Attachments
Abstract
Any discussion about an increase in inter-agency working particularly within the wider humanitarian aid and security sectors raise questions about the need for more collaboration. One key reason is the synergy required to effectively manage more complex and conflict ridden work environments whilst aiming to achieve increasingly difficult organizational objectives. Such organizations face greater management complexity, relentless pressure to meet the needs of often traumatized populations whilst providing a capable service, and dealing with the ever-increasing rate of situational change. Organizations whether from the not-for profit, public or private sectors are turning to external collaborations to improve their capabilities and their knowledge base. The key concept of absorptive capacity involving the various agencies ability to recognize, learn from and utilize new knowledge is identified as an important factor to support for example, distributed leadership. This exploratory paper builds on extant research and provides a heuristic framework to support further research to prompt the need for necessary growth in collaborative working and to aid in the management of the increased complexity and difficult work encountered in hazardous zones by inter-agency organizations.