Chipping Away at a Grand Challenge: Aligning Goal and Governance to Reduce Homelessness

Abstract

When many of today’s deepest problems are intractable, how can public, private, and nonprofit actors collaborate to mitigate negative local effects? Given the open-endedness of any collective effort to “chip away” at a grand challenge, these intersectoral collaborations must align the scope of a shared goal with the governance arrangements distributing decision-making authority. By juxtaposing insights from fieldwork on intersectoral collaborations formed to aid local homeless communities in São Paulo (Brazil), California (USA), and Manchester (UK), this research presents four goal-governance alignments to achieve coordinated collective action. To pursue a targeted goal, an organization can set up or join a local structure of centralised (Partnerships) or distributed (Coalitions) decision-making authority. To pursue broader goals, an organization can evolve into a Mission by engaging simultaneously in multiple, mutually reinforcing local partnerships and coalitions. Or evolve into a Movement by not only adding local structures of collective action, but also adopting a participation architecture to encourage collaboration at scale from third parties outside the organization’s managerial control.