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Towards Partnership: An Analysis of the Literature on Organisational Change

Project Code: X04003

09/07/2010

Kings College London
Needle, D ; Guest, D; Howard, M

This investigation examines organisational change within the context of partnership working between the FSA and its stakeholder organisations.

Evidence was obtained from the existing literature on partnership working and from the considerable literature on organisation change. The findings from the literature were examined against findings from a series of interviews with a number of FSA staff and a number of staff from stakeholder organisations. The latter group comprised mainly food producers and scientific service providers.

The literature review on partnership working identified a number of different types of partnership. These were: professional partnerships, partnerships between organisations, partnerships between groups within an organisation and specific public-private partnerships in the public sector. From the FSA perspective, the key focus was on partnership working with other organisations.

There is significant agreement in the literature on the conditions for effective partnership working. These can be summarised as:

• The need for a high degree of trust
• An agreed agenda and agreed realistic goals
• Regular contact between partners for relationship building
• Information sharing via ongoing dialogue
• Joint decision-making
• The presence of strong champions
• The achievement and communication of successes
• Sustainable mutual gains
• The establishment of institutional frameworks to embed the relationship.

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