Collaborative Governance Case Study

Outcomes

In examining whether the process is certainly collaborative, several of the requirements to collaborative qualities discussed previously could be evaluated. We could argue that it would definitely, but not only, include questions like:

1) Have all concerned stakeholders been directly participated in the decision-making process to assure the lawfulness of the process and its outcomes?

2) Have stakeholders engaged in a reliable negotiation in decision-making?

3) Do stakeholders have ‘ownership’ of the collaborative process?

4) Has their approach tried to satisfy the interests of all the affected parties ?

5) Are there any stakeholders who still prefer other approaches for problem- solving?

6) Has leaders been shared in the creation

3) Was the agreement durable?

4) Did the collaborative process lead to a great substantial agreement?

5) Did the collaborative process enhance the capacity of influenced stakeholders to solve problems and resolve conflicts?

6) Did the collaborative process facilitate the achievement of shared values that successively make other problems easier to solve and reduce conflict?

In this context, any evaluation of a collaborative governance approach will require taking into account both process and outcome levels. A number of the case studies suggest that collaboration is more likely to succeed when the possible objectives and advantages of collaboration are almost tangible and when ‘‘small wins’’ from collaboration are achievable (Chrislip & Larson, 1994; Roussos & Fawcett, 2000; Warner, 2006; Weech & Merrill, 2000). Although these intermediate outcomes may represent real outputs in themselves, we represent them here as important process outcomes that are crucial for having the incentive that can lead to successful collaboration. They can feed back into the collaborative process, supporting a good cycle of trust development (Vangen & Huxham,