Center for the Study of Collaboration in Work and Society

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 initiatives:

• The Public School Collaborative has developed a model of collaborative governance of school systems that has spread to 32 districts in New Jersey, and is currently being implemented throughout South Africa by the Department of Basic Education, the Education Labour Relations Council, and the seven education unions. 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, developing citizen capacity for collaborative problem-solving and action in local communities. Drawing on our experience with the Public School Collaborative and other participatory systems, we have helped develop an approach and materials to help communities find common ground in addressing controversial issues such as affordable housing, traffic management, and homelessness. 

Past efforts have included:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.