Paradoxes of Collaboration

Collaboration is a warm, friendly word currently used to describe a cooperative manager—subordinate relationship. In this study, the authors first specify a meaning for collaboration and then, from stories told by competent cabinet members at the state level, extract evidence of collaborative and directive managerial relationships in problem solving. Based on these stories, collaboration is usefully seen as one tool among several (directive, devolution, collaboration) rather than as a consistent manager style. Therefore, from the perspective of style, managerial behavior is more paradoxical than consistent. As a sidebar, devolution emerges as closer to directive behavior than to collaborative behavior as a way of relating to subordinates.