Governing public-nonprofit collaborations: understanding their complexity and the implications for research

Collaborations are increasingly important to non-profit organisations.This paper extends our understanding of how collaborations are governed. It presents a conceptual framework drawn from existing research and compares this literature to research on non-profit organisational governance. An application of the framework to two case studies highlights the dynamic and emergent quality of collaborative governing systems. Changes in governance structures and processes are driven by their external environments, trust-building and collective leadership processes, and the development of different types of governing rules.The paper concludes with implications for research on governance in collaborative settings as well as for the study of non-profit, organisational governance.