Collaboration from Within: Organizational Conditions and Tools for Strong Networks
How can healthcare and social services organizations collaborate more effectively with external partners and networks?
In “Collaborating from Within,” Odisee and Artevelde University College are investigating which internal decisions regarding vision, structure, processes, culture, and competencies strengthen organizations’ ability to collaborate. Together with a learning network and through pilot projects, we are developing and testing a practical guide. This provides organizations with concrete tools to collaborate in a more conscious, sustainable, and impact-driven way.
Project funded by VLAIO - TETRA
Problem Statement
Healthcare and social services organizations are increasingly working across organizational and sectoral boundaries. This is necessary due to complex support needs, staff shortages, limited resources, and policy frameworks that encourage or require integrated collaboration. Yet in many organizations, collaboration still arises on an ad hoc basis. An explicit vision, clear roles, agreements on decision-making and information sharing, and systematic monitoring of the added value are often lacking. As a result, networking takes a lot of time and energy, results remain difficult to measure, and continuity sometimes depends on individual employees.
Purpose
Collaboration from within strengthens the internal and external capacity for collaboration among Flemish social-profit health and welfare organizations. The project aims to help organizations organize, evaluate, and sustainably embed collaboration as a deliberate strategic choice. Consulting and advisory firms also gain evidence-based insights that enable them to refine their support for the sector.
Approach
Expected Results
Impact and Relevance
A strong collaboration policy can help organizations avoid overlap and duplication of effort, clarify roles and mandates, better preserve knowledge, and deploy staff and resources in a more targeted manner. In this way, the project supports the economic and social resilience of the social profit sector. Better collaboration can also contribute to a more coherent, accessible, and future-oriented system of health and social services. The project aligns with SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.
Connection to Education
Students and faculty from both universities of applied sciences are involved in the development, evaluation, and dissemination of the program. Within Odisee, the results are relevant to programs such as Social Work, Family Studies, and Special Education, as well as to course components focused on interdisciplinary collaboration, network strengthening, practice-oriented research, social entrepreneurship, and organizational policy.
Key words: ability to collaborate, networking, organization, sustainability, support
Project Partners & Funding
Join our learning network!
Do you work in the social sector and want to collaborate more closely with other organizations?
Join our learning network and actively work on your organization’s ability to collaborate.
In this program
- you’ll gain concrete tools and methodologies
- you’ll exchange experiences with organizations and experts
- you’ll test your insights in practice
Who is it for?
We are strongly committed to collaboration and have already learned a great deal in this area, but at the same time, we recognize that the challenges remain significant and that further exploration is needed. We are therefore eager to participate in the learning network to gain insights
and to follow the developments there.
Interested?
Interested in joining or learning more about the project?