Understanding collaboration

Abstract

Studies on collaboration acknowledge the role of culture in building a collaborative organization. These theories rarely look for more than one relationship among the organizational factors and are unidirectional in perspective. This chapter examines the evidence on building a Collaborative Culture. The purpose is to identify the organizational factors that influence collaboration in US-based corporations. The chapter looks at the collaborative context intra-organizationally. Several factors influence the building of a collaborative culture. This chapter defines culture, leadership, trust, knowledge management, and structure, using an evidence-based research synthesis approach. The relationships between these factors indicate the ability of an organization to build a collaborative culture. The aim is to understand the facilitators of and barriers to collaboration and the organizational factors that allow collaboration to thrive or fail.