Inter-Organizational Collaboration as a Source of Innovation in Public Management

Innovations in public management tend to be defined as creative ideas put into practice; of management seeking to resolving persistent problems faced while pursuing the public interest. Interorganizational collaboration fuelling the effective accomplishment of ventures launched within organizations is regarded as one of the methods for creating and implementing innovations. Therefore, the overarching objective of this paper is to investigate the correlations between interorganizational collaboration and creation of organizational innovations. The paper was drawn from literature studies and empirical research. It gives an insight into requirements for inter-organizational collaboration in public management with an emphasis on creating innovations. Furthermore, the innovative process in public management was illustrated as well as innovative inter-organizational collaboration was defined as creating cutting-edge ideas, concepts and methods for untangling specific problems underlying management by numerous organizations through their engagement in common enterprises and consolidation of resources, knowledge and ingenuity. Overall, this collaboration takes into account organizational and legal requirements and relies on previous positive relationships and capabilities enjoyed by individual organizations to build and advance rapports with other organizations. Literature studies were partly illustrated with empirical findings from research conducted in 2010 in commune offices located in the south of Poland (in the Malopolskie province). Surveys carried out led to affirming that though the needs and benefits in terms of creation of innovations as part of inter-organizational collaboration in public management attained visibility and recognition, though common practice within local government units fails to reaffirm this. Different replies to the implementation gaps of inter-organizational collaboration have been rendered, but there was no conclusive answer about how to achieve implementation.