4
1. Introduction
Most of the literature on networks and collaboration is quite positive.
Collaborative networks are seen as appropriate devices to tackle public management
problems and to successfully coordinate political, social and economic action. Figure 1
portrays a familiar relationship between public organizations and problems. Each
organization (01,02,03 and 04) intersects with only part of the problem and none of the
organizations are linked in any kind of a collaborative relationship (Hjern 1992:4). This
figure captures the rationale for public sector networks to collaborate to solve problems
like homelessness and healthcare delivery that cannot be contained within the boundaries
of one organization. Since the problem is bigger than any organization, collaborating with
other organizations is necessary if there is any hope of making progress in alleviating the
problem.
What writers on networks have widely ignored is the nature of the problem. The
focus among network scholars, ourselves included, has been to try and figure out how to
structure collaboration in a way that leads to problem amelioration. It is usually argued
that networks compared to hierarchies are a better solution to solving non-routine, non-
standardized or even ill-structured (Simon 1973) or wicked (Rittel and Webber 1973)
problems. These problems, however, were more or less constructed as socially non-
reactive and if there was political resistance to political measures it was assumed that it
was possible to co-opt those groups or organizations in some way or another.
But what happens if the problem is not an unorganized set of poor or cognitively
impaired clients but another network, perhaps engaged in illegal activity? If this is the
case the problem in Figure 1 could be labeled “drugs” or “terrorism” or “arms
Convention