Understanding the different faces of partnering: a typology of public-private partnerships

Abstract

The popularity and prevalence of public–private partnerships for problem-solving has been well documented in prior research. While there is widespread agreement that all partnerships are not the same, the partnership hierarchies offered by past research assume that some alliances are somehow ‘better’ than others. This article offers a new typology based on findings from our research on partnerships in education, in which we conducted a national study of charter schools in the United States. We found that partnerships can be differentiated based on how they are initiated, what services are provided, the form of the partnership and the depth of organizational involvement.

Acknowledgments

This article builds on a paper presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego, California. The authors are most grateful to the leaders of the charter schools and their partner organizations who took part in the study reported here.

Notes

1. The unit of analysis for this study is each of the 22 charter school sites. Since some charter schools had multiple partners, reported instances of a phenomenon do not always equal 22.