Perspectives on partnerships: Lessons and implications for international agricultural development

Although working in partnerships is widespread in international development organizations, the term partnership alone is still undefined, inconsistently applied and in constant evolution.

Perspective on partnership: Lessons and implications for international agricultural development is a compact and concise summary of the findings of a working paper named Perspectives on partnership: A literature review, published by three researchers from the International Potato Center (CIP), Douglas Horton, Gordon Prain y Graham Thiele.

In that publication, the authors reviewed the range of literature covering the complex issues arising from partnering.

This summary highlights common challenges, themes, lessons and implications presented to organizational development, institutional economics, and science and technology policy studies.

It also emphasizes the cross cutting themes and essential elements of a multi-organizational partnership, and analyzes common features such as formality, positive and negative drivers, and asymmetry in power relations. Likewise, the authors stand out the factors that are associated with a successful partnership.

Al last, this brief proposes a new definition of the term partnership, to be used in the international research-for-development context.