Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1998. / At head of title: MIT/Draper Technology Development Partnership Program. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-105). / by Garrett W. Shook. / M.Eng.

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Many leaders of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) lack strategies to build and maintain a financially sustainable organization to continue providing vital social services. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the financial strategies some NPO leaders used to maintain financial sustainability during general economic downturns. Five purposively selected leaders of an NPO in northwestern Indiana participated in the study. The resource dependency theory and the change management theory were the conceptual frameworks that guided the study. Data were collected from face-to-face and telephone interviews and a review of company documentation. Member checking was conducted with participants and data triangulation occurred with an analysis of organization documents that reinforced the validity of the findings. Data were analyzed using Yin's 5-step process of coding of participants' responses, including examining, categorizing, tabulating, creating a data display, and testing the data. Data analysis of organizational documents, interview transcripts, and the organization's social media sites revealed 3 themes: partnerships, fundraising, and diversification as the strategies used to maintain financial sustainability during periods of economic downturns. The findings of this study might contribute to positive social change by providing information to NPO leaders to help improve financial strategies and sustainability for community service organizations during general economic downturns and maintain social services.

In the face of increasing budget cuts, public K-12 schools are collaborating with both public and private organizations in an effort to more efficiently meet the needs of the students they serve. When schools share a facility with a community-based organization, the school not only saves costs in regard to facility maintenance and operations, but potentially improves services to their student population. In addition to facility sharing, community agencies might partner with schools to provide students services that satisfy basic needs, including medical, vision, and dental care, to allow students to perform better in school. Other community organizations have cooperated with school districts to provide before- and after-school programming to assist working parents concerned about the supervision of their children outside the school day. This is a case study of a collaboration between a school district and a nonprofit organization for the purpose of building two high school facilities together. Through interviews with district and nonprofit leaders, this study explores how this was accomplished. Analysis of interview data resulted in five emergent themes. These themes were juxtaposed with Melaville and Blank's 1991 framework. Melaville and Blank's research consisted of a study of multiple partnerships and resulted in five common variables: The Five Variables Shaping Interagency Partnerships. The final chapter of this study synthesizes the collaborative literature and the case study data to suggest a new framework for collaboration: The Five Steps to an Enduring School/Community Collaboration. Educational researchers can use this study and its framework to further explore collaborations in education. School leaders can use this framework to guide them through their own collaborative processes. All educators can use this research to answer the question, "What works in collaboration?"

Partnering and supply chain management (SCM) are concepts or approaches that can be applied as initiatives to solve problems in the construction industry and meet or surpass the expectations of supply chain members and final customers. With the benefit of an Action Research study on the construction process of a large format bulk retail development, by a prominent Auckland construction company, the application of the combined approaches and their relationships are discussed.It can be concluded that the concepts or approaches mentioned are useful for the company in achieving best results. However, whilst this combined approach provides useful insights to alternative construction procurement; it is by no means a catchall remedy for traditional contracting methods. In order to successfully adopt the SCM approach the size, type and scope of the project would need to be fit-for-purpose and embrace organisational and cultural enablers.The study identifies a growing need for future research in strategic collaborative approaches to project procurement, in order for the construction industry to grow as a whole.

This research, conceptualizes, operationalises and empirically tests a competency-based theory of business-partnering performance within an Australian business-partnering context. Drawing on theory from social psychology and marketing, the research integrates a number of theoretical approaches including resource-based theory, competency based theory, relational factors view, relational interaction theory, and competitive advantage theory to explain why some business partnerships are more successful than others are. The results use a ???process model of business-partnering??? performance to explain the interaction process through which business partners exploit the available partnering related ???operant resources??? and how these resources influence the performance of business partnerships and their ability to achieve a competitive advantage. Specifically, this research investigates a number of important internal resources, which facilitate the building, and maintaining of external businesspartner relations including ???joint alliance competence???, ???joint alliance structure???, ???interpersonal relational competence??? and ???market orientation???. This research shows that an adequate understanding of how these ???operant resources??? are deployed/accessed and co-created by the business partners to achieve a competitive advantage requires integration of ???relational interaction theory??? into ???resource-based theory??? and ???competency-based theory???. The results of this research show that those firms that pursue business partnerships as a competitive strategy can improve performance by engaging in a range of activities, which facilitate the building of ???relational capital??? of the partnership. The results provide support for conclusion that ???communication behaviour??? is a central and important mediating variable in the performance of business partnerships. Overall, the findings are consistent with the literature in finding support for the notion that ???joint alliance competence??? is a direct antecedent of businesspartnering performance. There is support for the notion that the partnership???s ability to govern and manage itself is an important determinant of ???communication behaviour??? and ???co-ordination behaviour???. The results identified ???market orientation???, ???co-ordination behaviour??? and ???relational capital??? as all having a direct influence on business-partnership profitability. Finally, given the relatively high failure rates of business partnerships this research provides greater opportunity for a discussion of the kinds of intervention strategies that could be used to minimise the risk of failure and/or to improve partnership performance. Keywords: competency, alliance, business partnership, relationship marketing, businesspartnering competency, relational factors view, resource based view, relational interaction theory, market orientation, interpersonal relational competency, alliance structure, process model.

Thesis (PhD (Public Affairs))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

The recent enlargements of the European Union brought about a strategic shift in the EU’s approach to conflict management and security in the eastern neighbourhood. The Partnership and Co-operation Agreements between the EU and Moldova contained no mention of the Transnistrian dispute, while the agreement between the EU and Geor gia included a vague phrase regarding political dialogue which may include the issue of conflict resolution. The addition of new members to the Union, however, expanded the EU into its neighbourhood and brought closer the unresolved territorial disputes. Concerns that were once further away are now right next door. While the former accession states might have served as buffers to these concerns, they can no longer, as members of the Union, be seen as such. Therefore, there is a greater need to address security issues, such as the ‘frozen conflicts’ bordering the EU. This thesis will examine the evolution of the EU’s responses to security chal lenges in the Eastern neighbourhood, and assess the role the EU plays in addressing these ‘frozen conflicts’ through the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Fur ther, this thesis will argue that the EU has thus far exerted limited direct pressure towards direct resolution of these conflicts and has instead approached regional stability through a variety of other indirect and long term means, such as the pursuit of economic growth and political stability. In particular, the research will look at the security sector reform (SSR) and will focus on the EU’s impact, or Europeanization, in the rule of law and border management sectors of Moldova and Georgia. It will be shown that these two sectors are related to promoting political stability and economic growth, which is in line with the EU’s effort to support development in Moldova and Georgia, and thus indirectly address ‘frozen conflict’ resolution by. altering the incentive structures. This thesis will conclude that the EU does have an impact on the rule of law and border management sectors and subsequently some impact on the ‘frozen conflict’ in Moldova but less so on the conflicts in Georgia.

This thesis examines the challenges and strategies to IT-Business alignment from the perspective of IT managers. The increasing importance of Information technology (IT) to organizations in areas such as joint  research and development (R&D), Open innovation, and the ever-changing business environment means that organizations need to reassess their IT and business strategies so as to remain competitive. This implies that organizations in general and business and IT professionals in particular would have to work together more often than before in strategic planning. This is not easy because these professionals with diverse viewpoints may understand IT and business quite differently. Using a qualitative research design in the form of semi-structure interviews with open-ended questions, findings indicate that communication, partnership, governance, and skills are major challenges and strategies to alignment. This study contributes to ongoing research in IT-Business alignment by indicating that challenges to aligning business and IT strategies such as communication should not be narrowly thought of to exist just between IT and business professionals, it is equally a main concern among IT professionals.

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