The Role Transparency Plays in the Success and Sustainability of a Collaborative Network: Within a Midsized Citywide Strategic Change Initiative

Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Organization Development & Change (D.O.D.C.)

Department

Organization Development

First Advisor

Jeanelle Sears (Committee Chair)

Second Advisor

Neil Baird (Other)

Third Advisor

Steven Cady (Committee Member)

Fourth Advisor

Jane Wheeler (Committee Member)

Abstract

This research explored the sustainability of collaborative networks and specifically the role of transparency. This deductive thematic analysis study focused on a midsized rustbelt city’s citywide governing strategic change collaborative network that began sometime in 2010 and spawned sixteen individual collaborative networks by the end of 2012. Each of these seventeen collaborative networks were co-led by leaders, called champions, around their passion for the change they were tasked to create. The citywide governing strategic change network was formed to bring together citizen and government leaders to collaboratively decide what could be done to make this midsized rustbelt city better for the citizens and surrounding regional communities. Initially, the effort was governed by the founding key city executive and four citizen leaders and grew to over two thousand members and thirty-nine champion leaders. A disruption in commitment was caused by the change in executive sponsorship when the foundational key city executive’s term ended. The successive key city executive was not supportive. This provides a secondary look at how a change in executive sponsorship affects commitment. There were also two outside paid members, a facilitator and me as a coordinator. Literature on collaborative networks, collaborative governance, and transparency has increased recently. Leading to Parung & Bititci’s (2008) theoretical framework developed to measure the sustainability of a collaborative network. This framework includes a construct for the health of a collaborative network which has five characteristics, trust, commitment, coordination, communication quality, and joint problem solving. According to research by Schnackenberg et al., (2021), transparency is relatively new and has a variety of constructs not necessarily related other than the fact that trust is a common characteristic. Schnackenberg et al. (2021) also included quality information in their transparency construct which is tied to quality communication (Maltz, 2000; Parker et al., 2001), providing a relationship between the health of a collaborative network and transparency. The unique opportunity this deductive thematic analysis study provided was a rare retrospective look back showing these characteristics and transparency, were indeed factors in how these seventeen collaborative networks performed, and the role of transparency was determined to be highly important to a collaborative network’s success or sustainability.

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