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Collaborative Governance

Striking multiple balances in cross-sector collaborations: how leaders navigate institutional complexity with interdependent leadership behaviors

JPART — 2026-07-17 Original Striking multiple balances in cross-sector collaborations: how leaders navigate institutional complexity with interdependent leadership behaviors Sandra Henninger, Rick Vogel Abstract Abstract In cross-sector collaborations, leaders must navigate the complex and often conflicting demands of the public, business, and nonprofit sectors. This study explores how leaders manage this institutional complexity through a multilevel framework, drawing on a case study of a tri-sector partnership developing technology for disaster management. Based on evidence from 27 interviews, observations, and documentary material, we identify the leadership repertoire and, as our core contribution, uncover four distinct types of interdependencies between these behaviors: enabling, substituting, stabilizing, and inhibiting. Our findings reveal that leadership in cross-sector collaborations goes beyond adopting a single style; rather, it requires a strategic orchestration of how different behaviors interact. We identify two overarching strategies (selective targeting and sequential switching) that leaders use to combine complementary behaviors while preventing them from undermining each other. By focusing on leaders’ microlevel agency in response to macrolevel sector differences, this study provides a clearer understanding of how interdependent leadership behaviors converge into what we theorize as institutional leadership in CSCs.

The cognitive fabric of collaborative governance: paradox mindset in transformation-oriented collaborations

PMR — pp. 1-35 2026-07-16 Original The cognitive fabric of collaborative governance: paradox mindset in transformation-oriented collaborations Noa A. Birman Abstract This theoretical article develops a micro-foundational perspective on how and under what conditions collaborative governance groups generate transformative outcomes. It integrates literature on collaboration, transformation, and paradox to advance three core propositions. First, collaborating for transformative outcomes constitutes a distinctive paradoxical context, in which the tensions of collaboration and the tensions of transformation are nested, reinforcing, and constitutive of the process itself. Second, diversity in collaborators’ cognitive-emotional capacity to perceive and navigate tensions (i.e. paradox mindset) shapes collaborative outcomes, with diversity in paradox mindset enhancing the likelihood of transformative outcomes. Third, the paradoxical leadership behaviours of designated leaders further increase the likelihood of transformative outcomes. By highlighting the dual challenge of transformation-oriented collaborations of eliciting tensions to stimulate change while containing them to sustain collaboration, the article links individual-level cognitive-emotional predisposition to group dynamics and system-level outcomes, offering a broader theorizing of collaborations in public administration.

Sea‐Level Rise Adaptation and Collaboration in Polycentric Governance: A Comparison of Three Regions

PAR — 2026-03-17 Original Sea‐Level Rise Adaptation and Collaboration in Polycentric Governance: A Comparison of Three Regions Francesca Vantaggiato, Mark Lubell, Matthew C. Nowlin, Juita‐Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Majid Shafiee‐Jood