Improving collaborations in public sector organisations is a critical element of many public sector reforms. Functioning in collaborations are characterised by tensions, conflicts and instabilities leading to their failure (Das & Teng, 2000; de Rond & Bouchikhi, 2004). Management of successful collaborations entail not only creating strategic, operational and cultural alignment between the partner organisations but also anticipating potential flashpoints for tensions and conflicts as partnerships evolve over time through different phases. Efforts of the senior management in building a culture of trust and transparency immensely contribute in smooth functioning of strategic partnerships. Interestingly, even though collaborations are now commonly adopted in public sector context, there have been limited studies on how different public sector organisations manage their collaborative activities.
The recent tragic events in London and Manchester in England have highlighted the challenging role played by the emergency services in crisis situations. Their swift and professional response has drawn universal praise but has also raised issues around reduced funding levels and job-cuts to match heightened security threat. Structural and cultural barriers hamper better collaboration and coordination of work between the emergency services. The call for ‘transformational’ reforms in the emergency services in the UK, particularly in this period of austerity that emphasise ‘doing more with less’ has been made elsewhere (Wankhade, 2017).
The government policy towards ‘blue light integration’, though a welcome development, is quite vague and lacks clarity. The Policing and Crime Act, 2017 places a duty on police, fire and ambulance services to work together but duty itself has not been well specified. The Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) can now make a business case to run the police and fire & recues services jointly but ambulance services remain outside the purview of these provisions. Successes of public sector collaborations are built on capacity of the leaders to engage with and address ‘people’ issues. Emergency services leadership has been characterised as ‘top-down’, hierarchical, ‘heroic’ with a command and control approach prevalent in the organisations. There has been reliance on historical and hierarchical models of ‘heroic’ and ‘top-down’ leadership and absence of a distributive and pluralist approach to leadership. Current thinking and models are often based around individual services without much joined-up approach. Greater collaboration entails a different approach to leadership development, which needs to be facilitated at multiple levels within the organisations.
The paper will highlight the essence of capacity building in the context of shifting policy and political landscape, which have adversely affected professionalization of the workforce with no clear direction of future travel and lacking a national perspective. Current focus continues to remain on performance metrics and a stringent target regime. The paper would review of the current blue light architecture and the integration drive of the UK government. It argues that the ‘blue light integration’ project of the government is likely to succeed and facilitate greater degree of collaboration only if attendant issues surrounding differences in collaborative arrangements, organisational and professional cultures, leadership styles and trust and confidence issues are acknowledged and dealt with.
