General systems approaches in mental health administration : developing state-university collaboration programs

Developing state-university collaboration is the process of creating mechanisms to couple two systems for mutual benefit. Collaboration requires setting new organizational boundaries for both the state agency and the university and developing new patterns of information flow within and between the organizations. Each organization's homeostatic properties resist change; this resistance must be balanced by leaders' attention to the organization's developmental needs. The impact of collaboration increases tremendously after key thresholds of involvement are attained and a "critical mass" of faculty exerts a synergistic effect that shifts both the state agency and the university department to new functional states.