Premium
Joined‐Up for What? Response to Carey and Harris on Adaptive Collaboration
Author(s) -
Scott Rodney James,
Boyd Ross
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8500.12233
Subject(s) - action (physics) , outcome (game theory) , process (computing) , government (linguistics) , path (computing) , psychology , process management , public relations , computer science , social psychology , operations management , management , operations research , business , political science , economics , engineering , microeconomics , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language , operating system
Carey and Harris present the concept of adaptive management as a practice for supporting effective collaboration, suggesting that performance information be used to modify actions. They observe that end‐outcome performance information is less useful because of long delays between actions and effects, and recommend instead that the performance information should concern the collaborative process itself. The New Zealand government has followed a similar path to the Australian journey described by Carey and Harris. First, New Zealand tried using end outcomes to drive collaboration. Then, New Zealand tried using process measures, but found that the resulting collaboration lacked purpose and urgency. More recently, New Zealand has found great success in using intermediate‐outcome measures to drive adaptive collaboration: measures with intrinsic value, but short delay between action and effect. We echo Carey and Harris’ call for adaptive collaboration, but write to suggest that intermediate outcomes, rather than process measures, may drive more purposive management.