Determined to succeed: Can goal commitment sustain interagency collaboration?. (January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Scott, Rodney James; Boyd, Ross
• Is Part Of: Public policy and administration. Volume 38:Number 1(2023)
• Page Start: 3
• Page End: 33
• Publication Date: 2023-01
• Subjects: Collaboration -- goal commitment -- mixed methods -- New Zealand; Policy sciences -- Periodicals; Public administration -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 350
• DOI: 10.1177/0952076720905002
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0952-0767

Abstract

Governments have struggled with addressing problems that cross agency boundaries. Since 2012, the New Zealand Government has achieved significant success by holding groups of agencies collectively responsible for achieving intermediate outcome targets (the 'Results Programme'). The Results Programme has been described as the most important change in how public services are delivered in New Zealand in 20 years. This article uses a mixed methods approach to triangulate 10 features of the Results Programme that appear to contribute to its success. Collaboration literature typically focuses on reducing barriers, often expressed in terms of transaction costs; in contrast, the successes of the Results Programme are explained here as methods for engineering a sense of joint goal commitment, that provides the sustained impetus to succeed despite the barriers encountered.