Rethinking Research Partnerships: Evidence and the politics of participation in research partnerships for international development

This article responds to the drive for research partnerships between academics and practitioners, arguing that while potential benefits are clear, these are frequently not actualized resulting in partnerships that are ineffectual or worse, exacerbate damaging or inequitable assumptions and practices. In order to understand/improve partnerships, a systematic analysis of the interrelationship between what counts as evidence and dynamics of participation is proposed. Drawing on data from a seminar series and iterative analysis of seven case studies of partnerships between Higher Education Institutions and International Non-Governmental Organisations the article concludes by suggesting substantial shifts in the theory and practice of partnerships

Beyond partnerships: embracing complexity to understand and improve research collaboration for global development

While there is a burgeoning literature on the benefits of research collaboration for development, it tends to promote the idea of the ‘partnership’ as a bounded site in which interventions to improve collaborative practice can be made. This article draws on complexity theory and systems thinking to argue that such an assumption is problematic, divorcing collaboration from wider systems of research and practice. Instead, a systemic framework for understanding and evaluating collaboration is proposed. This framework is used to reflect on a set of principles for fair and equitable research collaboration that emerged from a programme of strategic research and capacity strengthening conducted by the Rethinking Research Collaborative (RRC) for the United Kingdom (UK)’s primary research funder: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The article concludes that a systemic conceptualisation of collaboration is more responsive than a ‘partnership’ approach, both to the principles of fairness and equity and also to uncertain futures

The COVID-19 response system and collective social service provision. Strategic network dimensions and proximity considerations

©2020. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This document is the Accepted version of a Published Work that appeared in final form inService Business. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-020-00421-wThis paper aims to study and question the emerging social response network to the COVID-19 health crisis in the Valencian region (Spain). Our approach is twofold: a network approach using social network analysis techniques and a social services approach. We seek to analyze the diferent roles, strategic positions, ego-density and brokerage of the participating organizations. Furthermore, we examine the critical factors for explaining why the diferent organizations in the ecosystem cooperate. We fnd that associations and knowledge agents play the most relevant roles. Conversely, local and non-local governments rarely played brokerage roles to coordinate or inter-connect isolated operations of individual organizations. Finally, our results suggest important guidelines for practitioners that may facilitate the collaboration, coordination, and performance of a response network in the future