Multi-party collaboration as social learning for interdependence: Developing relational knowing for sustainable natural resource management

This article develops a conceptual framework to theorize about and to intervene in multi-party collaboration projects related to natural resource issues. It is a recent trend in public and private interorganizational policy that multiple actors get involved to collaborate around issues of water and soil management, nature preservation, land use, farming practices, introduction of new technologies in life sciences and related problem domains. Awareness grows that blue print planning-implementation approaches are no longer sufficient to obtain viable and sustainable outcomes. The technical complexity and social embeddedness of these issues, require the collaboration of public authorities, private business, scientific experts, groups of users and social interest groups, non-governmental organizations and representatives of stakeholders in the particular ecological domain. The central concern is always an interdependent involvement of the stakeholders, the development of a shared problem definition, the coordination of the different actions on all levels and the orientation towards a shared common script and action strategy. Social psychology and particularly organizational psychology, building on theories of interorganizational collaboration and social and organizational development, are challenged to make a contribution here. The different stakeholders engage in joint practices where the acknowledgement and the development of viable interdependencies are at stake. Learning about those interdependencies is considered in this article as the critical constitutive process and form of these multi-party projects. Through sharing problem perspectives and working with different kinds of knowledge and competencies, multiple actors or stakeholder parties co-construct a social learning process in an emerging community of practice. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.