Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While the concepts of public private partnership and partnership between corporates and civil society (non-profit or non-governmental) organizations have been discussed since the 1980s, the focus on the tripartite relationship between corporates, government and civil society organizations is relatively new. Cross-Sector Development Partnerships (CSDPs) refer to this collaborative relationship between the three sectors and have been called the “paradigm of the 21st century” (Austin, 2000a, p. 44). While such partnerships have been heralded as key to solving complex social challenges, their creation and management is complicated and often jeopardized by myriad inhibiting factors, creating a niche space for brokering agents and bridging organizations. These organizations are increasingly playing an important role in creating and managing partnerships between the government, corporate and civil society sectors, while also ensuring community involvement for sustainable outcomes.

Goal of the Paper

This paper studies a bridging organization that executed fourteen projects in the State of Uttar Pradesh in India in three and a half years, to understand the critical role that the organization played in producing sustainable development outcomes. Additionally, synthesizing the lessons learnt across projects, the authors have proposed three models to advance more in-depth understanding of bridging organizations and their role in managing complex partnerships for sustainable development. The goal of the paper is to offer a replicable composite framework of value creation by collaboration.

Methodology

The authors study the impact created by eight development project cases, across social issues, executed through the partnerships facilitated by the bridging organizations. They collected qualitative and quantitative data through observations from the field, discussions, interviews with the various stakeholders across projects and a survey using civil society partners as key respondents.

Keys Findings

The paper shows that bridging organizations efficiently cultivate partnerships and motivate stakeholders to utilize their combined strengths, skills, knowledge and resources to successfully implement large scale development projects. The study reveals that bridging organizations are critical in building trust and creating shifts in the mindset of the partnering stakeholders, making them more open to collaborations for a common goal. They also play an important role in creating a feedback loop to improve government policies making them more relevant to ground, using project results.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This paper has made an attempt to highlight the critical role bridging organizations play in sustainable development. It has also made an attempt in filling the gaps in the literature regarding processes of value creation by bridging organizations. While the study shows that bridging organizations create value for each partnering sector, especially for the government sector by supporting them in achieving their development mandate, systematic approaches to large-scale partnerships in diverse government, political and socio-economic environments needs further research.