| Higher education institutions are becoming increasingly responsible for securing additional funding in order to augment decreasing public and private financial support. At the same time, grant funders are requiring these institutions to demonstrate their capacity to leverage resources with partner agencies. The purpose of this study was to provide insight regarding factors affecting collaboration, including collective efficacy, organizational learning, and constructive conflict resolution, in a large community college consortium where an organizational team approach was taken to develop accelerated, intensive programs of study in three specific Career Technical Education industries so students earn a degree or certificate of value in a reasonable amount of time. This required the consortium's colleges to align course curricula across the region, as well as to industry standards.;A mixed methods design was used to examine the relationships among the independent variables of collective efficacy, organizational learning, constructive conflict resolution, and the dependent variable of faculty and administrator perceptions of project outcomes. For the quantitative phase, each independent variable was measured using Likert style survey questions adapted by the researcher. The dependent variable was measured using Likert style survey questions developed by the researcher. These data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, regression, and MANOVA. The results indicated that collective efficacy, organizational learning, and project quality outcomes were highly correlated, while constructive conflict resolution was not significantly correlated with collective efficacy. The regression analysis indicated that collective efficacy and conflict were significant predictors of project outcomes. There were no differences between work groups on all variables indicating they had similar experiences.;The qualitative phase consisted of an in-depth interview protocol that included questions designed to elicit faculty and administrator reactions to the project's collaboration process. Four themes, grounded in coherence theory, emerged as a result of the analysis of the qualitative data: relationship building/dissolving competition, sense of empowerment, supportive leadership, and fear for the future/sustainability. Recommendations and suggestions for future research were also presented. |
