Collaboration in public services: Case studies of the royal irrigation department

Abstract

This study explores the Royal Irrigation Department's cooperation in providing public services, with the following objectives: 1) Investigate the reasons and processes behind the RID's collaborative practices. 2) Investigate the elements that contribute to the Royal Irrigation Department's (RID) successful implementation of collaborative techniques for public service delivery. 3) Develop a model for implementing the RID's public-service requirements. The study discovered that the Royal Irrigation Department created a 14-step water supply and maintenance procedure with farmer engagement to enforce stakeholder compliance, solve the problem of personnel shortage, and respond to the Royal Irrigation Department's collaboration strategy. The Royal Irrigation Department's successful public service delivery relies on collaborative governance (system contexts, water resources, organizational and personal networks, legal framework or policy, political dynamics, and leadership, as well as the factors driving cooperation (principled engagement, trust, responsiveness, and leadership strength). Finally, the researcher found that the Royal Irrigation Department's model of collaboration for public service consists of three overlapping dimensions. System Contexts are influenced by politics, law, economy, society, and the environment, with diverse leaders advocating for collaboration, leading to the next dimension, Collaboration Dynamics. When the drivers push for collaboration, the Collaboration Process emerges, which is the innermost dimension that demands the potential of leaders and personal ties to bring stakeholders together and take action on the basis of mutual trust. These three components will be dynamic, and the outcomes of the collaborative dynamics will feed into the system context framework.