Partnership – the options

George Clark (2000) Seafield Research and Development Services

The word ‘Partnership’ is used by different people to mean different things. To explore this range of meaning, a simple and very broad definition is given and the items within it are conceptually unpacked to demonstrate the range of realities which can lie behind the same rhetoric.

People
Knowledge , skills and attitudes (ksa) appropriate to the task in hand
Working together for mutual benefit
For the greater social good
Organisational possibilities

People

The people in a partnership might be individuals representing their personal interests but they are more likely to represent some or other of the following categories of groups:

1. For any given issue, which groups should be invited to join the partnership? Who is competent to make this decision?
2. Do all groups have to be full voting members of the partnership or could some serve a purely supportive and advisory role?
3. Where there is interdepartmental or interagency overlap have all relevant groups been consulted?
4. Representative validity is a crucial factor – to what extent do individual members seek the views of, and report back to, the group which s/he represents?

Knowledge , skills and attitudes (ksa) appropriate to the task in hand

Knowledge and skills will be required for

Attitudes are rooted in beliefs and values and these can vary widely along continua such as

The KSA are unlikely to be distributed evenly amongst members of the partnership. There is thus an equity problem and a policy option continuum regarding degree of participation – especially for partnerships which are expected to operate in the long term.

Working together for mutual benefit

Much of the literature on partnership deals with business partnerships. Crudely this involves groups of like minded capitalists working together so as to maximise the profit that can be accumulated for distribution to shareholders. The main concern is to design legal frameworks to prevent members from exploiting each other.

Urban Authorities are not capitalist organisations but there are similarities in that their task is to ensure the effective provision of the most needed services at high quality and at low cost. Well regulated partnerships are a means of achieving this.

At a more personal level individuals within the partnership can help each other meet their performance targets. They can thus keep their jobs and possibly get promoted. What is true at the individual level is also true at the group level. By working together the partner groups will achieve more than they would be able to achieve on their own.

Few issues are totally clear cut. Deals and trade-offs are part of the partnership process. Hopefully there will be openness and transparency which will foster public trust, and widespread confidence that the partnership can deliver. This is in essence a political issue!

The most common problem in broad ranging social partnerships is breakdown of communication due to largely unconscious social exclusion of certain categories of member. The exact nature of this varies from culture to culture but is likely to involve:

Imagine a poor, old but street wise, female community representative attending a partnership meeting in a large hotel where she has to sit at table with rich, young, university educated males from the public sector using power point presentations to reinforce their arguments. It is easy to see how the partnership might be ‘captured’ by the men in suits and how the grass roots members might quickly become disenchanted. But this is not inevitable. Much progress can be made if there is willingness on all sides for making improvements to the processes of communication.

For the greater social good

Why should individuals work for the social good? The continuum of possibilities is illustrated by a series of questions ranging from individual selfishness through to global altruism.

The ‘rewards’ for involvement in partnership need not necessarily be financial. Some of the people, at least some of the time, will volunteer their labour and resources for a good cause.

This is most noticeable when rich and powerful individuals or organisations choose to be philanthropic (eg Ford Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Trust) and when deeply religious people take public action for the greater good of humanity (eg the Buddha, Jesus Christ). Voluntary contribution in kind is less noticeable but possibly more common at local levels where ordinary people freely commit their time and resources to a wide range of causes aimed at the social good.

Partnerships aiming to deliver quality, low-cost services should where possible encourage and tap into philanthropic and altruistic contributions but the bottom line is, and remains, financial. The task is to ensure the effective provision of the most needed services at high quality and low cost.

Organisational possibilities

At present the Urban Authorities have responsibility for all aspects of service provision:

Options for the future involve contracting out some (or all?) aspects of service provision to partners from the private or community sectors. There are many possibilities but the Urban Authorities should as a minimum retain responsibility for policing the critical ongoing needs analysis and quality assurance procedures. (This latter activity would include setting performance targets and indicators).

There is also the option of a central body to effect economies of scale in terms of:

Any of the partnership options will involve change. Key to the successful management of change is the provision of timely and relevant information, training and support. This will be required as much by the rich, young, university educated male from the public sector as by the poor, old but street wise, female community representative - the essence of partnership is people sharing ideas. This is why we said in the beginning that:

Partnership is about people, with knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the task in hand, working together for their mutual benefit and for the greater social good.