Scott, J.E. and Gable, G. (1997). Goal congruence, trust, and organizational culture: Strengthening knowledge links. Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Information Systems (pp. 107-120). Atlanta: Association for Information Systems.

Strengthening knowledge links is presented as a theoretical framework using five phases of partnership development and three challenges faced by knowledge link partnerships. The five phases comprise establishing the purpose, finding a partner, and then defining, maintaining, and institutionalizing the partnership. Goal congruence, trust, and organizational culture are also salient factors. The challenges include fitting the partner’s vision and goals, trust, and institutionalization of a partnership-specific culture. Implications for management, universities, and research are also discussed.

Smith, A., Conveney, J., Carter, P., Jolley, G. and Laris, P. (2004). The eat well SA project: An evaluation-based case study in building capacity for promoting healthy eating. Health Promotion International, 19(3), 327-334.

The Eat Well SA (South Australia) project has formed very substantial and effective partnerships and relationships with 50 organizations. The main purposes of this article are to describe the project evaluation outcomes, to further examine evaluation results using a model of capacity building, and to outline a planning and evaluation model for building capacity for healthy eating at a local or regional level. Partnership development was found to be a significant strategy for success, leading to increased problem-solving capacity among important stakeholders and workers from education, childcare, health, transport, and food industry sectors.

Sparks, D. (2000). Partnerships need purposes. Journal of Staff Development, 21(2), 3.

Sparks emphasizes that the strength of educational partnerships depends on a broad and compelling purpose that serves to lead and motivate partners’ work. Partnerships are most useful when they are inspired by challenging goals that require interdependency and synergy to be completed. New partnerships often fail because of partners’ unwillingness to accept major changes in their respective beliefs and practices. Partners must be willing to assume new relationships, responsibilities, and roles in order to maintain effective partnerships.