“Partnership”: What’s in a name?

In 2003, in an article entitled The Purist’s Partnership: Debunking the Terminology of Partnerships, Ken Caplan called for more rigour around the language we use in relation to partnerships. With a focus on minimising the overwhelmingly positive nature of a vocabulary that erroneously implied partnerships were “harmonious undertakings”, Caplan also pointed to the need for more clarity around different partnership typologies.

Re-reading this excellent thought piece today, and in view of a number of recent conversations on the topic, it seems that efforts to support the clarification process advocated by Caplan are still highly necessary, particularly in deciphering the word “partnership” itself. Although elastic enough to encompass a range of different collaborative relationships, use of the term “partnership” without attention to a specific context, purpose and structure is problematic. As well as creating unrealistic expectations about its possibilities, poor understanding of the concept means that working in partnership can be dismissed as loose and impractical on the one hand, and inflexible and restrictive on the other.

One of the most common misunderstandings is created by the indiscriminate use of the expression Public Private Partnership to describe all partnerships. Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) are formal contractual relationships between the private and public sector. In PPPs the private sector partner provides an upfront investment in infrastructure or technology in return for a long term concession, lease or fees for the provision of public goods or services. As a result PPPs operate within legal or regulatory frameworks  and go through lengthy tendering procedures. Typified by the UK’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) PPPs have been hailed by supporters as useful vehicles for improving the quality of public services and harnessing much-needed private capital, while criticised by detractors for promoting neo-liberal privatisation programmes and enabling the private sector to make incursions into the public domain. 

PPPs are very different from Cross Sector or Multi Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) in which different sector organisations collaborate in areas of mutual interest to achieve common or complementary goals. Operating through shared decision-making processes, these arrangements comprise diverse combinations of international agencies, government ministries and departments, private corporations, business coalitions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), charitable bodies, community groups, academic institutions and trade unions, among others. Although partners may operate within legal or regulatory constructs, partnerships of this nature are generally unregulated. These are the type of partnerships promoted by the European Social Fund (see my last post) where the overarching rationale is to work together to reduce socio-economic disparities by pooling different resources. With the aim of enhancing legitimacy, coordination and transparency in order to promote social cohesion, such partnerships are vastly different to PPPs.

Our understanding of “partnership” will undoubtedly be furthered by ongoing scrutiny of the different models that exist under the umbrella headings of both PPPs and MSPs. In the meantime reinforcement of the distinction between these two partnership forms is a belated and important prerequisite for the debunking that Caplan called for almost a decade ago.

Enviar comentario / 04 abr 2012 por ledastott
IMSD /

Partnerships for employment, growth and social inclusion

One of the projects I have worked with over the last three years is the Community of Practice (COP) on Partnership in the European Social Fund (ESF). From 2009-11, against the background of the economic crisis, the COP examined partnership approaches adopted by the national and regional ESF Operational Programmes (OPs) of EU Member States to promote economic growth, social inclusion and employment opportunities.

ESF regulations on partnership refer to both the involvement of stakeholders, including social partners (trade unions and employer representatives), in the governance mechanisms of OPs, as well as to the provision of financial support to multi-actor projects. In the COP we worked together to develop a working definition of partnership that combined these two distinct areas, at the same time as enabling flexible interpretation of the concept across different EU Member States:

Partnership is a dynamic and complementary relationship between diverse actors in which added value is achieved by working together rather than alone. In the ESF partnerships are used to support policy linkages that promote growth and prosperity across the EU by reducing economic, social and territorial disparities through:
• Encouraging employment and social inclusion at transnational, national, regional and local levels;
• Stimulating the involvement of diverse actors and approaches;
• Clearly defining target groups, objectives and priorities;
• Balancing competition and cooperation;
• Achieving benefits for both partners and wider society; and,
• Building participatory democracy through collaborative decision-making.

COP members exchanged learning through peer reviews that looked at different Partnership Practices, Effects and Opportunities (PEOs):

• P: Partnership Practices of Member States/regions at all levels of governance
• E: Effects of partnership approaches on policies and impacts for ESF target groups
• O: Opportunities for improving policy planning and delivery

Peer reviews, or PEO explorations, were conducted in: Austria, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Hungary, Portugal and Sweden. The diverse partnership approaches encountered in these Member States included:

• Austria: Territorial Employment Pacts (TEPs) – contracted regional partnerships that promote better policy linkages in order to improve the employment situation at regional and local level.
• Germany: A “T model” combining horizontal partnerships at federal level with vertical partnerships initiated at federal level but addressing regional and local levels.
• Greece: Mainstreaming of EQUAL Programme principles to promote greater empowerment and social cohesion at local level.
• Hungary: Emphasis on the added value of partnership and stakeholder engagement, with special focus on the local level.
• Ireland: Local partnership and community emphasis to reinforce grassroots links and gender equity.
• Portugal: Macro, meso and micro level approaches with two forms of partnership at meso and micro level: ‘formal’ projects developed in partnership with defined access to financing and management; and ‘informal’ partnerships based on the logic of coordinated work.
• Sweden: Regional Structural Fund Partnerships (SFPs) that reinforce improved governance through the engagement of politicians and also serve as selection bodies for “cooperation projects” operating at multiple levels.

The PEO explorations demonstrated that partnerships can foster employment, social cohesion, economic development, environmental sustainability and quality of life, even in times of crisis. Indeed countries and regions with long partnership histories and good cross-sector connections appear to have been better able to withstand the impact of the current economic crisis. While clearly not a panacea, COP members found that well-planned and executed partnership approaches have been able to support improvements in:

• Governance – by mobilising different stakeholders to work together and provide a more democratic policy ‘mandate’ and responsive policy approaches to problem-solving;
• Sustainability – through stakeholder engagement across different levels of society leading to more sustainable solutions to development challenges than when different actors operate separately;
• Transnationality – cross-country linkages and inter-regional cooperation that enable greater access to new ideas, approaches and skills; and,
• Innovation – the sharing of diverse perspectives, ideas and resources that create new solutions for promoting social cohesion and creating employment opportunities.

It is also worth noting that the review process itself was highly successful in enabling fruitful partnership learning. The COP’s work suggests that more dynamic and innovative cross-territorial learning exchanges, where experiences and knowledge are shared and reflected upon “at the same eye-level”, can make a valuable contribution to finding effective ways to address pressing ongoing challenges in the EU such as poverty, unemployment and social exclusion.

For more information on the work of the Community of Practice (COP) on Partnership in the European Social Fund (ESF) and details of the PEO explorations undertaken, please see the Partnership Learning Manual (Vienna, January 2012).

Enviar comentario / 19 mar 2012 por ledastott
IMSD /

New development indices and their responsible use

In the Himalayan country of Bhutan a focus on Gross National Happiness (GNH) (as opposed to Gross National Product) has been promoted as a way of assessing the population’s well-being. This idea may sound unusual but the move away from development indicators that focus solely on economic growth has gained ground in recent years.

The UK-based New Economics Foundation has developed a Happy Planet Index (HPI) that combines three indicators – ecological footprint, life-satisfaction and life expectancy – to measure “the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed.” The Genuine Progress Indicator and Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare are other examples of this trend which also includes “green” indices such as the Ecological Footprint (EF) and Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). These new indices have built upon the pioneering work of the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) in giving consideration to human, social and environmental factors that might adjust or replace Gross National Product (GDP) as the main indicator of development progress.

Challenging the dominance of economic development indicators, most specifically GDP, is not easy. In a recent article in Consilience – The Journal of Sustainable Development, Simon Bell and Stephen Morse note that, “GDP is a cultural artefact and a symptom of our mindset, not its creator.” As well as observing that “development” is conditioned by individual perceptions and values which may make it immeasurable, Bell and Morse also highlight concerns about indices and indicators that compress complexity into a single value or quantitative score. Such information, often presented in country league tables, may assist us in more easily making sense of the world, but numbers and rankings do not offer us a full picture of the variances and complexities of the world we live in. We should therefore exercise caution when using these forms of measurement and see them as tools for further exploration.

This point of view is reinforced by Amartya Sen who, in an interview celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first Human Development Report, stresses, “… that some of the things that we try to measure will not be measurable in numbers.” Sen recommends wider reading, writing and learning from one another in order to inform ourselves more profoundly about what cannot be captured numerically. As well as deepening our knowledge, learning from our peers and critically questioning, responding to, and reflecting on the information we receive can also encourage an appreciation of the many important nuances that development indices and indicators are unable to convey.

Enviar comentario / 23 nov 2011 por ledastott
IMSD /

The crisis, Keynes and sustainability

The Fundación Ramón Areces is hosting a series of conferences on the economist John Maynard Keynes this month. The first of these, “A Keynesian perspective of the slump of 2007-8 and how to recover from it”, was delivered by Professor Robert Skidelsky on October 4th. In the face of the current economic crisis Skidelsky suggested that we have two possible scenarios: disintegration and the fragmentation of the global economy with the rise of trade and currency wars; or coordination in which greater international cooperation by governments results in reforming the world financial system and stimulating private sector investment and growth. Skidelsky’s sombre expectation is that disintegration is most likely because of lack of political leadership and a complete inability to rethink our ways of living.

This latter point is reinforced in Skidelsky’s recent book Keynes: The Return of the Master and gives much food for thought. The crisis, he argues, is not just an economic one but also a moral one. “At the heart of the moral failure is the worship of economic growth for its own sake, rather than as a way to achieve the “good life”. “Good life” as defined by Keynes, is not about having money to be better off but in order to live “ethically”. While we may debate what “ethical living” means in today’s context, it is clear that we have reached a point where wealth accumulation and consumerism need to be viewed in relation to sustainability. And sustainability needs to be seen not just in terms of environmental management, but also of poverty reduction and social inclusion.

Enviar comentario / 13 oct 2011 por ledastott
IMSD /