Caring for the caregivers: implementing collaborative governance practices in healthcare workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: Grand challenges like COVID-19 demand collaboration, but effective collaboration hinges on governance. Collaborative governance convenes diverse actors for consensus-driven decisions, a process complicated by inherent tensions, including power imbalances and competing interests. Recent scholarship proposes a collaborative practices framework for governance, yet its application in high-pressure workplaces remains unexplored. The article addresses this gap by employing the COVID-19 pandemic as a critical context for investigating how collaborative governance practices are implemented under high-pressure workplace conditions. Design/methodology/approach: This research followed an exploratory qualitative case study design. Data were triangulated from primary and secondary sources. Primary data collection involved 8 semi-structured interviews, supplemented by secondary data from internal electronic documents and reputable news articles. An inductive content analysis was conducted, allowing subcategories of collaborative practices to emerge from the data. Findings: This research yields four key findings that refine collaborative governance in high-pressure contexts. First, specific collaborative practices can attenuate workplace pressure during grand challenges. Second, formalizing agreement practices is a dynamic, legitimacy-seeking process, not static control. Third, arrangement practices operate through consensus and purpose-driven rewards. Fourth, the findings show that digital engagement practices can successfully replace physical presence to maintain collaboration. Together, these four findings advance a synergistic approach where formal, consensual, and digital collaborative practices interactively sustain collaboration. Originality/value: Offering a distinct theoretical advance, this research reframes collaborative governance practices as a simultaneous and synergistic interaction. Rather than isolating individual practices, it reveals their dynamic interdependence in high-pressure workplaces. This interactive approach, where strength in one collaborative practice compensates for or amplifies another, offers a novel theoretical perspective.