With a little help from my friends

Abstract

Purpose Studies of multi-sector collaborations have increased in recent years. However, the topic is still complex and lacks synthesis. Toward that end, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how collaboration is addressed in the public administration and nonprofit sector journals, and applies well-established strategic decision-making theories to shed light on possible research directions that would provide rigor to the field of collaboration. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a literature review of the top nonprofit and public administration journals, believing these most likely to contain articles on the topic of multi-sector collaboration. Findings The authors identify a number of themes, including need for clarity, temporality, call to collaborate, funding, partnering issues and processes, benefits of collaboration across three different collaborative types. Originality/value The authors embed well-known strategic decision-making theories into the themes emergent from this review and offer suggestions as to how future researchers may test strategic decision-making processes within multi-sector collaborations.