Nineteenth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

There is much written across academic and practitioner literatures concerning the organizational challenge to adapt to an ever changing external environment. The same can be said for alliance building which is supported by a plethora of frameworks from practitioner contributions, and benefits from almost two decades of pro-partnership discourse, now fully embedded in the sustainable development goals. Only limited attention however has been given to the actual partnering function within organizations. The partnership function and its effectiveness can be seen as a fulcrum that balances on the one hand the efforts of the organization to sustain relevance within the external environment and on the other, internal organizational roles of specific individuals and task groups as well as policy, processes and sometimes simple precedence of how-did-that-work-the-last-time. This presentation will identify and discuss the challenges of the partnering function across levels as it relates to organizational strategy, climate and culture.