Introduction

A healthy, balanced and productive society requires that all sectors (public, private and civil society) have their place, fulfilling specific functions and making different contributions. No one sector alone has all the answers or even all the competencies and skills. The need for professional collaboration is increasingly clear.

Organisations collaborate (‘partner’) with others because they recognise that they can achieve their goals more effectively through working together rather than by working alone. This is the ‘bottom-line’ for all inter-organisational or cross-sector partnerships.

Working separately, the different sectors develop activities in isolation – often competing with each other, duplicating effort and causing serious wastage of finite resources. Working separately can all too often lead to the development of a ‘blame culture’ in which chaos or neglect is always regarded as someone else’s fault (whether business, the government or the community). Over time, this has a profoundly negative impact on societies, economies and the natural environment.

Partnerships are therefore essentially a mechanism designed to deliver effective, integrated and sustainable solutions to cultural, educational, social, economic and / or environmental challenges by building collaborative approaches.

The challenge is that collaboration requires some quite radical new ways of working; a range of complementary skills sets and a pooling of knowledge and experiences in systematic ways. Without this, partnerships simply do not work.

What is ‘partnership’?

While the term ‘partnership’ can be used to describe many types of relationship, The Partnering Initiative uses it specifically to describe a formal working relationship between organisations from different sectors of society (business, government and civil society).

“…Partnership is a cross-sector collaboration in which organisations work together in a transparent, equitable and mutually beneficial way. The partners agree to commit resources, share the risks as well as the benefits to work together towards a sustainable development goal.”
Definition of ‘partnership’ currently used by The Partnering Initiative, January 2005

The Global Context

Cross-sector collaboration is not new – indeed, some might argue that a level of social, cultural and economic inter-dependence has always been fundamental to social organisation. But during the latter part of the 20th Century, with the increasing pressures on the natural environment together with growing social and economic inequities, the need for integrated solutions to glaring global problems has become more obvious and more urgent.

In countries where there is a healthy and diverse business sector, an active civil society and an effective government machine, cross-sector partnerships are most likely to flourish (often – as in the UK – under the guise of the title ‘public: private partnerships’). They may be a logical way to proceed, but even so they are rarely a quick fix. Many ‘developed world’ governments are learning this at some cost! This is in large measure because each sector has its own way of operating and (understandably) relinquishes its own working culture and relative autonomy with some reluctance. Too many cross-sector activities described as ‘partnerships’ are in fact more a case of ‘business as usual’ with a new name.

In these situations, if partnerships are to have any real depth or value, those involved need to understand more profoundly the potential of cross-sector collaboration for breaking through to new, more radical and dynamic solutions.

Partnering: An opportunity for change...

In other places, particularly those undergoing major economic or political transformation, partnership has been seen (and used quite effectively) as a critical mechanism for change. This is because partnership approaches have provided opportunities for business, government and civil society to radically reconsider their core roles in society and arrive at more fundamental and innovative approaches to the development challenges they face.

These partnership experiences have a lot to offer by way of experiment and example.

Partnering for Sustainable Development

In 1992 the UN Conference on Environment and Development – the Rio Earth Summit – placed partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society as central to achieving global sustainable development. This has been echoed by successive summits on population, urban development, gender, social development and – most recently and most vigorously – at the Rio follow-up summit held in Johannesburg in 2002.

In our view, cross sector collaboration is likely to be the only approach that has a hope of meeting the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) and the single most important thing in building partnerships is in the capacity building of individuals (from every sector) to prepare them for operating in new ways.

What does each ‘sector’ contribute and what are the benefits?

Each sector brings to the partnership a different set of values, priorities, resources and competencies. Each sector has different competencies, aspirations and styles of operation that can - through successful partnering be brought together to achieve a common vision.

There is an ever-increasing number of examples of partnerships at local, regional, national and international levels that have made tangible and significant contributions to sustainable development. A number of websites which profile a range of cross-sector partnerships are listed in the Resource Bank. The Partnering Initiative is itself developing detailed 'learning' case studies. Analysis of partnerships that are well established and have stood the test of time suggests that those that are most successful produce multiple benefits for all stakeholders.

Benefits to partners from successful partnerships for sustainable development can include:

Access (to knowledge): Mitigating risk and reducing potential conflict by greater understanding of the operational context Innovation: Developing new ways of addressing old issues and complex challenges as well as maximising new opportunities Effectiveness: Creating more appropriate products and services Efficiency: Achieving reduced (or shared) costs and better delivery systems [Adapted from: Partnership Alchemy, and Managing Partnerships, 1998]

Access (to people): Drawing on a wider ‘pool’ of specialists, technical expertise, experience, skills and networks Human resource development: Enhanced professional skills and competencies in the work force Reputation and credibility: Well-earned / improved organisational reputation and credibility Long-term stability: Greater ‘reach’ means more development impact – a direct objective of government and civil society, but also critical to the sustainability of business.

Partnership: Is it always the answer?

In places recently emerged from conflict, or struggling to mitigate the debilitating impacts of corruption or natural disasters or grinding poverty is there a place for partnerships at all?

This is a challenging question – for instance for those in the UN being required to operate increasingly as ‘partners’ in countries where the sectors with which they are expected to partner are largely dysfunctional. In these circumstances, partnerships wherever they can be created will be an essential means of building and strengthening civil society, business and government rather than replacing them with alternative and largely unaccountable delivery systems.

Perhaps even in these circumstances where working collaboratively across the sectors is currently extremely difficult (Bosnia? Palestine? Afghanistan? Sudan?), it is still possible to lay the foundations of the idea of partnership as an appropriate mechanism for future economic and social development. This can help to provide a much-needed vision for creating a balanced, healthy and sustainable society in which people and the environment flourish.

Further information

The Partnering Initiative Resource bank