Going separate ways: ex-post interdependence and the dissolution of collaborative relations
研究了协作本身产生的新相互依赖（事后相互依赖）如何导致合作关系解体，通过对英国地方政府13个市际合作的比较分析，发现事后相互依赖在解体和流产的合作中更显著，而持续的合作通过管理行动最小化了这种依赖。
Interdependence is typically regarded as the cause of inter-organizational collaboration. But it is also a consequence. Collaboration itself creates new interdependence as partners become more entwined in one another’s operations and experience the vetoes, compromises, delays, and risks inherent in joint working. This paradox – mitigating one set of interdependencies by creating another – renders collaborative relations inherently unstable. Dissolution may occur if “ex-post” interdependence becomes more troublesome than the original “ex-ante” trigger for the partnership. We test this proposition through comparative analysis of 13 sustained, aborted, and dissolved inter-municipal cooperations in English local government. Ex-post interdependence was most pronounced in those partnerships that ended in dissolution, and informed the design of replacement arrangements. It was also a contributory factor in the abortive cases. But ex-post interdependence was minimized in the group of sustained collaborations by management actions that streamlined the coordination burden imposed by joint working. These findings have implications for partnership design, the collaborator’s skillset, and theories of collaborative public management.