Exploring Collaboration, Its Antecedents, And Perceived Outcomes In Service Partnerships Of Community-Based Organizations In South Florida

This article examines the temporal sequence of inter-organizational collaboration by investigating what factors contribute to collaboration and which collaboration practices influence collaborative outcomes in service partnerships formed by community-based organizations (CBOs) in South Florida. The article uses structural equation modeling to test the service partnership model. Findings indicate that development of service partnerships are mostly affected by environmental factors related to solving social problems (p \u3c 0.001) which accounts for 37% of variance in inter-organizational collaboration. In addition, cognitive and resource reciprocity, indicators used to measure inter-organizational collaboration, had statistically significant influence (p \u3c 0.001) on perceived collaboration outcomes. These findings shed light on how CBOs transfer theirs social mission in collaborative actions to alleviate social problems. Implications of this study can help service partnerships in identifying best practices and areas for improvement which are needed to build capacity at the inter-organizational level. © 2014 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC