Developing strategic partnerships are currently at the forefront of place-based education efforts. Review the literature on forming partnerships in education. Provide a synthesis and critique of the...

Leadership Essay, 30686
Developing strategic partnership are currently at the forefront of place-based education efforts. Review the literature on forming partnership in education. Provide a synthesis and critique of the theory…In doing so, consider some recommendations for successful partnership building and sustainability
Introduction
Partnerships and alliances are the buzz words today in all aspects of business. Marketers not just want to sell their products anymore rather they want to partner with their clients. Developers strives to make alliances to gain access to technology and capabilities. Salespeople strives partnership to new markets and customer segments. Partnering apparently seems to be answer to almost every question of increasing sales, expanding market and developing a company. However, most of the partnerships aren’t successful since they are unable to achieve their objectives. Alliances and partnership done strategically are extremely important in most of business as no business can do everything completely as everyone has its own points of strength and weakness and in order to become powerful in context to enhance on the strength with no point of weakness at all can be done through partnership model.
Current Scenario of Business
In present era we limit are formal education with what is present in books or available on the internet and absolutely ignore the influence of place in the process. When we go out for a dinner or on a vacation we learn so many things in organic way and experience the power of place. If we visit most of the school in the world, we observe traditional way of teaching. Although there is no denying of the fact that now there has been motivation to bring along innovative ways in teaching. Although technology is playing a big role to personalize learning however it is not prerequisite for personalization of learning.
Education is extremely fundamental for driving any kind of growth in the country and also provides a competitive advantage in the long run. Hence, there is growing emphasis on not just education rather more holistic education that includes horning new skills. In order to become more competent to the changing environment, students of today need to prepare themselves for something more demanding and driven by the knowledge. Taking reference from “Crossing Boundaries Creating Community College Partnerships to Promote Educational Transitions”, Amey, M. J., Eddy, P. L. & Campbell T. G.,2010). Many partnerships have been developed that have collaborated across many organization and developed strategies in order to meet the economic goals of education at all three levels - individual, institutional and state levels. When such strategies are successfully implemented they are a huge advantage for schools and colleges that have participated as they get access to meet changing learning needs by optimally utilising the resources. This interconnected collaborative partnership for education varies depending on the purpose and vision.
Benefits
With reference to “The role and impact of public-private partnerships in education” (Patrinos, H. A., Barrera-Osorio, F., & Gua´queta, J., 2009), In present era need of hour in any sphere of life is innovation, accompanied with limited resources collaborative partnership is very advantageous for all who are involved as it provides them support to achieve their goals that might not be achieved individually. This enables better access to education and students receives better opportunity to learn. On the other hand, these partnership assists institutions to meet their technology requirements and improve on service delivery. These partnerships can be tremendously favourable in accomplishing the goal of providing sound education and in the process can benefit to every organization that is involved in the process
Challenges
Even though collaborative partnership benefits all those are associated, it is still not sufficient to make such partnership as a mandate at state level. Short term goals like receiving immediate results may hamper the intent and purpose of partnerships and hence, same is viewed as compliance. These partnerships are complicated and difficult to implement and execute, that is the reason why the partnership doesn’t successfully achieve the desired goal. Also, if these partnerships are created as a mandate they rarely succeed even though they have a lot of potential. With reference to Understanding Strategic Service Partnerships, Northumbria University, (Baker, K., 2005), it is extremely difficult to build and sustain these partnerships because there is inherited difference in ways of working of organizations that are getting involved Hence, it is extremely essential to create alliances amongst the education institutions that can address the current challenges and utilise the given resources and work on achieving the goal.
Literature Study in the field of Education
In order to elaborate the study and literature existing in PPP. Under this one of the prominent example of model quite relevant in this is the partnership model. In such partnership all the institutions that are involved can benefit from arrangements of facilities-sharing like science labs, classrooms, computer laboratories and sport compounds. This brings out most effective utilisation of physical resources and help in minimising the expenses on new investments like constructing the social complex or sport facilities. Combining the resources of different institutions together provides positive atmosphere and better outcomes as they can achieve economies of scale and scope. However, the manner in which institutions that extract the benefit might not be in same proportion which highlights the probability of unevenly distributing power and rewards. Best method to tackle this situation is to have commonly comprehended and shared goals.
            Fig 1: Illustrate the phase 1 of the Partnership model
Partnership Model
This models takes into the consideration the social obligations that each organization has to fulfil. Hence, drawing the attention to the significance of organizational and social capital in developing partnership development. This development is profoundly called as partnership capital. Taking the literature reference from Crossing Boundaries Creating Community College Partnerships to Promote Educational Transitions”, Amey, M. J., Eddy, P. L. & Campbell T. G.,2010).
Stage 1: Getting Started
The initial stage includes the things that already existed from each and every partners that bestows for establishing this partnership. These antecedents not only involve all the available resource with the partners but also the vision, purpose and inspirations they have for the partnership. There are different reasons that attract partners as this can voluntary or involuntary, that happen in the case of command from higher authority. Voluntary partnership is most successful as they involve common thought-process and motivations. Nevertheless, there can be numerous reasons for becoming a part of this model but all reasons revolve around social and organizational capital that brings a dynamic flavour in order to comprehend the role and responsibilities of the partners.
Social capital essentially being an intangible resource makes it even more difficult to comprehend the growth since its productive and growth is inherently dependent in social structures and relationships. Today, this form of capital has become very frequently used in the literature of behaviour in an organization. This form of capital is dependent on two conditions - first, it is interlinked to the prevailing social structures as it eases actions that are performed by the actors regardless whether they are corporate employees or individuals. Social capital is unique because irrespective to other types of capital, social capital lives and breathes in relationship structure and networks among the actors incorporating as intimacies, degree of interactions and trust.
Some of the important aspects of social capital are density, trust and centrality that affect the relations in the partnerships and degree of the bonding that exist amongst individuals. Research of all this aspect helps to assists and comprehend range of opportunities for growth and development. High level of trust is often considered essential to build good and sustaining relationship in the partnership. In order to have mutual expectations and develop strong relations in the process demands more interactions in order to build density. Those actors that shares strong binds have a tendency to consider each other as trustworthy and credible. Aspect of centrality brings out the sphere of influence and sphere of control into the picture. It elaborates the degree to which a person is central and primary axis of influence in the overall structure to the partnership. Positon of a person in the network affects how one is perceived. Looking from a strategic angle, powerful partnerships are formed with individuals who have more power of sphere and influence of this alliance. Trust is not build...