Abstract for: Revealing Hidden Dynamics in Collaboration: Using Group Model Building to Enhance Qualitative Longitudinal Research

Researchers conducted an 8-year longitudinal study of a collaboration of nonprofits supporting minority-owned businesses in Minnesota. Despite apparent internal commitment by nonprofit CEOs and increased external attention, policy initiatives, and funding, the collaboration has not formalized as an independent entity capable of accepting funding and liability. Researchers were puzzled by the oscillating support and hesitation to advance to formal governance despite notable successes. A 14-hour system dynamics group model building workshop was conducted with the researchers who had studied the collaboration through interview data, observations, and archival analysis. The workshop included stakeholder elicitation, reference mode development, and structure elicitation to produce stock-flow maps and causal diagrams. Analyzing feedback loop interactions orally without simulation prompted reconsideration of key dynamics affecting the collaboration's trajectory. The workshop identified key feedback loops whose interaction explains the oscillating CEO support for collaboration, including “coopetition” dynamics between member organizations and balancing mechanisms that prevented formalization. The mapping revealed tensions between organizational self-interests and collaborative goals, service quality concerns, and resource allocation challenges. Maps effectively depicted both the “vision” of collaboration and the reality of implementation challenges. We discuss how the operational, feedback focus of system dynamics provided a complementary lens to the researchers’ process-oriented approach, revealing structural insights not apparent in previous analyses. The visual representations enabled researchers to “see what they said,” and we draw on Weick’s sensemaking theory to describe how group model building activities contributed to sensemaking among researchers. The paper thus contributes to both collaboration theory and group model building scholarship. for assistance in structuring and editing narrative