How to Use Partnerships: An Imaginary Conversation
Robert Klitgaard1
December 2004
Thanh speaks. “We’re being told that our government agency should set up a
‘partnership’ with some businesses and a couple of civic associations. Why isn’t clear to
me. How isn’t clear to me. Frankly, I’m not even sure if this partnership talk isn’t just
another fad. I admit I’m confused about partnerships.”
Thanh is a public manager in one of the GMS countries. He used to work as a volunteer
with a non-government organization (NGO). Now he is a highly regarded civil servant,
whose identity and job will be confidential. Not because Thanh would mind, since he’s a
fictional invention, but because the specifics of his challenges might distract or even
deter you, dear reader. Like Thanh’s, your problems and your country’s are distinctive.
But perhaps we can use an imaginary conversation with Thanh as a vehicle to focus on
some important issues about partnerships.
From now on, Thanh’s comments and questions will be indented in italics.
THANH: Let’s begin with the arguments in favor of partnerships. I used to hear
a lot about this when I was in the NGO, but not so much in government. Now
they’re telling us about all these good things that will happen if our agency
partners with the private sector and with community groups. They say that our
partners will bring to the table things we don’t have, or don’t have enough of,
such as resources and technical know-how in the case of the businesses, and
credibility and local knowledge, in the case of the civic associations. We’re told
that from partnerships, all kinds of good things will flow, besides making our
anti-poverty efforts more effective—things with big names like legitimacy,
participation, and empowerment.
I don’t know where to begin thinking all this through, but I admit I’m a little
skeptical.
You’re right that the synergies of partnership can be exaggerated.
One evening at a dinner, George Bernard Shaw was seated across from Isadora Duncan,
the celebrated and beautiful dancer. She flirted with him outrageously. Finally she said
1
A talk presented at the summit of the Mekong Delta countries, Vientiane, Laos, Dec. 2004. I
am grateful to Gregory Treverton for valuable discussions of the topics in this paper.
loudly for all to hear, “Oh, my dear Bernard, wouldn’t it be simply wonderful if you and I
should have a child? Just imagine—a child with your brain and my body.”
To which Shaw replied: “But what if it should be the other way around?”2
The “Shaw and the Dancer Problem” abounds in partnerships of other kinds. Yes,
partnerships have potential benefits. But partnerships may not work out as planned.
So, how can leaders of government agencies, international organizations, businesses,
and NGOs decide whether to partner, with whom, how much, and how?
THANH: Well, those are questions I’m asking all right. Since you seem to see
what’s bothering me, let’s speak frankly.
Is “partnership” just another
development fad, or is it something we’ll be seeing more and more?
It’s hard to say, in advance, that a partnership will really pay off. There are
many different benefits and costs. In my country, we don’t have much
experience with partnerships. What can we learn from other countries?
These questions are increasingly important. I believe that the lines between public and
private are eroding fast, that we are entering an era of “hybrid governance.” Around
the world a remarkable transition is underway
•
•
from layer-cake governance, where tasks are taken on separately by different
sectors (public, private, non-profit),
to marble-cake governance, with new partnerships across sectors.
The government of the territorial state was a doer; students of public administration and
public policy learned that government’s choice was “make, buy, or regulate.” For
tomorrow’s public managers the triad will be “carrots, sticks, or sermons”—or all three,
simultaneously. The shift in mind-set this will require of government can hardly be
overstated. Governments will not come easily to the idea that they work with, and
sometimes for, local NGOs and businesses.
The transition will also challenge the private sector. Private actors are more and more
responsible for public purposes, often in partnerships with governments.
That
responsibility will run through issues ranging from tourism to agriculture, from
communications to transportation, from fighting terrorism to countering cultural
imperialism.
What Are “Partnerships”?
THANH: I believe you that something significant is going on, and government’s
2
Isadora Duncan’s sister Irma denies the traditional identification of her sister as the dancer. “As
for the anecdote which connects her name with George Bernard Shaw, he himself admitted that
the ‘dancer’ in question was not Isadora. The latter had no occasion to meet G.B.S. nor did she
correspond with him. Her letters and writings give ample proof of her own native intelligence
and wit.” Irma Duncan, Duncan Dancer: An Autobiography (Middletown, CT: University of
Connecticut Press, 1965): 159.
2
going to have to work more closely with the private sector and community
groups and international institutions. But what does that mean? When people
say “partnership,” it just seems so vague. How can I get my head around the
concept?
The word “partnership” has been applied to relations between rich and poor countries.3
More to our point, public-private-citizen partnerships are increasingly advocated.4 The
World Bank’s James Wolfensohn has been among the most enthusiastic. “I cannot
stress enough the importance of partnerships,” he declared. “The task ahead is too
formidable for any single institution or set of institutions to tackle. Every one of us has
a role to play. Halving poverty by 2015 is possible, but only if we concert our efforts in
a new way.”5
But what is meant by “partnership”?6 Partnership is one label for better ways to
manage cooperation and conflict to mutual advantage. Theoretically, you may think of
the prisoners’ dilemma, where proceeding without “partnership” leads both players to
worse outcomes than they can have if they properly take into account their strategic
interaction. Or you might think of a game of coordination, as when GMS countries
agree on standards for highways. You might think of gains from trade, where one
partner is good at wheat and the other partner is good at iron. You might think of
complementarities, where one partner is good at marketing and the other is good at
3
For a review of recent usage, see Simon Maxwell and Tim Conway, “Perspectives on
Partnership,” OED Working Paper Series No. 6. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000; and
John Eriksson, The Drive to Partnership: Aid Coordination and the World Bank. Washington, DC:
The World Bank, 2001. Three decades ago the Pearson report talked about partnership for
development. This led to a stream of titles contesting aid as partnership. In 1973 Paul Albert
wrote a book called Partnership or Confrontation? Poor Lands and Rich (New York: The Free
Press, 1973). This was two years after Joan Nelson published a review article on foreign aid. Its
title: “The Partial Partnership.” (Joan M. Nelson, “The Partial Partnership: Trends in Multilateral
Aid and Aid Coordination” International Organization, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Winter 1971): 79-96.)
4
An internal document from the World Bank defines partnership as “a collaborative relationship
between entities to work toward shared objectives through a mutually agreed division of labor,”
including specific programs and “ongoing, often open-ended relationships.”
“Partnership
Oversight and Selectivity: A Discussion Note,” March 2000, p. 2. For a review of recent usage,
see Simon Maxwell and Tim Conway, “Perspectives on Partnership,” OED Working Paper Series
No. 6. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000; and John Eriksson, The Drive to Partnership: Aid
Coordination and the World Bank. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2001.
5
http://www.worldbank.org/partners/
6
My favorite rhetorical flight on “partnership” is the title of a publication by The Copenhagen
Centre: Partnership Alchemy. The alchemy metaphor is designed, perhaps unsuccessfully, to
describe situations where “Participants seek to achieve more than the sum of their individual
parts by creating leverage and synergy based on and between key components of the
partnership—context, purpose, participants, organisation, and outcomes.” The Copenhagen
Centre, Partnership Alchemy. Copenhagen: The Copenhagen Centre, April 2000.
http://www.copenhagencentre.org/TCCWEB/TCCWEB.NSF/K_Concepts/K222?OpenDocument
3
production and they decide to join forces. All these approaches recognize strategic
interdependence—and the importance of not thinking like myopic individuals.7
Many Types of Partnerships
THANH: Are partnerships occurring in many policy areas?
Yes. Table 1 shows how E.S. Savas characterizes partnerships in various areas of public
policy. Service delivery arrangements range from complete government provision (no
business participation) to complete business provision (no government provision)—and
beyond that, to citizens’ providing their own services (without government or business).
Note the last column of Table 1. Urban transportation services simultaneously include
every degree of public-private partnership. There is pure government provision, as in a
public transit authority that runs a bus service. There is the free market or pure
business provision model, as when there is a competitive market for rental cars. And
there is pure citizen self-provision of transportation services, as when one drive’s one’s
own car or bicycle. And there are many hybrids in between.
Insert Table 1 about here
THANH: One of my colleagues said something the other day that was blunt, but
it rang true to me. He said, “The first question we have to ask about this
proposed partnership is how it will help our agency do what we’re supposed to
do?”
He said he didn’t really care about all the so-called social benefits. He said our
agency has a mission and our own way of doing things—and we have to see
what the partnership would accomplish in our agency’s terms.
Your colleague’s question is a good one. It is worthwhile distinguishing two levels of
questions regarding partnerships. Level 1 focuses on the benefits and costs for a
specific partner. Like your colleague, it asks, “How good is this partnership for our
agency or organization or country?” Level 2 tries to estimate the social benefits and
costs from the partnership as a whole.
7
This question opens vast areas of theoretical inquiry. It invites typologies, the theories of
teams and of clubs, analogies to vertical and horizontal integration, studies of networks, and
analyses of gains from trade. And this is only through the lens of the rational actor, or Model I in
the sense of Graham Allison. Model I looks at each partner as a rational player seeking its own
benefits. Allison’s Model II looks at the each partner’s organizational repertoires, standard
operating procedures, and cultures, and assesses the likely complementarities and conflicts.
Model III evaluates the interactions among individual players sitting in particular positions, and
how they matter for the success of the joint endeavor. Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow,
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd Ed. Reading, MA: Longman, 1999.
4
Each Partner’s Benefits and Costs
The first question for all possible partners is “What’s in it for my institution?” Put
somewhat more precisely, the question becomes: “What are the costs and benefits to us
and our mission from various kinds of partnerships, structured how, managed how?”
Benefits
A recent publication of the World Bank’s Business Partnership and Outreach Group lists
eight possible benefits for business, among them “to enhance or rebuild brand
image/corporate reputation” and “to address public accountability issues or market
failures.”
Among the seven possible benefits for “communities/our clients” are
8
efficiency, effectiveness, equity, and sustainability.
Other hoped-for benefits are often not enunciated publicly, including prestige, political
insulation, and cooptation. These motives have been dominant in many recent
business-NGO partnerships. They are probably crucial in the popularity of partnerships
at international financial institutions; for example, partnerships with NGOs may be
designed in part “to enhance or rebuild brand image/corporate reputation.”
Costs
THANH: Partnerships can’t all be good, though. Have you ever tried to
coordinate things among government agencies, or even different parts of a local
office? What a hassle. It must be even more difficult across the public-private
divide, no?
It is remarkable how often costs are overlooked in many discussions of partnerships.
For example, the alliance called InterAct “believes that the shift to a focus on
collaborative processes is key to democratic renewal, social inclusion, sustainable
development and a vibrant civil society.” But its paper “Evaluating Participatory,
9
Deliberative, and Co-operative Ways of Working” lists none of the costs.
Practitioners worry about partnerships. The transactions costs of partnering and
10
coordinating can loom large.
A recent survey found that the World Bank was a
8
Business Partnership and Outreach Group, “Partnering with Business: Questions and Answers.”
Briefing Note No. 2. Washington, DC: The World Bank, Nov. 2000.
http://www.worldbank.org/business/files/note2.pdf
It is of course a long way from a typology of benefits to their careful measurement in a specific
case, and in international development we know of no exemplar.
9
Brighton, England: InterAct, June 2001.
10
A point once made by Robert Chambers could be made about “partnership” substituted for “coordination.” “’Integration’ and ‘co-ordination’ can be seen to have heavy costs as well as
benefits… The word ‘co-ordination’ provides a handy means for avoiding responsibility for clear
proposals. It is perhaps the reason that it is much favoured by visiting missions who are able to
conceal their ignorance of how an administrative system works or what might be done about it
5
member of 87 global and regional partnerships. Worried about the costs of too many
partnerships, the Bank’s management asked how such partnerships could be evaluated.
How should the Bank decide in advance which partnerships to join and how to
participate?
[I]n order to ensure that the Bank fulfills its mission, it needs to be able to be
selective in its role and only participate in initiatives with the greatest possible
development impact, the best leverage of resources, and the strongest synergies
with other partners. A clear direction for the Bank then is to make sure that its
work at the global level contributes to poverty reduction, and builds on its core
11
expertise—developing and helping to implement country-based programs.
NGOs fear that partnerships will dilute their mission, silence their voices, and
12
bureaucratize their cultures. Government agencies worry that they will be undermined
by outsourcing, by public-private partnerships, even by regulation—consider the
phenomenon of “regulatory capture,” where regulatory agencies are deviated from their
13
public purposes through their interactions with the regulatees.
A would-be partner will want to ask: what will a partner contribute, and why is that
good for me? This begins to address a critical issue: what are the distinctive
advantages (and defects) of particular sectors?
The Evolution of Partnerships
THANH: Let’s talk a little more about the different degrees of partnership. How
do you deal with that?
Business school professor James Austin notes a progression from “philanthropic” to
14
“transactional” to “integrative” partnerships between businesses and NGOs.
At the
first stage, companies give money to the non-profits, but there is little interaction. The
by identifying ‘a need for better co-ordination.’ Indeed, a further research project of interest
would be to test the hypothesis that the value of reports varies inversely with the frequency with
which the word ‘co-ordination’ is used.” Robert Chambers, Managing Rural Development.
Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1974: 24-25.
11
“Addressing Global Dimensions in Development, A Discussion Note,” The World Bank, March
20, 2000: 9. The document later notes (p. 10) that “Key aspects of the Bank’s comparative
advantage are global reach and a broad developmental mandate, ability to mobilize and manage
resources, and operational competence at the country level.” Again, it is easier to list these
aspects than to monitor and evaluate them across a range of potential partnerships.
12
For example, NGOs, States and Donors: Too Close for Comfort? ed. David Hulme and Michael
Edwards. London: Macmillan, 1997.
13
Jean-Jacques Laffont and Jean Tirole, “The Politics of Government Decision-Making: A Theory
of Regulatory Capture.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106, 4 (Nov. 1991): 1089-1127.
14
See James E. Austin, The Collaboration Challenge: How Nonprofits and Businesses Succeed
through Strategic Alliances. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000, especially chapter 2.
6
for-profits get the benefits of having been good citizens, benefits that are at this stage
as much directed toward the company’s staff as toward its potential customers.
At the second stage, business gets a “branding” benefit from visible association with a
highly regarded non-profit. The non-profits got more predictable funding from the
companies. Depending on the institutions involved, the non-profits may also receive
leadership training, publicity, jobs for its trainees, and so on.
Few partnerships reach the integrative stage. At that point, the alliance becomes truly
strategic and the boundaries between “us” and “them” blur. The partnership resembles
a joint venture that is critical to the strategies of both partners. Exchanges multiply of
everything from money to people to ideas. The partnership is able to withstand shocks.
From the perspective of government, partnerships with business promise more
resources and more efficiency.
But government managers may fear a loss of
accountability. Indeed, one of the unstated arguments for privatization is that the
government’s concerns over accountability and equity can generate so much red tape
that it is next to impossible to actually do or build anything. In that sense, privatization
is a flight from accountability, and government managers may worry on precisely those
grounds. Government managers may be tempted to look to the not-for-profit sector.
NGOs may bring many benefits:
15
•
Cost. The most visible cost advantage is volunteer labor, though NGOs may
have some innovative process or service delivery mechanism as well.
•
Quality. Non-profits are sometimes expected to deliver higher quality service.
Providing the service may be a mission, not simply a way to make a profit. In
his study of nursing homes and handicapped facilities, for instance, Burton
Weisbrod found some evidence of quality advantages in not-for-profits, at least
those that were church-related.16
•
Access. NGOs may be more able to serve a hard-to-reach target population
because the NGO is perceived as “one of us.”
Evaluating Partnerships as a Whole
This is helpful in thinking about what we’d like our business and NGO partners to
do with us. What else I’m taking away from the discussion so far is that it is
easy to be myopic about partnerships. Easy just to praise the benefits and
ignore the costs—or I have to admit, the other way around. Easy to focus just
on the deliverables and leave out other benefits and costs—for example, I’m
See Pauline Vaillancourt Rosenau, ed. Public-Private Policy Partnerships.
Press, 2000: especially chapter 13.
15
Cambridge: MIT
Burton Weisbrod, “The Future of the Nonprofit Sector: Its Entwining with Private Enterprise
and Government,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 16(4): 541-55 (1997).
16
7
impressed by the risks of collusion and corruption.
And I’m beginning to see how a larger social purpose could be advanced by
partnerships. Can you help me think harder about that second level of benefits
and costs, at the social level? How should we take those into account in
deciding where and how and with whom to partner?
A second level of evaluation of partnerships focuses on the social benefits and costs
accruing to the partnership as a whole, as compared with alternatives. Under what
conditions, and for what problems, would it be socially useful for government, business,
and NGOs to partner?
Consider agricultural development in Africa. To enable new seeds to make a difference
in Malawi, it has been suggested that some parts of the solution belong to the state
(funding R&D), some to the market (distributing new seed varieties), and some to NGOs
(mobilizing farmers to enable group credit).
As another example, consider welfare-to-work programs in the United States. Some
social experiments have created a competition among government agencies, NGOs, and
private employment companies to see which one will do the best at placing welfare
recipients on jobs. But is competition the best way to proceed? Instead, might
government, business, and NGOs have comparative advantages with different kinds of
welfare recipients? For examples, NGOs might do best in bringing certain kinds of
participants in and giving them confidence in the process of job seeking. Private firms
might have an advantage in teaching marketable skills and work habits to another
clientele.
And we could also imagine various kinds of partnership, instead of
competition. Then we would ask how it might be possible to blend the distinctive
features of business, government, and non-profits in this endeavor—for example, trying
to draw on the efficiency of private providers and the commitment or superior access of
non-profit institutions.17
At the social level, the list of potential benefits and costs changes. If you think as an
economist again, you might imagine a production function for social benefits, and also a
cost function.
The production function refers to the outcome of interrelationships among different
goods and services. The outcome may be as grandiose as “homeland security” or
“provision of relief services,” or as narrow as “nursing home services.” The different
goods and services might be provided by a government agency, an international
institution, a private business, and an NGO. Each combination of these different goods
and services “produces” an outcome. The question is, what is the nature of this
production function? How much “homeland security” or “nursing home services” is
produced by what combinations of public, private, and non-profit inputs?
The second function is a cost function. It displays the (various kinds of) costs that
17
See, for instance, Paul C. Light, Making Nonprofits Work: A Report on the Tides of Nonprofit
Management Reform. Washington: The Brookings Institution, 2000.
8
accrue to each combination of public, private, and non-profit inputs. The costs would be
financial, as when the government provides a certain number of soldiers, the private
sector a certain amount of medicine, and the NGO a certain number of volunteer
physicians, each with a financial cost. The costs could also be transactional—including
the management and administrative costs of combining, coordinating, creating a hybrid,
or otherwise entering into a partnership.
The optimal partnership would take into account both the production function and the
cost function. Theoretically, we would need a way to find a common metric, such as the
economist’s social welfare function. More practically, we would weigh the various levels
of production against the costs of providing them.
Practitioners have developed useful checklists to guide the analysis of benefits and costs
in a partnership. An example is the outline for a benefit-cost analysis distributed by The
18
Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum (please see Table 2).
[Insert Table 2 about here]
Table 2 omits some potentially important considerations. On the positive side,
partnerships may build trust, enable negotiation, reduce violence, undergird a social
contract, inhibit government discretion, and enable freer flows of information. For
example, InterAct’s “Evaluating Participatory, Deliberative, and Co-operative Ways of
Working” lists as possible benefits increases in information and understanding, trust
among stakeholders, ownership, “capacity” among stakeholders, openness and
transparency, “representativeness of participation,” and “level of understanding about
the process and the specific project—as well as “changes in values, priorities, aims and
objectives” and new relationships between organizations (formal and informal). At a
more practical level, InterAct says to look for reduced vandalism, better maintenance,
leverage for additional funding, and impact on the policy process. The document admits
that “there remains insufficient hard evidence on these benefits for them to be widely
acknowledged.”
On the negative side, partnerships may spawn corruption and cronyism, reduce
diversity, and inhibit innovation. For example, Jose Edgardo Campos and Hilton Root
studied various public-private policy partnerships in East Asia, especially “deliberation
councils” involving people from industry, the government, academia, and in some cases,
19
Campos and Root extolled the benefits of
the press, consumer groups, and labor.
these partnerships as the key to the East Asian economic miracle. But after the East
Asian economic crisis of 1997, some critics cited these same partnerships as catalysts of
crony capitalism and corruption, which rendered these countries more vulnerable.
The conclusion: experience indicates that partnerships may have important benefits and
18
“Measures for Success: Assessing the Impact of Partnerships.” London: The International
Business Leaders Forum, August 2000.
http://www.pwblf.org/csr/csrwebassist.nsf/content/f1d2a3b4c5.html
19
The Key to the Asian Miracle: Making Shared Growth Credible. Washington, D.C.: Brookings,
1996.
9
costs that go beyond the level of service provided and the financial costs.
Using Checklists
How would you suggest using a checklist like Table 2 in an organization like
mine?
A colleague of mine who’s been a CEO of both a private company and a non-profit
recently said, “In today's world, the role of the CEO is no longer to huddle behind the
crystal ball and oracle out strategic directions, but rather one of coach (and be the
accountability boss) of a team of unit managers around him. He gets his team to work
through the analysis together.”
The same is true for the analysis of partnerships. It isn’t a job for the leader to do alone
and tell others the results. Nor should the analysis be left to a technical evaluator alone.
Rather, I recommend participatory diagnosis, facilitated perhaps by the leader and with
inputs from the technical evaluator, where the agency’s leaders and managers work
through the checklist. For each heading on the checklist, there is a discussion. What
does this category trigger in your imaginations? How big might this category of benefits
be, and what does it depend on? Which benefits and costs seem most important to our
agency’s mission? Which of the synergies or complementarities across partners seems
most crucial? Which most fragile? And so forth.
In other words, a two-hour meeting built around a checklist like Table 2 can yield shared
insights and creative ideas about whether and how to proceed. I suggest that for a
particular issue of partnership you and your colleagues work through the questions in
checklists like Table 2. Probe each dimension, together. The result may be that you
conclude that a particular benefit (or cost) is paramount, and then you can actively
focus on it with your partners. Or you may find that there are angles of the problem
that you had overlooked—and by talking them through together, you can design and
manage them more effectively.
10
Table 1
Partnerships in Municipal Services
Type of
Partnership
(or Not)
Education
Government
service
Parks and
Recreation
Hospitals
Housing
Protection
Streets and
Highways
Conventional
public school
system
Traditional
police
department
Municipal
highway
department
Municipal parks
department
County
hospital
Public housin
authority
Government
vending
Local public
school
accepts outof-district
pupil and is
paid by
parents
Sponsor pays
city for
crowd
control by
police at
concert
Circus pays
town to clean
streets after
parade
Sponsor pays
town to clean
park after
company
picnic
Intergovernmental
agreements
Pupils go to
school in the
next town;
sending
town pays
receiving
town
Town buys
patrol
services
from county
sheriff
County pays
town to clean
county roads
located in
town
City joins
special
recreation
district in the
region
City arranges
for
residents to
be treated
at regional
hospital
Town
contracts
with count
housing
authority
Contracts
City hires
private firm
to conduct
vocational
training
program
City hires
private
guard
service for
government
buildings
City hires
private
contractor to
clean and
plow city
streets
City hires
private firm
to prune
trees and
mow grass
County
hospital
hires firm
for
cafeteria
service
Housing
authority
hires
contractor
for repairs
and paintin
Franchises
Police
Firm is
authorized to
operate cityowned golf
course and
charge fees
Grants
Private
colleges get
government
grant for
every
enrolled
student
Government
grant to
expand
nonprofit
hospital
Grant to
private firm
to build an
operate low
income
housing
Vouchers
Tuition
voucher for
elementary
school, GI
Medicaid card
permits
holder to
get medical
Voucher
enables low
income
tenant to
11
Bill for
college
care
anywhere
rent any
acceptable
affordable
unit
Free market
Private schools
Banks hire
private
guards
Local merchant
association
hires street
cleaners
Commercial
tennis courts
and golf
driving range
Proprietary
(for-profit)
hospitals
Ordinary
private
housing
Voluntary
Service
Parochial
schools
Block
association
forms
citizens’
crime-watch
unit
Homeowners’
association
hires firm to
clean local
streets
Private tennis
club and
fitness center
Communitybased
nonprofit
hospital
Housing
cooperativ
Self-service
Home
schooling
Install locks
and alarm
system, buy
gun
Merchant
sweeps
sidewalk in
front of his
shop
Swimming pool
at home
Self
medication,
chicken
sup, other
traditional
cures
Do-it-yourse
home
constructio
12
Table 2 Outline of Some Benefits and Costs of “Cross-Sector Partnerships”
Needs
Inputs
Process
O
Societal Needs
Inputs
Outputs of p
•
equitable economic
growth
•
human capital
•
developm
social capital
•
improved
supporting human
development
•
Greater Efficiency
•
•
man-made capital
•
•
organizat
•
protecting the
environment
•
natural capital
pooling resources and optimizing “division
of labor”
•
•
increased
•
•
encouraging good
governance
decreasing costs associated with conflict
resolution and societal disagreement on
policies and priorities
more effe
services
•
creating economies of scale
•
assisting social
cohesion
•
promoting technological cooperation
enhanced
credibility
creation o
upholding human
rights
facilitating the sharing of information
•
•
•
•
•
accountability to all
stakeholders
overcoming institutional rigidities and
bottlenecks
•
Private Sector Needs
Inputs—Private Sector
•
finance and other resources
•
human resource
development
•
formation of local supply
chain
•
setting and raising standards
•
access to and impact on
policy dialogue
•
making social investment
Outputs—Pri
Improved Effectiveness
a.
leveraging greater amounts and a
wider variety of skills and resources
than can be achieved by acting alone
b.
accommodating broader perspectives
and more creative approaches to
problem-solving
c.
shifting away from “command and
control” to more informed joint goalsetting
d.
obtaining the “buy in” of recipients
and local “ownership” of proposed
solutions, thereby ensuring greater
sustainability of outcomes
13
•
increased
societal v
•
greater co
long-term
•
enhanced
employee
stakehold
Public Sector Needs
Inputs—Public Sector
•
regulatory framework
•
physical infrasructure
•
social infrastucture
•
safety nets
•
security and protection of
people and environment
•
offering more flexible and tailored
solutions
•
speeding the development and
implementation of solutions
•
acting as a catalyst for policy innovation
Outputs—Pu
national gover
competitivene
less bureaucra
perception
cost reduction
Increased Equity
Civil Society Needs
Inputs—Civil Society Sector
b.
individual expression
c.
tools for empowerment
d.
guardians of heritage
and culture
e.
campaigning
f.
service delivery
g.
grassroots knowledge
h.
legitimization
•
improving the level and quality of
consultation with other stakeholders in
society
•
facilitating broader participation in goalsetting and problem-solving
•
building the trust needed to work towards
shared responsibilities and mutual benefit
•
building community-level institutional
structures, networks, and capacities to
enable local control and ownership
From “Measures for Success: Assessing the Impact of Partnerships.” London: The
International
Business
Leaders
Forum,
August
2000.
http://www.pwblf.org/csr/csrwebassist.nsf/content/f1d2a3b4c5.html
14
Outputs—Civ
a.
socia
b.
huma
c.
empo
d.
acces
a.
reput