The Key Factors for Effective Partnership Working in Community Capacity Building: Developing Country Context

Abstract

The current socioeconomic conditions of many nations are challenging due to the global financial crisis and many institutions that facilitate Community Capacity Building-CCB are struggling to shoulder the expenses alone without being in some type of partnership with others. The concern is that organised partnership organizations with well-intentioned commitments sometimes produce unwelcome outcomes due to unnecessary dispute that mostly shorten the partnerships’ life-span. Many studies have examined the key factors for effective partnership working, but did not identify the stages where each factor is paramount in partnership working. This paper intends to contribute to the development of theory on the key factors for effective partnership working in CCB from a developing country context. This paper adopted a single case study approach which is in line with the position of Stake (2005) and Yin (2003) on the possible rationales for using a single case study, and carried out interviews with 48 selected participants to gather informative data. This paper identified seven factors which were used to design a framework called ‘Partnership Test Card-PTC’ that might be used by existing partnership organizations that involved in CCB as check lists, and might serve as guides to organiser of partnership organization in developing countries.

Key words: AARSI partnership organization, effective partnership working, partnership framework, partnership test card, capacity building interventions