Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies

A Positive Project Outcome: Lessons from a Non-Dominant Government University-Based Program

Anne Namatasi Lutomia

Michigan State University

Julia Bello-Bravo

Michigan State University

John Medendorp

Michigan State University

Barry Pittendrigh

Michigan State University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24926/ijps.v7i2.3482

Keywords: partnership, non-domination, trust, relationship, government, collaboration, project managers, positive-outcome experience, equalization of inputs

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Abstract

This article explores factors contributing to a non-dominant collaboration paradigm in a partnership between a government-based international development agency and a university-based non-governmental organization. Anchored in Wood’s and Gray’s collaborative framework, this article describes how the steeply hierarchical partnership navigated the elements of collaboration – organizational autonomy; shared problem domain; interactive processes; shared rules, norms, and structures; and decision making – to produce non-dominant values and practices deriving from negotiated processes, rules, norms, and structures that produced positive collaboration outcomes. In particular, a history of prior mutually beneficial interactions emerges as a critical precondition for achieving a non-dominant collaboration in this case study’s steeply hierarchical organizational relationship, one in which egalitarianism and equal decision-making regarding the agenda and the goals of the collaboration could have been highly constrained.