Why Managers Don't Collaborate: Revealing the Myths and Truths

Description

This book is an innovative and controversial approach to dispel the baseless myths that are preventing managers of organizations from moving forward and reaping the benefits of collaboration. Compared to most publications on the market, this book is packed with the rich results of 20 years of research. It is based on over 200 studies in a wide variety of public, private, and international... Read more

This book is an innovative and controversial approach to dispel the baseless myths that are preventing managers of organizations from moving forward and reaping the benefits of collaboration. Compared to most publications on the market, this book is packed with the rich results of 20 years of research. It is based on over 200 studies in a wide variety of public, private, and international settings and over 4000 quotations gathered from interviews with managers. Many have been selected to illustrate the case studies and key points in the book. Collaboration has been presented as a serious business strategy for at least 50 years. Scads of books, papers, and conferences by consultants, academics, institutes, associations, and governments have trumpeted its benefits, and many online discussion channels are extolling the same messages. This book faces off against all this gung-ho hype that has patently failed in most alliance cases to achieve the full extent of the potential return,s such as improved revenues, reduced costs, greater market share, access to specialized know-how, and increased resilience in difficult economic conditions.

The authors have looked at over 200 organizations in many industries and public sectors across the world, and in most cases, they have claimed they are collaborating, but it is not happening. This is the first Big Myth. The second Big Myth is that managers ignore it because they don’t have the foresight to realize how collaboration will benefit their operations, and so they find excuses why they don’t need to do anything. Many believe that closer working with partners is more trouble than it’s worth; it’s a black art ‘where we don’t know what to do, we don’t know that we don’t know what to do, it’s someone else’s job, or we don’t have the time, money or inclination to do it’. These attitudes are prevalent despite the high value (both bottom-line and strategic) that is usually tied up in the often long-standing formal and informal agreements between organizations. They also ignore the adverse impact on staff workloads, motivation, development, and morale, and seriously undermine their enormous potential contribution to alliance success.

The purpose of this book is to dispel these myths because the research has clearly shown that they are baseless and are stopping managers and organizations from moving forward and gaining the benefits of collaboration that are there for the taking. This is groundbreaking and contentious because, for the first time, the universal misuse and obfuscation of the collaboration concept is being confronted. After many years, collaboration has become a cozy buzzword that is thrown around randomly and not taken seriously.

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Author(s)

Biography

Linda McComie, MBA, is the Director and co-founder with Andrew Humphries of SCCI Ltd. For more than 20 years, she has piloted and co-developed the SCCI toolset with Andrew. She has been actively promoting the use and continuous development of collaborative working with both managers and business schools. Her work with SMEs has been particularly successful, where clients’ organizations grew by 33% year on year over a three-year monitored period. She is a former Senior Manager in the UK Finance, Manufacturing, and Employment sectors and has worked extensively with blue-chip companies to improve the performance of their alliances and collaborative partnerships. In recent years, she has also worked extensively at the strategic level with several charities, one of which achieved the King's Award for Volunteer Services in 2023. Linda gained her MBA from the Open University Business School in 1994. She is the co-author of Implementing and Managing Collaborative Relationships: A Practical Guide for Managers (Routledge, 2022).

Andrew S. Humphries, MBA, PhD, is CEO of SCCI Ltd, a company specializing in performance improvement within complex, commercial, and government relationships. Over the last 20-plus years, He has worked with a wide variety of organizations in Europe, Asia, and Australia using PartnerLink. This scientific process identifies partnering performance drivers and opportunities for improvement. As a result, he has enabled many to achieve significantly enhanced collaborative effectiveness and bottom-line benefits. He retired from the UK RAF in 2004 as Head of Policy for Defense Aviation Logistics. He has over 35 years of experience as a practical military logistics manager and director. Andrew gained his PhD from Cranfield School of Management, UK in 2003 and has published widely. His books: Strategic Alliances and Marketing Partnerships (Kogan Page, 2009), Collaborative Change (2010), Enterprise Relationship Management (Gower, 2015), and Implementing and Managing Collaborative Relationships (Routledge, 2022). These books demonstrate the importance of applying a management discipline to ensure the success of collaborative relationships, alliances, and partnerships.

Critics' Reviews

In capital-intensive, high-risk industries, collaboration is not a slogan; it is a capability. This book strips away the comforting myths that too often undermine alliances and replaces them with clear, practical principles rooted in experience, evidence, and common sense. What distinguishes this work is its honesty. It acknowledges why collaboration fails in the real world, short-termism, weak leadership, misplaced governance, and cultural blindness, and shows how organizations that confront these realities can unlock extraordinary value. I have seen firsthand how projects succeed or fail based not on contracts or technology, but on how leaders design relationships, empower people, and manage complexity across organizational boundaries.

For executives, project leaders, and boards, this book is a call to action. Apply its lessons, and you move beyond transactional thinking toward resilient partnerships that deliver better outcomes for shareholders, clients, and the people doing the work. Ignore them, and the myths will continue to quietly erode performance. This is not a book about being idealistic. It is a book about being effective.

-- Ed Humphries, VP Minerals and Metals Global Capabilities, Atkins Realis, Montreal, Canada

With deep evidence and unmatched practitioner insight, the authors reveal why collaboration fails—and provide leaders with practical tools to make it succeed where it matters.

-- Dr. Richard Gibbs, Senior Lecturer in Business and Management, Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies, Southampton Solent University, Southampton, UK

In an era marked by global volatility and escalating supply chain challenges, collaboration is a requirement to enable resilience — but only when it is actively designed, governed, and led. Too often, organizational relationships are left to chance and rhetoric replaces disciplined practice. Drawing on decades of evidence-based research into collaborative networks, risk and strategic performance, this book cuts through the myths that prevent collaboration from delivering value. The authors offer thoughtful, challenging insights that enable managers to take action and manage collaborative relationships more effectively, turning them into a genuine source of resilience and adaptability, thus sustaining performance.

-- Professor Richard Wilding, OBE. Emeritus Professor of Supply Chain Strategy, Author and Presenter of LinkedIn Learning: Supply Chain Foundations: Risk and Resilience

Linda McComie and Andrew Humphries, leading experts in collaborative performance, present the definitive roadmap for managers worldwide, an essential guide to unlocking collaborative value. This groundbreaking book confronts the myths and excuses that prevent effective collaboration. Drawing on over two decades of research and thousands of manager interviews, it reveals why collaboration so often fails and provides a clear, evidence-based framework and practical principles to finally make it succeed. Move beyond empty rhetoric. This provocative, pragmatic guide shows senior executives and decision-makers how to transform their alliances into a disciplined practice that delivers lasting, measurable results.

-- Dr. Carlos Mena, Associate Dean of Graduate Programs, Daimler Endowed Professor of Supply Chain Management, Portland State University, USA

This book should be essential reading for every senior manager. As a CEO running two UK-based SMEs, I find that in-depth collaboration is essential for my companies to compete with much larger competitors, some of whom are MNCs. We have at least 16 medium and long-term Partnerships that extend well beyond routine vendor, trading, or distribution arrangements. The relationships must be grounded in mutual trust and disclosure. Therefore, avoiding the common pitfalls that prevent selecting the "right" partner is essential because long experience and a few failures en route make this a perfectly attainable goal. Benefits to my companies include increased market share, a broader technology portfolio, and reduced costs through shared planning and product design.

-- Mike Reilly, MBE, CEO of Ether NDE Ltd, Baugh & Weedon Ltd, Alban NDE LLC

Are you one of those people who view collaboration as a weakness and compromise? If so, you’re definitely missing out on opportunities. Read this book to discover hidden strength.

-- Prof. Tim Cummins, President and Head of Research & Learning, World Commerce & Contracting Association

Why Managers Don't Collaborate Revealing the Myths and Truths

Description

Table of Contents

Author(s)

Biography

Critics' Reviews

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