Inter-organisational Collaboration in Saudi Arabia's Public Sector: Drivers, Barriers, and Challenges

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia has invested a considerable amount of its resources in enhancing its public services through digitalization and building an e-government. In this dissertation, I examined the drivers and discussed the challenges associated with inter-organisational collaboration in Saudi Arabia’s public sector. After implementing qualitative research and testing its findings using a quantitative method, I identified that the most common drivers are service delivery and data sharing. In addition, I discovered that most of the research participants have struggled with the impact of different priorities between government organisations. Moreover, I identified the different phases the collaboration process passes through and the effect of influential factors on each phase. The dissertation findings provide public managers with abilities to assess the collaboration progress and identify the risks of inter-organisational collaboration.