| This study assesses four federal interagency coordination groups in the U.S. ocean policy arena to examine the factors that facilitate and hinder interagency collaboration, with the aim of developing policy guidance for achieving effective collaboration across the range of federal agencies involved in ocean policymaking and implementation. The need to improve interagency collaboration among the large number of federal agencies involved in national ocean policy in the United States was a key recommendation of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy's Final Report to the U.S. Congress and the President in 2004, and underscores, as well, President George W. Bush's response to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy establishing a new ocean governance structure through the December 2004 U.S. Ocean Action Plan and Executive Order.; Using the marine policy and interorganizational collaboration literature as a theoretical foundation, complemented by government documents, thirty-six semi-structured interviews were conducted with current and former members of the four federal interagency coordination groups to determine what the groups were established to do, what they accomplished, and what factors promoted and hindered collaboration among the agency members in the groups. The groups were: the National Ocean Research Leadership Council (NORLC); the Interagency Committee on the Marine Transportation System (ICMTS); the Subcommittee on Oceans Policy of the Global Environment Policy Coordinating Committee (Oceans Sub-PCC); and the National Dredging Team (NDT).; The study identified seventy factors that promote collaboration and ninety-two factors that hinder it, which represent a mix of structural factors, which describe organizational characteristics, non-structural factors, which describe characteristics of organizational interactions and group member behavior, and some external/political factors, which describe influences on organizations from outside the groups and their memberships. In addition, the study developed a Continuum of Collaboration to provide a framework for categorizing concepts defined in the literature on interorganizational collaboration, including communication, cooperation, coordination, harmonization, and integration. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
