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Administration & Society, Vol. 38, No. 1, 79-112 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0095399705284203

Contradictory Interests, Tangled Power, and Disorganized Organization

P. Denise Cobb

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Beth A. Rubin

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

University-community partnerships are a new organizational form that has emerged out of the economic crises that characterized urban landscapes in the 1990s. Based on an 18-month, multimethod, qualitative case study of one university-community partnership, the authors find that when participants have contradictory interests and work within an ambiguous organizational structure, the organization will tend toward persistent failure. This effect will be particularly problematic in organizational hybrids that feature partnerships among groups from systematically unequal social positions. Thus, the findings suggest that these organizational hybrids are predisposed to nonrational tendencies and permanent failure.

Key Words: university-community partnership • inequality • collaboration • nonrational organization


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