Power and collaboration
The following is an excerpt from my dissertation The Ontology of Love: A Framework for Re-Indigenizing Community ©2015
Because we live in a hierarchical society where there is a gap between different types of people, we also live out unequal power relationships. Inequity begets mistrust. Therefore, building trust and respect entails addressing relational and socioeconomic inequity within our relationships.
In their essay “Nurturing Collaborative Relations: Building Trust in Interorganizational Collaboration,” Siv Vangen and Chris Huxham explain:
Issues concerned with power relationships seem to be significant contributors to mistrust and to the hampering of trust building. Practitioners argue for the need to deal with power differences so as to minimize interagency hostility and mistrust, and they use phrases such as “power games,” “power plays,” and “power struggles,” which suggest that power issues are frequently seen to be problematic. (13)
Some research about the issue of power has been done in the field of community/university partnerships. Colleges and universities are often in the position to directly affect the socioeconomic conditions in their communities in positive and negative ways. Community/college partnerships that do not have an existing strategy to narrow unequal relationships, need to create them. Otherwise, they risk disengagement from important elements of the communities they are trying to impact and/or simply replicating what they are already doing that clearly fails to do away with the impetus behind the formation of collaborations in the first place. Lawson provides a great illustration of how power imbalances in community/college partnerships may be detrimental to collaborative efforts as follows:
When a school, university, faith-based organization, or a social-health service agency provides the organizational home for collaboration involving diverse stakeholders, there is no guest-host (insider-outsider) relationship... This vital feature is arguably one of the most difficult ones to achieve and secure. It is especially difficult when categorical (single system) policies emphasize outcomes-oriented accountability.
For example, when evaluation and resource allocation systems for a school focus exclusively on students’ academic achievement, the school’s leaders may harness other stakeholders’ resources in service of personal and organizational goals... This resource exploitation marks the end of collaboration, including the loss of a shared agenda, equity among stakeholders, and interdependent relations. (231)
Indeed, colleges also often look to collaborations as gateways for increased revenue generation. Increasingly, this is a strategy to diversify funding sources as state and federal allocations shrink. However, and though this practice benefits local communities, it can also hinder community-based efforts by draining available resources for ongoing college operational needs. A win-win balance must be found and met in these ongoing efforts. Collaboration, as a fundraising strategy is important across all sectors and must be implemented in ways that foster trust and respect. Addressing power imbalances in collaborative efforts implies the inclusion of unlikely collaborators.
The result of simply not addressing power imbalances leads to the formation and constant reproduction of homogeneous collaborations. In “Rethinking Community Collaboration Through a Dialogic Lens: Creativity, Democracy, and Diversity in Community Organizing,” Renee Guarriello Heath explains the characteristics of homogenous collaborations and their effect on collaborative group dynamics. She states that elements of a homogeneous partnership include:
0 1. Prehistory of volunteering or relationships (159)
0 2. Mandated participation (160)
0 3. Resource focus (Ibid.), and
0 4. Normative organizing practices (location, times, manner of meetings) (160-1)
Heath also classifies the effects of homogeneity on a partnership as follows:
0 1. …discursive closure by disqualification (exclusion of people who have not undergone discipline-specific training like students and parents, etc.) (162)
0 2. …and that the absence of disagreements, while creating a semblance of equality and togetherness, actually increases power differences (Ibid.)
In other words, if a partnership is built upon pre-existing relationships and has come together as a result of a mandate, has an easily coordinated structure with a focus on resources (generation, allocation, coordination of), it may very well be a homogeneous partnership. An easy example of this dynamic comes from my days running a school for gang members. The program was hosted by a youth organization in Massachusetts. It had a long-standing “street team,” a group of community people who were paid and volunteered to work with local gangs. Given the diverse nature of the cities in the region, gangs were extremely diverse in demeanor, language, and in the ways they operated.
The “street team” set up a regular working schedule with a special emphasis on basketball that ran from 7:00 PM until midnight every day. They also spent much of their time conducting home visits and accompanying people to different types of appointments. None of the “street workers” (later renamed Gang Intervention Specialists) spoke Spanish. Two of them spoke Khmer even though the Khmer population had moved out of the region’s immediate areas of concern. They all spoke English. The major focus of operations needed to occur in densely populated Latin@ areas in the region based on the severity of what folks called the “gang problem.” I was put in charge of overseeing this team as a result of the attainment of a grant to fund the “street school.”
When I finished assessing what needed to occur in order for the school to meet its outcomes, it was clear that the team membership needed to either change or be expanded to include Latin@ “street workers.” The existing team worked intensely with one gang mostly incorporated by Puerto Rican youth and young adults and two other Khmer gangs living outside the regional area we were supposed to serve. However, the regional Latin@ population had shifted and fifty percent of all Latin@s were actually immigrant and first-generation Central Americans. Although I did not want to recognize the severity of the “gang problem” in the Central American community because as a Central American person I did not want to accept its severity, the numbers spoke for themselves and I was forced to device a strategy that would seek to interrupt gang formation processes and to inhibit their growth.
Part of the strategy implied diversifying the team, its ways of operating, and its general program offerings. It would have been far easier to just keep what was perceived to be a successful program structure. However, diversification was necessary and incredibly uncomfortable. I first had to endure the condemnation and distrust from my executive team, as the former director of the “street team” was personally offended that I dared change his model. Then I had to endure the blowback from the team members themselves as they refused to share resources, time, and space with newly hired members and “their kids.” Then, I had to get through the immense resistance from the wider community who were aghast by my decision to engage “those people” (including Latin@ community members). Lastly, I quietly witnessed the excessive use of force from the local police departments when dealing with gang-involved members of that community. Eventually, as gang-related crime decreased, the model seemed like the way business was done on a regular basis, and little to no memory of the way “things used to be” remained.
In the end, I discovered a few noteworthy things: former gang members were still gravitating to their old stomping grounds and often participated in gang-related events; active gang members considered program resources part of their territory; therefore, instead of preventing gang formation and gang-related activities, the “old” program was serving to support gang formation and gang-related activities. This happened because in homogenous collaborative efforts, there is little capacity for internal reflection, accountability, and innovations development. In this case, I encountered a homogenous collaborative effort and transformed it into a heterogeneous one. To counter the notion of homogeneous partnerships, Heath envisions what she calls “engaged partnerships” that generate:
0 1. Creativity through each partner’s voice (156)
0 2. Conflict through diversity (157), and
0 3. Reciprocity and symmetry (159)
In my example from the “street school,” the inclusion of team members who were Central American ignited creativity in the entire team as new types of conversations and problem solving approaches were developed between newly configured smaller teams, as new activities were implemented, and as new relationships that led to increased trust and respect emerged. An expanded diversity of gangs being targeted for inclusion in the school created a fair amount of diversity as conflicting gang members found themselves in situations where they were sharing equipment, classrooms, and lounging spaces with members of other gangs. This diversity created conflict; lots of conflict.
The conflict was handled on a daily basis by individual team members and different arrangements of team members. Sometimes, conflict emerged between team members as old loyalties and not so old loyalties were triggered. A commitment to Vázquez’ idea of dialogue and long-term relationships more often than not engendered innovations in program offerings, approaches, and strategies. As these innovations were implemented and evaluated, team members increasingly trusted and respected each other. In the end we co-created a space where gangs, who would in any other circumstance engage in violent activity, co-habitated spaces, and a team was created that could navigate conflict and generate innovation.
Donna J. Cherry and Jon Shefner comment on the propensity for domination colleges and universities display in the effort to collaborate with communities in “Addressing Barriers to University- Community Collaboration: Organizing by Experts or Organizing the Experts?” A critical understanding of dynamics of power, language, and exclusion in collaborations would allow for colleges and university to unlearn core assumptions that prove detrimental to colleges and universities who labor at implementing collaborations. According to Cherry and Shefner, one of the assumptions to be shed is what they understand as “the assumption that institutional knowledge surpasses the community’s understanding of its needs.” (227) They identify that singular assumption as the source of a pattern of behavior that renders communities as “deficient.” (Ibid.) Cherry and Shefner invite us to rethink is the idea of the expert and of expertise as determining value and status. They explain:
The expert role also defines university-affiliated workers as those who know the decisions to make, the direction to pursue, and the strategies to attain the defined goals. University faculty and staff are defined by expertise based on educational experiences; expertise provides the foundation of legitimacy in research, teaching, and service activities. Expertise is further reinforced by its organizational affiliation. Thus, university workers remain entrenched in relationships in which they are the dominant actors–they teach students rather than learning with them, and conduct research on subjects more often than collaborating with them. Acquiescence... the flip side of power, requires both empowered and disempowered actors to accept the cultural environment that reinforces that static relationship as the legitimate order of society. With greater legitimacy and power, universities are positioned to dominate their community partners. (227)
On the other hand, in “Moving Toward Dialogical Collaboration: A Critical Examination of a University—School—Community Partnership,” Peter Miller and Madeline M. Hafner identify the elements that need to be present in a successful community/ college partnership:
0 1. A partnership must be “…built on community-identified assets and needs”
0 2. It must “…be guided by strategically representative leadership”
0 3. It must “…remain aware of and rooted in historical contexts”
0 4. It must “…address issues at systemic levels”
0 5. It must “…act on clear and realistic goals and expectations”
0 6. And it should “…create environments where mutual participation is maximized” (101)
I think it is important to name a few of these challenges and to offer some thoughts on how to overcome them.
0 1. “…built on community-identified assets and needs”: this means that building a needs assessment does not occur in an evaluation and grant writing office. Ideally, a participatory community needs assessment process is implemented that entails many conversations with people outside of the institutional context. It means convening working groups to collect “the low hanging fruit,” or easily obtained data, and then generating conversations that are then carefully captured that add further richness and qualitative dimensions to the data: a mixed- methods approach.
0 2. “…be guided by strategically representative leadership”: for example, in the educational sector, this means that it is completely appropriate for non-education experts to lead educational initiatives that impact them personally, even if they do not have institutional power and authority. There are far too many partnerships seeking to improve the lot of students that do not engage students, and their families. To the latter, after all, Albert Bandura says in his essay “Social Cognitive Theory in Cultural Context” that “[t]here is no autonomous self unless one is living the life of a hermit, nor is there an entirely interdependent self completely submerged in collectivity without any individual identity or sense of personal capacity.” (276) To understand the complexity of the realities faced by students and their extended social networks is critical in devising solutions for their engagement and retention in colleges and universities. In the non profit sector, the same is true for “clients.”
0 3. “…remain aware of and rooted in historical contexts”: this means that not all communities operate in the same ways. A community’s history shapes the way people live, what they experience, how they make decisions, and how they understand change. Building change strategies without taking into account a community’s history is like building a house of cards or a sand castle. Inevitably, the environment will have its way with it, in the way in which the environment operates.
0 4. “…address issues at systemic levels”: this means that even though institutional representatives from colleges attained their professional status by knowing a lot, doing a lot, and by being recognized by their peers as having done so, the “problems” faced by communities are so complex that even their inherent wisdom will not be able to solve it. Complex, chronic problems may not necessitate complex solutions. In fact, as history demonstrates, elegance and simplicity often are the end result of highly complex cognitive and behavioral processes. The reasons for the rise of slavery were complex, and so were the reasons and processes that enabled the emancipation of slaves. Emancipation itself, was/is a simple concept. One is a slave (the problem), therefore one must be emancipated (the simple elegant solution). However, getting to the declaration and implementation of emancipation continues to be a process that is unfinished. The flip side of this phenomenon is how Jillene Joseph, Executive Director of the Native Wellness Institute, an internationally recognized indigenous organization, handles all challenges. Whenever she is asked what she thinks the answer to any intractable social dynamic is, she unequivocally answers with the following word: “Healing.”
Healing in her cultural context means the reconstitution of individual and community connection with the physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of individual and collective human experience. In this context, the response to all community challenges imply individual and collective responses that often in turn require the sharing of resources and the enactment of ceremony that seeks to bring individuals and communities to full relationship with what is happening presently in order to them transform that which is happening presently into a receding situation in order to enable a communities’ efforts to learn and grow from said experiences.
0 5. “…act on clear and realistic goals and expectations”: this means that collaborations should work hard to develop goals and expectations that all partners help generate. Intractable social problems take a lot of time and effort to resolve. It is important that collaborative efforts generate goals and strategies that are attainable, practical, and that build up to larger and loftier goals over time. Small wins, in time, amount to big wins.
0 6. “…create environments where mutual participation is maximized”: this means that even though it would be quicker and more practical to just make things happen, collaboration leaders should work hard to encourage as much dialogue and sharing as possible. Create opportunities for small teamwork; sub-committees; learning dialogues; and discussion in times of conflict and uncertainty. The way through these complex dynamics is through connecting with each other, not walking out and/or moving away from each other.
The academic world can be an environment that opposes every aspect of collaborative practice. It is no small matter to lead an initiative that goes against the very grain of the institution to which one is accountable and upon which one depends for one’s livelihood and future prospects. Yet, that act of courage is exactly what is needed if the Academy is going to be relevant in the efforts to transform society from a highly hierarchical arrangement of power, towards a flatter or more Indigenous one. In “Institutional Theory and Institutional Change: Introduction to the Special Research Forum,” Tina Dacin, Jerry Goodstein, and Richard Scott state:
Institutional change can proceed from the most micro interpersonal and suborganizational levels to the most macro societal and global levels. It can take place in relatively brief and concentrated periods or over time measured in decades or centuries. And it can take place incrementally, so that observers and participants are hardly aware of any change, or abruptly, in dramatic episodes that present large discontinuities with former patterns. (48)
Although Dacin, Goldstein, and Scott present a complex understanding of change, it is important to keep in mind that institutional, community, and personal change all stem from the same place: our vision for a potential future condition. In such a manner, it is the result of what Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, and Bryan J. Smith call “creative tension” in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. “Tension,” they assert, “by its nature, seeks resolution, and the most natural resolution of this tension is for our reality to move closer to what we want. It’s as if we have set up a rubber band between two poles of our vision and current reality” (195). In other words, humanity’s future(s) will only be as large as it can imagine.
I remember Peter Senge once describing being in creative tension as the feeling of continually running in place and not seeing any immediate results to one’s change efforts. I love that metaphor because as perceptions change, change makers are often the last to truly witness the results of their efforts. Sometimes such results take a long time to emerge in the public eye as having occurred and more often than not, the initial implementers of those changes have long since departed the actual place and time of initial implementation.
