The Role of Disputes in Collaborative Capacity-Building

The capacity for joint actions, a critical concept concerning the ability of a collaborative network to execute collaborative actions, is often discussed in collaborative design, where the pooling of resources and institutional arrangements is expected by collaborators for policy execution. Little is known, however, about how this capacity-building process actually proceeds when collaborative disputes occur that threaten the collaboration with disruption or even collapse. Though disputes among collaborators due to changing circumstances, expectations, needs, and motives could increase collaborative costs, they also present an opportunity for building additional capacity to overcome these disputes, leading to a stronger collaborative capacity for more sustained joint actions. Employing a unique and comprehensive database of 213 collaborative disputes traced from 2,257 government documents from 1997 to 2023, we explore how the disputes originate and progress, and how collaborative capacity is developed in overcoming them. We show that a surge of collaborative capacity is needed to resolve disputes, which in public infrastructure and service delivery collaborations follow very different patterns in origination, process, and resolution strategies. Most disputes are resolved by collaborators internally, though intervention of an external authority is not uncommon. Communications, coupled with proper rule and policy adjustments, are most frequent ways of resolutions, likely leading to institutionalization of collaborations for long-term joint actions. The findings extend the literature that has long focused on maintaining interactions rather than resolving disputes in collaborative capacity-building, demonstrating significant theoretical and policy contributions.