Exploring HIV/AIDS services through inter-organizational collaboration

Background: HIV/AIDS-related organizations collaborate with other entities - such as state agencies, community groups, and other AIDS service organizations – to serve the complex needs of their populations living with HIV and AIDS. While inter-organizational collaborations for HIV/AIDS services are becoming more common across the United States, inter-organizational collaboratives are as diverse in their activities, styles, structures as the perspectives and backgrounds of participants in these collaborations. This exploratory study employs qualitative data collected through semi-structured key informant interviews, field notes based on observations conducted at local community meetings, and analysis of archival materials produced as part of the collaborative process to identify the ways in which structural and individual factors shape the process of HIV/AIDS service organization collaborations. Over a 9-month period three researchers met with key informants in Texas that provide direct and indirect services to HIV-positive African American male and Latino ex-prisoners re-integrating into an urban community in Texas. Inter-organizational collaborations are both hampered and facilitated by structural and individual factors. Structural factors include policy mandates, points of contention, conflicting frameworks among funding streams, and community betterment versus community empowerment perspectives of organizations. Individual factors include staff members' preparation for teamwork that supports collaborative efforts, coordination versus collaboration of care philosophies, collaboration members' process compared to outcome focus, and mechanisms for sharing interpersonal power among collaboration members. Interpersonal and organizational politics play a role in individual aspects of collaborations. Structural forces shape the process of collaboration and the diverse products that come from inter-organizational collaborations.