Cross Collaborate

You are browsing the archives of 2009 January.

If you were to read up on the practice of consensus-building, you would quickly discover that the recommended model for paying the facilitator or mediator calls for joint contributions by all the parties. The sharing of costs is one way the participants can demonstrate their commitment, but it also helps reassure them that the practitioner’s […]

Collaboration is a word more often associated these days with online services than with public policy. The two, however, can be linked in several ways. There are tools available through web browsers to help collaborative groups share virtual workspaces, simplify communication, facilitate project management and conduct real-time meetings. The explosive growth of offerings includes many […]

In the last ten years or so, collaborative governance has emerged as a term to fit the general idea of collaboration more specifically to the public policy field. Use of the term, though, is not that common. I still get a lot of blank stares when I use the phrase and even bemused cracks about […]

As a fairly young field, public policy collaboration has acquired an interesting assortment of names, which are sometimes used loosely and interchangeably. Depending on the context, the practice might be called mediation, consensus-building, conflict management, dispute or conflict resolution, collaboration or, most recently, collaborative governance. What practitioners do hasn’t changed all that much: they are […]