Collaborative Architecture: Components, Relationships, and Implications for Partner Influence

Abstract

This article provides a detailed exploration of the collaborative architecture concept and its ability to deepen research on interorganizational collaborative arrangements. After introducing four components of collaborative architecture (goals, arenas, membership, and mechanisms), the article uses the components to compare two cases of public education reform collaborations. We investigate methodological challenges in coding and data analysis and evaluate the conceptual strengths and weaknesses of collaborative architecture, including the extent to which it lends specificity to existing frameworks for studying collaboration and collaborative governance. The article demonstrates that the collaborative architecture concept enables researchers to probe and assess important characteristics and relationships among goals, boundaries, structures, and processes of interorganizational collaboration as well as the exercise and embeddedness of partner influence.