Creating partnership synergy: the critical role of community stakeholders.

While there are compelling reasons for professionals in health and human services administration to collaborate with other stakeholders in the community, the experience with such partnerships thus far has generated more frustration than results. Recent research on partnership synergy--a key indicator of a successful collaboration process--suggests that many of these partnerships are inadvertently compromising their own success by the way they involve community stakeholders. Applying research findings to current practice, this article shows how the ability of a partnership to understand and address complex problems--and sustain interventions over time--is related to who is involved in the partnership, how community stakeholders are involved, and the leadership and management of the partnership.

Broadening participation in community problem solving: a multidisciplinary model to support collaborative practice and research.

Over the last 40 years, thousands of communities-in the United States and internationally-have been working to broaden the involvement of people and organizations in addressing community-level problems related to health and other areas. Yet, in spite of this experience, many communities are having substantial difficulty achieving their collaborative objective, and many funders of community partnerships and participation initiatives are looking for ways to get more out of their investment. One of the reasons we are in this predicament is that the practitioners and researchers who are interested in community collaboration come from a variety of contexts, initiatives, and academic disciplines, and few of them have integrated their work with experiences or literatures beyond their own domain.

Making the most of collaboration: exploring the relationship between partnership synergy and partnership functioning.

Considering the challenges inherent to collaboration and the time it takes to achieve measurable outcomes, partnerships need a way to determine, at an early stage, whether they are making the most of collaboration. The authors have developed a new measure, partnership synergy, which assesses the degree to which a partnership's collaborative process successfully combines its participants' perspectives, knowledge, and skills. This article reports the results of a national study designed to examine the relationship between partnership synergy and six dimensions of partnership functioning: leadership, administration and management, partnership efficiency, nonfinancial resources, partner involvement challenges, and community-related challenges.