A Local-State Government Spatial Data Sharing Partnership

Chapter 3 – Collaboration, Partnerships and the Government Environment
process may facilitate improved standardisation of data within each organisation, however
they may well choose to continue to limit the data for their own business activities.
Inter-organisational coordination is generally seen as more formal than inter-organisational
cooperation, generally requires resources and relies on the interdependence of the
organisations (Dedekorkut 2004). It also usually results in the loss of the autonomy by one
or more organisations in order to accomplish their respective or shared goal. Mulford and
Rogers (1982) distinguished coordination from cooperation through their intended
outcomes. The authors define inter-organisational coordination as “the process whereby
two or more organisations create and/or use existing decision rules that have been
established to deal collectively with their shared task environment” (Mulford & Rogers
1982, p. 12). They also distinguish coordination as being either managed or unmanaged.
In the early stages of building spatial databases it was recognised that coordination of
effort in data capture between government agencies was important from both an economic
and data quality perspective. Often these coordination efforts were sporadic and usually
based on projects e.g. a mapping project over areas of common geographical interest.
Mulford & Rogers (1982) compared cooperation and coordination through the comparison of
rules, goals, linkages, resources and threats to autonomy (see Table 3.1).
Table 3.1 A comparison of cooperation and coordination processes (Mulford and Rogers, 1982, p.13)
Criteria Cooperation Coordination
Rules and formality No formal rules Formal rules
Goals and activities
emphasised
Implications for vertical and
horizontal linkages
Individual organisational
goals and activities
None, only domain
agreements
Personal resources involved Relatively few – lower
ranking members
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Joint goals and activities
Vertical and horizontal
linkages can be affected
More resources involved –
higher ranking members
Threat to autonomy Little threat More threat to autonomy
In Table 3.1 it can be seen that cooperation is generally seen as less formal, involving less
resources and less threatening as the organisational goals and domains are not
compromised. On the other hand, coordination requires more formal rules, joint goals,
commitment to resources and as a result, generally poses a threat to autonomy.
Collaboration between organisations may be seen as an extension and/or the inclusion of
both cooperation and coordination. Gray (1989, p. 5) describes collaboration as “the
process through which parties who see different aspects of a problem can constructively
explore their differences and search for solutions beyond their own limited vision of what
is possible”. Although much of the literature on collaboration concentrates its focus on