SDG17 - Partnerships for the Goals

Strengthening Implementation Through Global Cooperation

Monica Thiel

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787693173
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Partnerships are often implemented in various ways, often without considering the impact, process or systemic performance and governance level of the partnership itself. The current bank of knowledge also offers little about complex partnership performance logics and multi-level governance across sectors. Partnership concerns can often be predominately focused on opportunistic business goals and benefits rather than the systemic partnering process itself. But partnerships do not operate in a vacuum.
This book leads with the idea that partnerships can drive change. It argues that current partnership practices may impede sustainable business benefits and increase risk through a disregard for excellence, the ethics of care, and consideration for how partnership performance can directly affect corporate value and public value. The book utilizes comprehensive critical analyses and collaborative strategies to help readers learn how to formulate, integrate, implement, and monitor partnership performance. The book concludes that business and global development concerns are not independent of partnership concerns.
Concise Guides to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals comprises 17 short books, each examining one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The series provides an integrated assessment of the SDGs from economic, legal, social, environmental and cultural perspectives.

1

DEFINING A PARTNERSHIP

THE CONCEPT OF PARTNERSHIP

In examining the concept of partnership, we need to move beyond seeing partnerships through finance, contract management and service-based approaches and adopt a more strategic approach (Roumboutsos & Chiara, 2010). Contemporary preferences for partnerships are deeply embedded and ‘influenced by the institutional context in which they operate’ (Fossati, 2018, p. 523). Partnerships may be pursued for a variety of reasons and generate new forms of organisational, business and relational models. Innovation through partnerships increasingly plays an important role in their governance. Classen and Bammens (2013) suggest that external collaboration and innovation are more restricted among family controlled firms because these firms rely to a lesser extent on formal contracting as a governance tool in their innovation partnerships. Although they may be seen as bringing social benefits, many organisations seek partnerships out of self-interest and to disrupt the benefits of innovation. The very many forms of relational models and processes found in both formal and informal partnerships, give a sense of extreme fragmentation with no single or standard definition; moreover, collaboration in partnerships may often be used interchangeably (Kolbe, Allensworth, Potts-Datema, & White, 2015).

Concepts are generally contested and defined in different ways. The concept of partnership is usually defined as mutually shared goals and relationships. However, collaboration, cooperation, network or an alliance also describes a partnership (Armistead, Pettigrew, & Aves, 2007). Partnerships are often used to improve resources, capabilities and assets through cooperation based on a common purpose, need or problem. A comprehensive and general definition of partnerships includes ‘coproduction of services or functions with different potential roles and relationships’ (Koski, 2015, p. 328). However, the choice of concept can influence the way in which a partnership is made and sustained. For instance, when a partnership is defined as a network, this may suggest there is a greater distance and positioning in the way cooperation and collaboration take place within the partnership. Best practice in these partnerships may unintentionally prevent closer formation and execution in the collaborative and cooperative process. Established partnerships may consist of various groups of mixed actors (Wettenhall, 2003). Table 1 illustrates a variety of partnership logic types in order to give a better understanding of what defines a partnership.

Differences in partnership structures result in considerable multi-level heterogeneity with respect to sustainability. Moreover, club convergence means we should also take into consideration the heterogeneity of individuals within partnerships (Durlauf & Johnson, 1995). Partnerships could be classified according to sectoral, relational, economic and policy objectives; also in terms of scope or as mixed partnerships (Bovaird, 2004), although some scholars question whether mixed partnerships actually merit the term (Wettenhall, 2003). Nevertheless, an innovative relationship between the private and public sectors could be present even when a real partnership does not exist between the two sectors (Khan, Ghalib, & Hossain, 2015). This chapter and the remaining seven chapters in the book will focus primarily on private–public partnerships (PPPs) and cross-sector partnerships (CSPs).

Table 1. Partnership Logic Types.

Stakeholder Specific	Multi-stakeholder
Multi-sector specific	Private–public, cross-sector, private and people living labs, public–private workplace, public-NGO, tri-sector, ‘tripartite co-regulation and private co-regulation’ (Steurer, 2013) and business community
Technology specific	Technology start-ups
Education specific	Service learning, academic practice policy, research and human-artificial intelligence
Non-profit specific	Cause based and public advocacy
Government specific	Inter-governmental and intra-governmental
Geographic specific	Transboundary (freshwater and ocean), cross-border, development zone, global–local, global–regional, global–national and local enterprise
Business specific	Marketing, general, limited liability, transactional, new product development, advisory services, sponsorship, mergers and acquisitions, brokering, joint ventures and capacity development
Legal specific	Governance, regulatory and cross-jurisdictional
Network specific	Cooperative network alliances
Innovation specific	Entrepreneurial and disruptive
Ecological specific	Biodiversity and sustainable development
Mixed specific	Mixed members and mixed logics (integrative, dynamic, reflexive and systemic)
Generation specific	Youth alliance

PRIVATE–PUBLIC PARTNERSHIPS

PPPs are often defined within infrastructure projects and institutional arrangements for cooperation and financial models (Hodge & Greve, 2007) to generate innovation and alternative approaches with the goal of empowering society and solving societal problems. Bovaird (2004) suggests that PPPs are often sought for the following purposes:

• policy design and planning (e.g. land-use and transportation studies with consultants, where the consultants become a central part of the planning function over a long period);
• policy coordination (e.g. allocation of responsibility for particular policies to specific agencies perhaps through a policy steering group, although typically the final decision will rest in the public sector) or setting priorities;
• policy monitoring (e.g. policy steering group with partners from public, voluntary and private sectors);
• policy evaluation and review (e.g. policy steering group with partners from voluntary and private sectors);
• policy implementation and service delivery in one of three ways: in-house (with external partners in advisory capacity, e.g. management consultants), co-production with external partners (e.g. joint venture for waste disposal) or full externalisation (e.g. selling of social housing stock to housing associations);
• resource mobilisation (e.g. sponsorship or fundraising management); resource management (e.g. ICT or facilities management). (p. 202)

The private sector pursues partnerships by increasing sustainable efficiency, acquiring tacit knowledge and new skills, addressing stakeholder concerns, value creation (Milne, Iyer, & Gooding-Williams, 1996), soft power, risk management, market and non-market strategies, product development and technology development. Many firms also depend on prosperous and healthy societies to achieve solid growth and success. Jamali (2004) suggests that the term PPP is a misapplied and ambiguous concept, given the broad spectrum of possible public and private partnerships it offers. When collaboration and interdependence are the shared concern of both public and private actors, PPPs enter the discourse on public governance (Rhodes, 1997).

Government agencies and private sector organisations share in financing and operating programmes or projects to accomplish important public goals in PPPs. Historically, PPPs were ‘deployed by the federal government in the United States as a tool for stimulating private investment in inner-city infrastructure’ and were ‘key to coordinating federal initiatives in regional economic development’ (Linder, 1999, p. 35) and ‘large-scale public infrastructure’ accomplished ‘through a complex contracting-out scheme’ (Roberts & Siemiatycki, 2015, p. 780). However, greater emphasis should be placed on how governments foster an environment for maximising multi-stakeholder development cooperation (OECD/UNDP, 2016). PPPs may be more attractive to all parties in the United States apart from the public, which is unaware of the specific details and arrangements of partnerships (Riccio, 2014). Similarly, limitations on ‘meaningful community consultations’ in Canada restrict public understanding of the costs and benefits of PPPs (Siemiatycki, 2015, p. 343). Every partnership will benefit from differing resources and partner selection (Wassmer, Pain, & Paquin, 2017).

PPPs are often sought in a variety of types of organisation and governance, including autonomous and integrative (Kivleniece & Quelin, 2012), to generate greater creation of value. However, it is managerial strategies that affect outcomes and values rather than organisational forms (Steijn, Hans-Klijn, & Edelenbos, 2011). Villani, Greco, and Phillips (2017) find that ‘a government-led legal framework is more likely to put the public partners in a position where they can steer the establishment and management of the PPP’ (p. 902). The public sector therefore uses partnerships as an execution mechanism for establishing its mission and goals. Alternatively, the private sector may position and organise itself to ensure competitive delivery of goods and services rather than collaborating in a partnership. It is important to note that just because a private and public sector relationship is formed through interactions, this does not imply a formalised partnership. It is instead the case that a partnership requires a comprehensive relationship which is continuous and institutionally structured.

CROSS-SECTOR PARTNERSHIPS

As with PPPs, CSPs are often used to provide public goods and services, also to solve public, economic, social and environmental problems through collaboration. However, the generalisation of partnerships often creates more inequitable challenges than beneficial opportunities. Although much research on CSPs has been incremental (Johnson, Dooley, Hyatt & Hutson, 2018), Dentoni, Bitzer, and Pascucci’s (2016) findings on the effect of CSPs on corporate capabilities reveal that business initially enhances its ability to sense, interact, learn and change based on stakeholders as business participates in CSPs. Overall, the different dimensions of CSPs mean that the partnership processes require a specific set of skills and competencies to manage the potentially conflicting interests, perspectives and objectives of partnering organisations (Bitzer, 2017). There is much room for improving the way partnerships operate in silos apart from society. For instance, examining social progress based on social welfare without acknowledging other impacts and outcomes could potentially lead to conflicting or illusory partnership practices (Thiel, 2016). On the other hand, an emphasis on partnerships in resolving social problems may lead to an awareness of formal processes, interactions, knowledge-sharing and relationships, while obscuring informal decision-making relationships and roles.

Effective cross-sector collaborative governance in partnerships requires multiple partners rather than one organisation. Co-management and co-production are concepts used by scholars to demonstrate the importance of collaboration in achieving sustainability goals. Miller and Wyborn (2018) suggest that innovative knowledge is inadequate without inclusive participation from society at large to monitor outcomes. The authors highlight the following three key lessons:

1. Be inclusive in the diversity of participants, the power accorded to them and the processes and objectives of co-production. Ensure that the institutions that enable co-production attend carefully to the credibility, legitimacy and accountability this entails.
2. Acknowledge that co-production is a process of reconfiguring science and its social authority. Such processes require participants to be reflexive about the inherently political nature of producing knowledge in the service of changing social order at local to global scales.
3. Recognise that public engagement, deliberation and debate will shape the content and relevance of knowledge and its ability to help construct and empower institutions to facilitate sustainability.

However, other scholars suggest that partnerships can be deleterious because of potential job losses, reduced government control and power, profit making and government subsidised private interests in the place of public service in the local community. Non-profit or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) may lose their independence in a partnership (Bovaird, 2004), and partnerships may also compete against each other. Clearly, there are many challenges arising from competing interests and priorities among governments, business and society at large. The heterogeneity and complexity of partnerships stem from imbalances with...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1. Defining a Partnership
• 2. Collaborative Performance
• 3. Collective Governance
• 4. Examining Partnership Success and Failure
• 5. Collective Intelligence
• 6. Part nership Intervention Strategies
• 7. Integrated Partnership Performance Among Government, Business and Civil Society
• 8. Connecting Partnerships with Responsible Investments
• References
• Index