Rethinking Collaboration: Winning Salience or Losing Favour

Abstract

This study examines collaboration when operationalised or enacted within the youth health sector. The youth health sector provides a unique opportunity to research collaboration as within this context government simultaneously promotes collaboration and the principles of New Public Management (NPM). As a result, collaboration is promoted in an environment where youth health service providers are involved in competitive tendering processes and each individual organisation is financially accountable for youth health services delivered. The youth health sector is a unique context to examine collaboration as government funding bodies sometimes enforce and coerce participation in collaboration as a condition of competitive tenders. Furthermore, within the youth health sector altruistic values associated with assisting youth in need are reasons to collaborate. Collaboration is championed in NSW government policy aiming to improve youth health service delivery. It involves bringing together a broad range of expertise, knowledge and resources that enable comprehensive and innovative thinking about complex issues and the formulation and delivery of solutions. In the context of youth health service delivery, this means bringing together a range of organisations involved in youth health service provision in order to deliver youth health services more effectively and efficiently than could be achieved individually. However, the enactment of enforced or coerced collaboration in a context where competitive tendering processes and collaboration are both promoted by government is under-researched, particularly within the context of a government-coordinated youth health network.