The role of social capital in sustaining partnership

Abstract

Partnership is a dominant theme in education policy and practice in England and in other western countries but remains relatively under‐researched, especially with respect to what sustains a partnership. This article draws on a study of partnership working in the field of post‐16 learning that revealed the role of dimensions of social capital in supporting and sustaining the case study partnership. The research adopted a grounded approach and used multiple methods of data gathering including observations of partnership meetings, semi‐structured interviews and documentary research. The findings reported here focus on aspects of partnership working and facets of social capital that support and sustain partnership, including multiple layers of collaboration, networks and networking, high levels of trust and shared norms and values amongst key participants. The analysis suggests that the contested concept of social capital provides a useful theoretical frame for understanding the basis of sustainability in education partnerships.

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to the two anonymous referees who provided very detailed and helpful comments on the earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. The use of italic indicates original emphasis by the speaker.

2. The gender and ethnicity of the sample was 60% female, 40% male and 100% white. I was the only person from a minority ethnic background at meetings of the partnership.

3. The interviews were held in the workplace of each senior manager so that I could experience the institutional culture of the participating organisations.

4. See Dhillon (2005) for a fuller discussion.