and Todd E. Vachon. Lera Research Volume. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2025.
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Trust in a Complex World (Heckscher, Charles), Oxford University Press, 2015
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“Building a Collaborative Enterprise” (Adler, Paul; Heckscher, Charles; Prusak, L. Harvard Business Review, 2011
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The Firm as a Collaborative Community (Heckscher, Charles and Adler, Paul eds), Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Video: Saul Rubinstein, Outstanding Educator Award
Activities and Events
Capacity-building training
During the 2024-25 school year, the Public School Collaborative During the past school year delivered Capacity Building Training Sessions to ten school districts. This capacity building was conducted by Rutgers faculty (Saul Rubinstein, Charles Heckscher, Sue Schurman) and 15 Rutgers “Facilitators” who are full time superintendents, principals, school board members, union leaders and teachers who do this work as Rutgers Instructors.
This training included the largest district in the state: Newark, NJ, where we held workshops for 32 schools and will complete the remaining 32 this year. The Newark Teachers Union recently noted that this effort “provides a model of collaborative school leadership, bringing together principals, teachers, staff, families, students, and community members to share responsibility for strengthening schools.”
Inter-district Learning Network Meetings
We held our Inter-district Learning Network Meeting on April 4, 2025 to allow for learning and exchange among all our districts. This conference was attended by over 150 people including a delegation from South Africa led by the Director-General of Basic Education.
Facilitator Training
We conducted two Facilitator Training Workshops: January 2025 and June 2025.In these workshops we trained 30 new Facilitators from Newark Public Schools, 35 Facilitators from South Africa, and Facilitators from three other NJ school districts.
South Africa Technical Assistance
In April 2025 we hosted our ninth delegation from South Africa. It included the Director General of Basic Education, the Chairperson and the General Secretary of the South African Labour Education Council, and leaders of the South African teachers unions. As a result of earlier visits and our work with our South African colleagues, the South African Ministry of Education has endorsed that the "Union Management Collaboration Project" to be implemented across all nine provinces in South Africa with our technical help. We have been invited to keynote a conference in Cape Town in February 2026. We have been awarded a grant from Rutgers Global to support this effort.
Research
We published a book with Harvard Education Press on our work and publicly engaged scholarship: Democracy and Reform in Public Schools: The Case for Collaborative Partnerships (Saul Rubinstein, Charles Heckscher, John McCarthy). This book has been well reviewed and won an American Library Association Choice Award as an Outstanding Academic Title of 2024.
We have now partnered with the Rutgers Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies Directed by Distinguished Professor Charles Payne to conduct a new round of research specifically focused on the impact of Collaborative Partnerships on urban schools. We are particularly interested in student achievement, graduation and drop-out rates, attendance, discipline, teacher turnover and retention, school culture and climate. Joining us in this research are colleagues from the Rutgers Department of Urban Education, Rutgers Bloustein School of Public Policy, and Rutgers Department of Sociology, and Kean University. We have recruited graduate students to assist in this research.
Our research team is also partnering with several South African universities to conduct joint comparative research on the implementation and impact of Collaborative Partnerships on both sides of the Atlantic.
Plans for 2025-26 School Year
Capacity Building Training
We plan to train another 32 schools from the Newark Public School District for two days each. This will be funded by the contract between NPS and Rutgers SMLR.
We plan to train 6-8 additional New Jersey School districts. This will be funded by the grant from the National Academy of Arbitrators.
Rutgers Facilitator Training
We will conduct Facilitator training for both NJ and South African districts.
Inter-District Learning Network
We plan to hold two state-wide Inter-district Conferences – one in late Fall 2025 and the other in late Spring 2026.
Research
We plan on conducting new research on the impact of Collaborative Partnerships on urban school districts in conjunction with Rutgers Newark (Cornwall Center and Department of Urban Education) and the Rutgers Bloustein School and the Sociology department.
We also plan to embark on a joint research initiative between Rutgers (New Brunswick and Newark) and a set of South African Universities. This will be funded in part by our grant from Rutgers Global.
South Africa Technical Assistance
We will continue to host delegations from South Africa (Education Labour Relations Council, Department of Basic Education, South African Democratic Teachers Union and others). The next visit is scheduled for Fall 2025.
We have also been invited to Keynote a conference in Cape Town in February 2026 for all District Managers and union leaders. This will be hosted by the Department of Basic Education and the South African Education Labour Relations Council.
