HLTH 8465 Week 8 Partnership Setback Discussion Post Example

Week 8 Discussion: Initial Post and Replies

After the Six-Month Delay: Partners Stay for Returns They Can Already Count

The crisis center's opening has been pushed back six months because renovation at the independent hospital ran late. Staff hired early are idle, and the independent hospital's board has asked why it should keep paying its share of their salaries for a center that does not yet exist. That is a reasonable complaint, and I do not think the other partners should treat it as disloyalty.

Huxham and Vangen observed that collaborations slow down far more often than their founders expect, a pattern they called collaborative inertia (Huxham & Vangen, 2005). Seen that way, a six-month delay is ordinary rather than fatal. But it is also the point at which partnerships most often lose members, because the costs are real and the benefits are still promises.

My claim is that partners stay for returns they can already count, not for the goal they signed up to. Appeals to the shared goal, fewer adults in crisis held in emergency departments, will not persuade a board that is counting losses this quarter. What persuades is something the partner has already gained. Relationships between organizations deepen through repeated cycles in which commitments are made and then visibly kept (Ring & Van de Ven, 1994), and Ansell and Gash describe the importance of intermediate outcomes, small wins that build trust and commitment while the larger goal is still distant (Ansell & Gash, 2008). The partnership needs some now.

I would propose one interim return per partner before opening. The independent hospital's idle crisis staff could train and work alongside the county's mobile crisis teams, which would cut the hospital's emergency department holds a little now and give its staff experience before the center opens. The larger system could receive the authority's agreement to count its clinicians' hours toward the center even before opening, protecting its contract. The sheriff's deputies could begin calling the mobile teams before going to an emergency department. And the authority could report these interim results to the county commission, which protects its appropriation.

I concede that interim returns cost something, and that a partner determined to leave will not be held by them. If the independent hospital's board has decided the center is not worth its share, a training arrangement will not change that. But most boards are not yet decided; they are counting, and interim returns change what they count.

Reply to Jasmine

Jasmine, your coalition has been planning a shared community health worker program for nine months. What has each partner received so far, other than meeting time? If the answer is nothing, I would expect the first setback to test the coalition hard. Is there an interim return you could arrange in the next quarter, such as shared training for workers each partner already employs?

Reply to Nathan

Nathan, you argue that a strong shared vision is what keeps partners together through delays. I think vision helps partners join but does less to keep them. When a board's finance committee sees a cost with no return, the vision is the argument the champion makes, and the committee has heard it before. I would be interested in whether your partners have any return they could point to if a delay came.

References

Ansell, C., & Gash, A. (2008). Collaborative governance in theory and practice. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(4), 543-571. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mum032

Huxham, C., & Vangen, S. (2005). Managing to collaborate: The theory and practice of collaborative advantage. Routledge.

Ring, P. S., & Van de Ven, A. H. (1994). Developmental processes of cooperative interorganizational relationships. Academy of Management Review, 19(1), 90-118. https://doi.org/10.2307/258836