Most graduates of MPA programs will lead cross-sector collaborative efforts during their careers, and they will find that this task requires a skill set distinctive from that required by management within a single organization or within a single sector. Based on a grounded analysis of in-depth interviews with 30 experienced public and nonprofit managers, this paper distills their lessons learned into a collaboration model and a set of learning objectives and activities to help prepare students to lead successful cross-sector collaboration. These practitioners’ experiences teach that students must understand the interplay between formal and informal aspects of collaborative relationships and how these affect collaboration outcomes, organizational learning, and learning throughout the collaborative system.
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