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The use of interorganizational relationships such as collaboration, partnerships, and alliances between public, private, and nonprofit organizations for the delivery of human services has increased. This article contributes to the growing body of knowledge on collaboration by exploring one kind of interorganizational relationship-interagency collaboration-in the field of early care and education. It examines variations within interagency collaborations and their impact on management and program outcomes. The findings show that interagency collaboration has a clear impact on management, program, and client outcomes: Specifically, the intensity of the collaborative relationship has a positive and statistically significant impact on staff compensation, staff turnover, and school readiness.
Over the past several decades, scholars studying the management of human services have noted the increased use of various forms of interorganizational relationships-such as collaboration, partnerships, and alliances between public, private, and nonprofit organizations-for the delivery of services (Austin 2000). As Agranoff and Pattakos (1979) discuss, these structures are being formed at every level of service delivery and in a range of organizational domains and sectors. Changes are occurring in the organization of governmental administrative entities; interdepartmental task forces and teams regularly meet for planning, program, and policy development at the state and federal levels. At the local level, organizations from different sectors are coming together to link discrete services and resources into multifaceted delivery systems that, in theory, will decrease fragmentation and redundancy and increase access (Austin 2000; Sabatier et al. 2001). Finally, organizations are working together at the level of actual service delivery, using case management and other tools of coordination and service integration to better treat the needs of individual clients. Across sectors, collaboration and other interorganizational structures have been consistently heralded as the way to find new solutions to complex problems (Lawrence, Hardy, and Phillips 2002). Although interorganizational relationships have proliferated in both usage and form, the existing research provides little conceptual clarity as to the functioning of these kinds of relationships and little understanding of the impact of interorganizational relationships on the clients receiving services and the organizations engaged in these relationships.
Using data from a comparative case study of 20 human services organizations that provide early care and education services in New York State and the Commonwealth of Virginia (the Investigating Partnerships in Early Childhood...