Programmatic vs Process Outcomes for Systemic Change in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships

Abstract:

Despite the identification of factors and issues as pre-conditions for successful partnerships in the literature, the direct study of partnership outcomes is surprisingly a less prominent area of research, particularly within nonprofit-business partnerships. Comparing the programmatic vs. process outcomes is a way of assessing the quality of the partnership implementation and its potential for systemic deep-level change. The paper aims to assess the links between different types of outcomes in order to determine the existence or absence of linking mechanisms between programmatic and process outcomes leading to systemic outcomes. Two in-depth partnership case studies from the UK context (Partnership A: Earthwatch-Rio Tinto and Partnership B: Prince’s Trust-Royal Bank of Scotland) are employed to present the partner-specific value creation in CSSP that constitutes process outcomes developed over time and as result of the partnership implementation. In contrast societal value creation in partnerships appears not to be in both cases high for the nonprofit and profit partners. The paper suggests that unless nonprofit organisations reclaim their responsibilities as socially embedded organisations, in order to strengthen the societal value creation as a process based partnership outcome, it is unlikely that social partnerships can be used as systemic change mechanisms. Determining the links between the programmatic and process outcomes can instil and unlock mechanisms of systemic change.

Spreker:

M. May Seitanidi (FRSA) is Associate Professor of Strategy and Director of the PhD Programme at Kent Business School, University of Kent. She is a Visiting Fellow at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR) at Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham and Visiting Professor in CSR at LUISS Business School, Rome, Italy. Her work for over 20 years, as a practitioner and academic, focused on all types of cross-sector social interactions, previously on philanthropy and socio-sponsorship and currently on social partnerships. She was the founder of the Hellenic Sponsorship Centre (1994), the magazine “Sponsors and Sponsorships” (1995) and the “Annual Review of Social Partnerships” (2006) promoting globally cross-sector collaboration for the social good. In 2007 she founded the International Symposia Series on “Cross-Sector Social Interactions” organized by academics at leading universities around the world. She has served as a consultant and trainer for many private, public, and non-governmental organizations. Books include: The Politics of Partnerships (2010, short-listed for the SIM 2013 Best Book Award),Social Partnerships and Responsible Business. A Research Handbook (2014, co-authored with Andrew Crane) and Creating Value in Nonprofit-Business Collaborations: New Thinking & Practice (2014, co-authored with James E. Austin and received the 2014 Finalist ‘Terry McAdam’ Best Book Award Book of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management).