Innovation in institutional collaboration

The world is said to be confronted with complex issues working against the long term well-being of people and planet that can only be effectively addressed through (hyper) collective effort. How necessary collaboration comes about and progresses shows numerous approaches, professional specialisations, studies and examples. However, there is little in the way of a comprehensive, comparative perspective examining the instigator(s) of diverse collective action objectives and participants in co-creative relationships for societal change that are maintained over time and brought to fruition. More critically, organisational innovations suggest that what currently exists to tackle intractable problems by getting institutions and their organisational actors to cooperate needs updating. Past approaches to collaboration are not good enough for operating in tomorrow’s conditions. Drawing on Actor Network Theory, this paper therefore explores a category of actant – an interlocutor – as potentially crucial in committing to, arranging and holding together complex collective action engagements. From multiple angles and using examples of organisational innovation, the analysis considers the interplay between interlocutor attributes and interlocution processes. A preliminary conclusion is that a combination of characteristics exhibited by an interlocutor offers a helpful category to explain and bring about multi-institutional problem solving. As importantly, increasing the number and variety of interlocutors across the world may be an agenda worth pursuing

TRI-INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATION NETWORK

Symposium on Basic and Translational Training and Diversity of the Biomedical Workforcehttps://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/posters/1204/thumbnail.jp

Building Bridges with Boats: Preserving Community History through Intra- and Inter-Institutional Collaboration

This chapter discusses Launching through the Surf: The Dory Fleet of Pacific City, a project which documents the historical and contemporary role of dory fishers in the life of the coastal village of Pacific City, Oregon, U.S. Linfield College’s Department of Theatre and Communication Arts, its Jereld R. Nicholson Library, the Pacific City Arts Association, the Pacific City Dorymen\u27s Association, and the Linfield Center for the Northwest joined forces to engage in a collaborative college and community venture to preserve this important facet of Oregon’s history. Using ethnography as a theoretical grounding and oral history as a method, the project utilized artifacts from the dory fleet to augment interview data, and faculty/student teams created a searchable digital archive available via open access. The chapter draws on the authors’ experiences to identify a philosophy of strategic collaboration. Topics include project development and management, assessment, and the role of serendipity. In an era of value-added services where libraries need to continue to prove their worth, partnering with internal and external entities to create content is one way for academic libraries to remain relevant to agencies that do not have direct connections to higher education. This project not only developed a positive “town and gown” relationship with a regional community, it also benefited partner organizations as they sought to fulfill their missions. The project also serves as a potential model for intra- and inter-agency collaboration for all types of libraries

Analysis of heterogeneous collaboration in the German research system with a focus on nanotechnology

The German research system is functionally differentiated into various institutional pillars, most importantly the university system and the extra-university sector including institutes of the Helmholtz Association, the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz Association and the Fraunhofer Society. While the research organisations heterogeneous institutional profiles are widely regarded as a key strength of the German research landscape, tendencies towards segmentation and institutional self-interests have increasingly impeded inter-institutional collaboration. Yet, in young and highly dynamic fields, many research breakthroughs are stimulated at the intersection of established scientific disciplines and across fundamental and applied technological research. Therefore, inter-institutional collaboration is an important dimension of the performance of the German research system. There is tension between the need for effective inter-institutional collaboration on the one hand, and the governance structures in the public research sector on the other hand. The paper presents preliminary results of an ongoing DFG project on collaborations between the various research institutions in Germany, particularly in the field of nano S&T. It introduces key facts of the German research system including institutional dynamics between 1990 and 2002. It discusses rationales for cooperative research relationships and elaborates on institutional factors that either facilitate or interfere with the transfer of knowledge and expertise between research organizations. For this purpose, the paper refers to a governance cube as a heuristic tool that captures three institutional dimensions which are important in facilitating heterogeneous research cooperation. --

Institutional Collaboration to Accelerate Interprofessional Education

Evidence has been generated and synthesized to support enhanced outcomes in healthcare environments supportive of interprofessional practice. Despite the preponderance of evidence, many health professions education programs do not prepare their students for interprofessional practice. Multiple factors influence the integration of interprofessional education into a program’s curricular offerings including availability of potential partnering professions, conflicting schedules, lack of curricular alignment, and logistical challenges. This manuscript describes initiatives and innovations used to replace health profession and institutional silos with interprofessional and cross-institutional collaboration in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. While the initial point of connection involved the administrators and faculty members from Texas Christian University and the University of North Texas Health Science Center collaborating to create interprofessional training opportunities for health professions students, this collaboration continues to generate new innovations and cooperative initiatives. These initiatives include research projects supported by significant external funding awards and a decision by the leaders of the two institutions to collaborate to develop a new medical school

Readiness for Inter-Institutional Collaboration Among Adventist Institutions of Higher Education in North America : Stages of Change

Problem The current sociological and economic environment faced by higher education in North America has inspired many institutions to form consortiums in an attempt to enhance institutional viability. The Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities (AACU) is a consortium of 15 Seventh-day Adventist institutions of higher education in North America. This consortium was formed as an attempt to increase collaboration, enhance quality, and augment institutional viability. The purpose of this study was to describe the current inter-institutional environment for collaboration among AACU member institutions. Currently, there has not been formal research into the collaborative environment of the Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities. Without an understanding of the status of inter-institutional collaboration in Adventist higher education, the path to increased inter-institutional collaboration is likely to fail. Method This study was a quantitative study using survey research methodology in which a survey developed by James Prochaska was adapted to assess inter-institutional collaboration among Adventist colleges and universities in North America. The survey was administered via web-based technology (Zoomerang) to faculty and administrators at the 15 Adventist institutions of higher education in North America. In particular, this survey and the Transtheoretical Model were chosen as they have been used to measure organizational change relative to elements of collaboration but have not been used within an inter-institutional setting. Results Analysis of stage of inter-institutional collaboration among Adventist institutions of higher education in North America found that approximately 57% of the participants are at the precontemplative or contemplative stages whereas about 42% are at the action or maintenance stages. Stage of collaboration is not related to gender, whereas work assignment as faculty or administration, age of the participant, and years of experience in Adventist higher education do have a significant relationship with stage of inter-institutional collaboration. The majority of faculty are at precontemplation whereas the majority of administrators are in maintenance. The data suggest that older participants tend to be further along in the stage of inter-institutional collaboration than are younger participants. Further investigation into the significance of the relationship of age and stage demonstrated that when faculty and administrator were analyzed by work assignment and age, there was no significant relationship between age and stage of inter-institutional collaboration. Years of experience was found to have a significant relationship with stage of inter-institutional collaboration. Analysis would suggest that more experienced participants are further along on the stage of inter-institutional collaboration, but when years of experience was analyzed by work assignment only, faculty demonstrated a significant relationship between stage and years of experience in Adventist higher education. Data analysis with respect to the relationship between stage of inter-institutional collaboration and the outcome measures of the Transtheoretical Model indicated a significant relationship between stage and behavioral frequency, decisional balance, and self-efficacy. There is a significant relationship between stage of inter-institutional collaboration and the linear combination of decisional balance, self-efficacy, and behavioral frequency. However, there is no significant interaction effect between stage of inter-institutional collaboration and the demographic characteristics of gender, age, years of experience in Adventist higher education, and work classification as faculty or administrator. The data suggest that the relationship between stage of inter-institutional collaboration and the linear combination of decisional balance, self-efficacy, and behavioral frequency does not depend on demographic characteristics. Conclusions Adventist higher education in North American is in the process of developing a more inter-institutionally collaborative system. This study described the environment for inter-institutionally collaboration within Adventist higher education and identified a variety of group-related stage differences. With group differences in mind, failure to match change processes with the stage of inter-institutional collaboration will decrease the likelihood of continued collaborative growth within Adventist higher education in North America. This study indicated that the Transtheoretical Model of human change is reliable across demographic characteristics and appropriate in the organizational environment

Institutional stakeholder participation in urban redevelopment in Tehran: An evaluation of decisions and actions

Experimentation with citizen participation in urban redevelopments is increasing worldwide. This paper aims to scrutinise this trend through an in-depth case study of the decisions and actions taken by the institutional stakeholders involved in participatory urban redevelopment in Tehran, Iran. The discussion is based around two contrasting urban redevelopment areas which set out to adopt a participatory approach involving various stakeholders including institutions (the Municipality of Tehran and the Heritage Organisation) and local owner-occupiers, developing new knowledge, understanding, and clarity about the concept and application of participation in urban redevelopments in developing countries. In both areas, the institutions invited owners to participate in the physical and economic improvements of their places through land assemblage or sharing redevelopment costs. In this study a range of qualitative methods are used including photo-elicitation techniques (PEI) and semi-structured interviews with locals, officials and professionals. The results show the vulnerability of the process. This was revealed when one institution did not maintain their role and when some owner-occupiers acted as free-riders. This highlights the challenge of building an enduring collaboration between institutional stakeholders from the planning to in-use stages, in particular the difficulties that arise as different institutions become involved in the process. This issue is more problematic when resources are limited and/or intermittent. As the results show, the institutional collaboration was smoother when fewer stakeholders were involved in decision making. In the commercial case, there were more complaints about overdue completion in the projects due to poor institutional collaboration. We recommend the need for an agreed mechanism prior to such initiatives where the role of the various stakeholders and their responsibilities are clearly cited, and where all different impact scenarios from the planning to in-use stage are set out

Challenges and opportunities in inter-institutional collaboration in digital scholarship

Many schools have recently embarked upon initiatives in digital scholarship – those forms of scholarship largely in the humanities and humanistic social sciences that emphasize digital tools and infrastructure, as well as accompanying expertise and support. These initiatives bring new challenges, such as meeting the growing demand for technical support from faculty and students with trained staff and necessary hardware and software. Even institutions with well-established programs struggle to keep pace. As a way to address this challenge, we have been envisioning a staff exchange that would allow for schools to share staff across institutions to provide expertise that is not available within their institution, and which would establish a powerful network of collaborators to advance the field. In this talk, I’ll show some examples of digital scholarship to provide some context, share some of the findings of a planning grant that has helped us conceptualize the exchange, and discuss in some detail some of the core principles that need to be in place for such an exchange to succeed. These principles, based on the work of Yochai Benchler, may be of particular interest for anyone considering the creation of a non-market based approach to working together on projects of any kin

Expanding Access to Consumer Health Information: A Multi-Institutional Collaboration

A partnership between an academic library, a public library system, and an area health education center meet a critical information need in a rural region of southeast Georgia

College ready Hispanic students : a case study of institutional collaboration

In 2017, Hispanics had the lowest percentage of earned bachelor degrees awarded. Additionally, graduate or professional degree attainment for U.S. Hispanics was 13.2% compared to 37.2% for Non-Hispanic Whites, 22.4% for African Americans, and 57.7% for Asian Americans. Hispanic students had a high rate of remedial course enrollment as well. The impact of a growing, undereducated Hispanic population could prove harmful to United States and Texas economies. The purpose of this case study was to examine one academically high performing district in Texas to determine organizational structures used to produce Hispanic students who are ready for college. Furthermore, I explored how institutional collaboration between this school district and its public institutions of higher education (IHE) partners produced college-ready Hispanic students. I examined the district’s organizational structures and how collaboration between its high school and area public IHEs produced college-ready Hispanic students. The six participants of this case study were all employees of the case study public school district. All participants held general education licenses issued by the TEA. One participant worked in the central office, one participant represented the high school campus’ leadership, two participants were higher education coordinators and advisors, and two participants were dual credit and AP teachers. As the interviews and data collection ensued, the results indicated that the district’s sustained success with graduating college ready Hispanic students required more than collaboration with higher education partners. The five overarching themes were College Ready School Culture, College Going Experiences of the Hispanic Family, Navigating Legislative CCMR Requirements, Educator Mindsets, and Higher Education Partners are Critical to Developing Students’ College Readiness. The highest level of collaboration, known as coadunation, was achieved in the interdependence between the district and the IHEs. The case study school district brought the colleges and universities into the high school. Establishing structures for institutional collaboration that were effectively implemented over many years led to this district’s success with college readiness among its Hispanic high school graduates. The recommendations for practice include district wide expectations for the mindsets of educators. The recommendations for research include additional needs for examples of effective alignments between IHEs and school districtsEducational Leadership and Polic