Cross-departmental Collaboration in China’s Public Service Delivery: Drivers and Obstacles

Abstract: Nowadays, very few public services could be delivered by only one department or organization. In order to deal with those "wicked" issues, like transportation, housing, environmental protection, food safety or some other problems, collaboration between departments has been a need. Meanwhile, cross-departmental collaboration has been proved to be an important means for governance, which has been widely used in political issues. Actually, collaboration has been a culture. Most countries around the world have been already involved into this wave. The use of collaboration as a main form of cross-departmental relations allows different agencies to work together and to create a solution to those large, complex or seemingly unsolvable problems, and to deal with the problems that cannot be handled by any single organization. In this thesis, I study cross-departmental collaborations in China by focusing on its influencing factors during development process, the possible reasons for collaborating, and the collaboration dynamics in China. This research found that, besides those factors like leadership, funding, environmental factors, resources which have been proved in Western studies for years, collaboration in China focuses more on the organizational culture, the relationship between officials (Guanxi), the political support, as well as the government' macro-plan and strategies for development.