The Effectiveness of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Mapping the Literature; Questioning the Assumptions

The Effectiveness of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Mapping the Literature; Questioning the Assumptions | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article The Effectiveness of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Mapping the Literature; Questioning the Assumptions Moira Faul, Bart Gabriel, Liliana Andonova This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3763996/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Partnerships that bring together public, private and voluntary sectors are increasingly promoted as a key tool in addressing sustainable development. Paradoxically, however, knowledge of the effectiveness of partnerships is limited, and fragmented across several academic disciplines despite their common research topic. As research into the effectiveness of partnerships is developing in this disjointed manner, it is important to surface the structuring of the academic landscape of partnership effectiveness research, and the assumptions on which it rests. We therefore map the partnership effectiveness research across several disciplines, question the main assumptions made by partnership effectiveness researchers, and propose new directions for partnership effectiveness research. By centering effectiveness, our article moves the field beyond discipline-centric, issue-specific questions to call for interdisciplinary, cross-cutting analysis that challenges assumptions in the existing literature. Social science/Politics and international relations Business and commerce/Business and management Social science/Development studies Social science/Environmental studies Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Introduction Partnerships have become the default mode of addressing sustainability challenges. Researchers have heralded the utility of partnerships in correcting for market or regulation failures. Thus, Benner et al. (2004) argued that partnerships that encourage relationships between public, private and civil society organisations provide a ‘new mechanism that helps to bridge diverging problem assessments and interest constellations.’ (p. 197). Most recently, public-private partnerships are increasingly considered to provide a new paradigm in governance and are considered a core instrument for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs (UN: General Assembly, 2015). In this paper, we report on a bibliometric and thematic study of a sample of publications that address partnership effectiveness. The bibliometric analyses provide (1) a peak in partnership effectiveness studies in 2011 and a recent rise, with a high incidence of international collaboration in the Global North, (2) five disciplines lead in publications and citations: health, public administration, management, environmental sciences and international relations, (3) common issues in partnership effectiveness research, despite (4) research being largely confined to disciplinary clusters, with two instances of cross-disciplinary citations. In addition, the inductive thematic analysis of a larger sample of existing partnership effectiveness research across several disciplines reveals — and challenges — four underlying assumptions: (1) partnerships are the new paradigm, (2) between sector differences and within sector cohesiveness, (3) effectiveness is solely a technical question, and (4) that academic research in one discipline is sufficient to address the effectiveness question. Background and context The rise of public-private partnerships as instruments of international governance and public service delivery is frequently justified with reference to their anticipated effects. In theory, partnerships facilitate collective action by enabling diverse actors to negotiate objectives and terms of engagement towards social, economic or environmental goals. In turn, successful partnership experiments are thought to enlarge the scope of collaboration through learning-by-doing and updating the beliefs and interests of relevant actors (Andonova 2017). Partnerships are thus considered to provide new venues for collective action (at global, regional, national and local levels) on economic, environmental and social issues that are part of the global sustainability fabric, such as health, education, humanitarian issues, or clean energy (for example, Andonova & Carbonnier, 2014; Brown & Held, 2017; Faul, 2014; Szlezák et al., 2010). Contemporary global policy documents (such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN: General Assembly, 2015) and the Addis Ababa Agenda on Financing for Development (UNDESA, 2015) emphasize the role of partnerships in achieving global objectives. While studies exist that evaluate goal achievement of partnerships, the role or functioning of the partnership itself in achieving those goals are frequently overlooked (Mkperedem et al., 2023; Khan & Han, 2023 for example). Partnership effectiveness literatures Effectiveness is frequently differentiated from efficiency. Efficiency might be characterised as ‘doing things right’, whereas effectiveness focuses more on ‘doing the right thing’ (Drucker, 1967). Nevertheless, while considerable research has been carried out into the rise of partnerships and the increasing range of social, economic and environmental problems they are purported to solve, the question of their effectiveness requires more research attention (figure 1). To date, the literature on partnership effectiveness has developed in a variety of disciplines, and is characterised by a plurality of definitions, methods and theories as well as divergent assessment methodologies. At first glance, different disciplines appear to emphasise different aspects of partnership effectiveness. In broad-brush terms, the business management literature appears to focus more on the internal workings of partnerships and the value they may create for partners (Stadtler & Van Wassenhove, 2016; Wang, 2018). Furthermore, the international relations and development literatures tend to examine how partnerships might advance credible cooperation and advance sustainable development solutions (Andonova, 2017; Faul, 2016a). In public policy and administration, similarly, the main concern is how a partnership contributes demonstrable progress towards achieving its goals, and how those goals contribute to solving specific problems of public interest (Garon et al., 2014; Nolte & Boenigk, 2011). However, researchers may see this account of research in their discipline as if through a distorting mirror. These disciplinary caricatures caused by the fragmentation of partnership effectiveness literature are precisely the analytic motivation of this review: to address the thus-far limited systematic assessment of the apparent disjunctures and links between partnership effectiveness research that is undertaken in diverse disciplines. The time has come for comprehensive review that maps existing research into partnership effectiveness across disciplines. The objective of this paper is therefore to illuminate what is shared – and not shared – in extant partnership effectiveness research across several disciplines. We address this broad question in two findings sections that use different methods to address the following sub-questions: What is the intellectual structuring of research into partnership effectiveness, revealed through the bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in Web of Science? What assumptions tend to be shared across different disciplines, surfaced through inductive thematic coding of journal articles, books and book chapters, and grey literature? This paper draws on diverse disciplines that currently engage with research into the effectiveness of partnerships, while questioning the key assumptions underpinning partnership effectiveness research. By contributing a review of key texts in several disciplines, our intention is to stimulate, on the one hand, debate as to what is shared – and not – across various disciplines’ research into partnership effectiveness, and on the other, further multidisciplinary research to answer the partnership effectiveness problems we examine. Throughout, we argue for the utility of recognising and using the contributions of multi-disciplinary and multi-theoretical perspectives, explore the complexity of the effectiveness of partnerships, and open new directions of analysis. Approach While much has been written about the rise and promise of partnerships, a systematic overview of research into the effectiveness of partnerships has been lacking. Moreover extant research tends to be scattered among the many academic disciplines that study partnerships, including business and management studies, economics, international relations and politics, law, natural sciences, and public administration and policy. This article seeks to contribute to these academic debates by providing bibliometric and qualitative thematic analyses of research outputs on the effectiveness of partnerships. Bibliometric analyses are used to study patterns of publication on topics as diverse as education and financial technology (Afjal, 2023; Samsul et al., 2023). In our bibliometric study of partnership effectiveness, we quantify overall and disciplinary production and geographical collaboration, we employ keyword and citation analyses to map social and intellectual structures of academic research into partnership effectiveness. Citations are considered to denote the academic value and influence of a paper and its author (Merton, 1996), and therefore co-citation analyses are considered critical to mapping the intellectual structure of a field or in an issue (Garfield & Merton, 1979). Academic publications serve instrumental purposes in transmitting information as well as in academic career paths, with tenure and promotion cases built on so-called ‘high-impact’ publications (Nowotny et al., 2001). In addition, academic publications also fulfil the symbolic function of acknowledging researchers’ intellectual property and prestige and positioning within their communities (Small, 2004; White & Griffith, 1981) (table 1). Much citation analysis is undertaken to define a field of study or area of science (for example, Lin & Cheng (2012) on strategic alliance research), or to examine one discipline’s perspective on an issue that is explored in many others (such as Wang et al.’s (2018) bibliometric analyses of public-private partnerships only in the public administration literature). Yet, research on the same topic can be undertaken in several academic disciplines. Thus, the bibliometric analysis we present makes a contribution towards understanding the disciplinary dynamics of the effectiveness of partnerships literature. Table 1: Instrumental and symbolic functions of citation in academia Function of citation Instrumental Symbolic For cited author Build case for promotion Indicate prestige For citing author Build patronage Indicate insider status and belonging Of text Transmit information Designate intellectual property Sources: Nowotny et al., 2001; Small, 2004; White & Griffith, 1981 We are not judging the relative validity of knowledge claims but rather using robust methods to surface the existing hierarchy by mapping the structuring of the research field in question. An evaluation of the effectiveness of the partnerships analysed in the research we draw on for this review lies beyond the scope of this paper. What is at stake here is the examination of the structuring of the intellectual field of partnership research across the main disciplines that contribute analyses, and the identification of the key assumptions underlying the production of academic research into partnership effectiveness. Drawing on bibliometric analyses and inductive content analysis, this article shows that despite studying similar research questions, with very few exceptions research on the effectiveness of multistakeholder partnerships rarely recognises the contribution of other disciplines studying similar phenomena. Simultaneously, researchers across all disciplines tend to share four key assumptions. We thus contribute to the partnership and multistakeholder governance literature by surfacing the intellectual structure of and assumptions underlying much research into the effectiveness of partnership, within and across diverse disciplines that do not engage with each other. Sample The sample of publications used in the analyses of this paper was compiled through the manual selection of relevant papers through Google Scholar. The Google Scholar search query using the following search terms returned approximately 17,000 records: CONTAINS: partnership, public-private MUST CONTAIN: “effectiveness” MUST NOT CONTAIN: “infrastructure” Meta-data was then compiled for the resulting sample using Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science (WoS). Web of Science was selected for data collection as it is the most extensive generalist database for research/research metadata (summarised in figure 2). While some argue that an electronic search provides objectivity, it can also include titles irrelevant to the research question. We reviewed all titles and abstracts to screen for inclusion based on predetermined decision rules, excluding from the dataset publications that focused on: infrastructure, violence in intimate partnerships, ‘partner’ countries in the development literature (where relations are within one sector: states), where author affiliation was a partnership, references to ‘research partners’ for effectiveness evaluation where no partnership was involved, the comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of public vs. private sector provision or of privatisation in different territories, where partnership is merely recommended as a solution to the effectiveness challenge, and finally where the case study was a partnership but the analysis was not examining effectiveness. In addition, we consulted a cross-disciplinary group of experts in environmental and social partnerships to identify what they considered to be core texts.[i] This resulted in an initial sample of 453 papers, which formed the basis of the qualitative analysis. To explore the structural characteristics of this sample, we manually reconstructed this sample by consulting the Web of Science database. Of the 453, 50 records were compiled on Google Scholar but not on the Web of Science, and a further 110 records featured incomplete meta-data (e.g. missing publication information, bibliography entries). Filtering incomplete bibliometric information from this sample, 293 documents represent the working sample for our inquiry using bibliometric analytical techniques. We return in the Discussion to the restrictions imposed by the constraints of the database used and the implications of our research decisions based on these constraints. Bibliometric analyses of partnership effectiveness across diverse disciplines Bibliometrics is defined as the quantitative study of scientific production (Broadus 1987) using primarily statistical analysis and network mapping (Kajikawa et al., 2007). Bibliometric methods allow researchers to assess the structuring of one or multiple academic fields, which then allows the assessment of technical and political aspects that may contribute to that structuring. Bibliometric analyses were conducted using Aria & Cucurrullo’s (2017) Bibliometrix package for R, as well as its proprietary extension BiblioShiny. Key findings I. Bibliometric mapping of the partnership effectiveness literature We conducted the following bibliometrics analyses, which structures this section, mapping: (1) scientific production and collaboration, (2) disciplinary composition of publications and their references, (3) key themes through keyword co-occurrence, and (4) intellectual structure of the partnership effectiveness research through a co-citation analysis. Mapping scientific production and collaboration Scientific production from 1987-2022 is characterised by a relatively high degree of co-authorship and international collaboration (table 2). Table 2: Descriptive statistics of the sample Description Results Timespan 1987:2022 Sources (journals, books, etc.) 179 Publications 293 Authors 837 Authors of single-authored publications 75 Single-authored publications 78 Co-authors per publication 3.54* International co-authorships % 29.69 References 13177 Average citations per publication 65.89 * After discounting the 78 single-authored publications Analysing annual production shows a rapid growth of total publications since 2008, with 67% of the sample published between 2008 and 2013 (figure 3). Partnerships as a new institutional form in the context of the multilateral system underwent significant growth towards the end of the 1990s and primarily in the first decade of the millennium (Andonova 2017), followed by a peak of policy and academic attention. For example, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) partnerships were formally recognized in 2003, boosting attention and academic interest, followed by global partnerships in health and other MDGs. Andonova and Levy (2003) provided the first systematic data collected on environmental partnerships, and became the baseline for Bierman & Pattberg’s (2008) data and project. The upward trend until 2013 was then reversed until 2017, followed by an increase to above 2008 levels that continues today. Mapping international collaboration frequency reveals that collaborations between researchers in high-income countries account for more than half of scientific collaboration within the sample, whereas less than ten percent occurs exclusively between low- and middle-income countries (figure 4). This reflects a broader academic publication dynamic that is skewed towards high-income country researchers. Mapping the disciplines involved Analysing our sample against Web of Science’s (WoS) disciplinary categorisation scheme identifies different disciplinary patterns in the volume of publications as compared to citations. In Table 3, we compare rankings of publications (on the left) and citations (on the right). The three top-ranked research categories in both publications and citations (health, public administration and management) together account for 64% of the publications in the sample and 67% of the cited reference sources. Equally, the rankings of environmental sciences, international relations and social issues are very similar in production and citations. In contrast, development studies, education and nutrition are highly productive, appearing in the top ranking of publications, and yet are underrepresented in the citations ranking, indicating that there is substantial scholarship on partnership effectiveness in these literatures which is not cited, or indeed, known. In contrast, publications from the disciplines of law, and interdisciplinary natural and social sciences are cited comparatively more than these disciplines are productive, while economics is relatively productive (rank 8) but its rank in citations is higher (6). This would indicate that these four disciplines are influential in their own and also other disciplines. Table 3: Ranking of sample publications and citations by disciplinary categorisation Publications Rank Citations WoS Disciplinary Category n=293 n=5543 WoS Disciplinary Category Health 94 1 1619 Management Public administration 48 2 1059 Public administration Management 46 3 1032 Health Environmental sciences 28 4 356 International relations International relations 14 5 319 Environmental sciences Social issues 10 6 157 Economics Education 9 7 150 Social Issues Economics 8 8 143 Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Development studies 6 9 107 Multidisciplinary Natural Sciences Nutrition 5 10 86 Law Italics indicates disciplines that appear in one ranking but not in the other (either publications or citations), based on the categorisation of 100% of sample publication sources, and all cited reference sources with at least 10 occurrences in all of the reference lists in the sample. Disciplinary aggregation decisions are available in Appendix 1. Mapping common issues Keyword co-occurrence analysis identifies co-occurring clusters of author-selected keywords and can therefore help identify substantive links in research questions and concerns within and across different disciplines. Keywords are connected when they systematically co-occur with others in other publications in the sample. Figure 5 was constructed by mapping the 50 most frequently co-occurring keywords connected to at least one other keyword, with thicker lines indicating a higher rate of co-occurrence. The nodes were clustered by colour using the Walktrap community detection algorithm (Pons & Latapy, 2006). The algorithm makes ‘random walks’ across the network until a maximum number of connections are within the same communities, and as few as possible occur across different communities. Analyses of keyword co-occurrences thus indicate the dominant and marginal issues addressed in the sample publications. Chief among these are partnership means (shown in red in figure 5) and partnership outcomes (in purple). It is likely that partnership means and ends are considered to be interwoven features that are frequently studied as indicative of partnerships’ effectiveness. Also present are relatively self-contained literatures dealing with public health partnerships (in green) and global governance (in yellow), and a smaller cluster related to questions that mainly arise in the management literature (blue) as well as a series of papers on tuberculosis research (brown), and isolates dealing with good governance (pink) and community (grey). Mapping the structure of partnership effectiveness research Co-citation analysis is helpful in determining the structural characteristics of the research field by mapping the papers that are cited together in the publications in the sample. Mapping the 500 most frequently co-occurring citations reveals four interlinked clusters (figure 6). Despite the keyword analysis showing shared research questions and issues, citation practices appear to follow disciplinary structures and strictures. Of particular interest is the management and business literature’s relatively interstitial relationship to global health, international relations and public administration literatures, sharing citations from all three other communities. Bäckstrand (2006) and Bryson et al. (2006) appear to have crossed over into other disciplines because they filled a need in those literatures as the disciplines evolved to address new research questions (table 4). The nascent management literature focusing on public purpose (in outlets such as Business Ethics or Business and Society ) leant on literature from the administration of public services ( Administrative Science Quarterly ). In the same way, the emerging literature on global environmental issues in international relations looked to the environmental literature ( European Environment ). At the same time, the publication of environmental issues in core disciplinary outlets in international relations is more recent, as these have historically focused on diplomacy, international organisations and security. Global health publications are interstitial to international relations, management and public administration literatures since they share citations with those disciplinary literatures as well as citing their own publications (which are not highly cited outside this issue focus). The centrality of an environmental paper to the international relations literature alongside a separate cluster in health indicates the continuing disciplining function of international relations outlets, which are now more welcoming to the former topic than the latter. Table 4: Most central cited references in each co-citation community Authors Title Source Citations Community Bäckstrand, 2006 Multi‐stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development: rethinking legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness European environment 1025 Environmental sciences; became widely used in international relations Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2006 The design and implementation of cross‐sector collaborations: propositions from the literature Public administration review 3519 Public administration Provan & Milward, 1995 A preliminary theory of interorganizational network effectiveness: a comparative study of four community mental health systems Administrative science quarterly 2924 Administrative science; became widely used in business and management Buse & Harmer, 2007 Seven habits of highly effective global public–private health partnerships: practice and potential Social science & medicine 422 Global health All citations transmit information; citing within disciplines indicates a lack of knowledge of literatures outside the authors’ disciplines alongside the disciplining practices of symbolic citations (Small, 2004; White & Griffith, 1981). The academic research reviewed here appears to speak to debates within individual disciplines (organisation studies and management, political science and international relations, public policy and administration) or individual SDG issue areas (such as education, environment or health) rather than contributing to a wider interdisciplinary dialogue about partnerships. II. Questioning the assumptions underlying partnership effectiveness research In addition to the bibliometric analysis reported above, we undertook qualitative thematic coding of the core sample of 453 publications, identifying four assumptions underpinning partnership effectiveness research. Much of the literature recognises the complexity of stakeholders, processes, impacts and measures of effectiveness. Nevertheless assumptions remain that require more critical examination in order to move forward the agenda of partnership effectiveness research. Here we focus on four such assumptions: (1) partnerships should be accepted as the new governance and delivery paradigm, (2) within partnerships, the ‘clash of civilisations’ between public, private, and voluntary sectors is the most important faultline in their functioning and ability to support sustainable development solutions, (3) effectiveness is a technical question, and (4) academic research in one discipline is sufficient to address the effectiveness question. Assumption 1: Partnerships are accepted as the new paradigm While some research maintains a critical tone, much of the current partnership effectiveness literature appears to start from the assumption that partnerships should be accepted as the new paradigm for the governance and delivery of public and common goods and services for sustainable development. Partnerships, along with other transnational initiatives, have created alternative platforms to advance collaboration (Andonova et al., 2022). At the same time, the private sector claims to be taking the social and environmental effects of their economic activity more seriously (Karakulak & Faul, 2023), or to be efficiently providing for local and global needs while turning a profit (Werhane et al., 2009) or promising finance for sustainability (Faul & Tchilinigirian, 2021a). The literature on partnership effectiveness tends to view these new modes of organising uncritically, reflecting the policy discourse (for example in the SDGs) that partnerships integrate the perceived strengths of public, private and voluntary sectors to correct for market or regulation failure. And yet there are alternatives. The public, private and voluntary sectors could individually carry out their core activities in ways that are coherent with achieving sustainable development, in the absence of – or parallel to – partnerships. Thus, businesses could independently realign their core activities to deliver on a ‘triple-bottom line’ (Elkington, 1998, p. 2), delivering economic, environmental and social co-benefits as was the norm before maximising shareholder value became the single bottom line in the 1970s (Friedman, 1970; Stout, 2012). Equally, the role of the state in changing the regulatory environment in which private and voluntary sector providers operate could be modified in ways that foster sustainable development (rather than the partnerships they might choose to participate in). This would entail social and environmental protections (Mazzucato, 2018; Raworth, 2017) and regulations to govern illicit financial flows (Brandt, 2023). However, rather than promoting sustainable development regulation, in many contexts the state may be functionally absent (Batley & Mcloughlin, 2010), may manipulate governance and service provision (Herrera, 2017), may promote anti-sustainability policies (Leach et al., 2013) or use public finances for personal gain (Andersen et al., 2020; Zucman, 2013). Thus, researchers could show more sensitivity to different contexts, inquiring if partnerships are more effective in creating a public or common good or reducing a public bad compared to existing private interventions or public institutions in different contexts. In this reading, the contemporary focus on partnerships may obscure the changes in practice that each sector – separately – could make to contribute meaningfully to sustainable development objectives. Assumption 2: Divisions between public, private, and voluntary sectors represent the most important faultline in partnership effectiveness Partnership effectiveness research across all disciplines considers that conflicts and tensions between public and private sectors is the most significant issue at stake – and therefore to be researched – in partnership processes and impacts. Across the disciplines, partnerships are assumed to bring together individuals and organisations with different societal rationales, interests and principles, and therefore distinct ways of behaving and organising (Andonova, 2017; Clarke & Crane, 2018; Wang et al., 2018). Nevertheless, research in single sector business alliances indicates that difficulties also arise in such collaborations (Jiang et al., 2010; Zimmermann et al., 2015), and there is evidence that large corporations engaged in public-private partnerships can defraud smaller firms in their supply chains as well as their public sector partner and taxpayers (in the case of Carillion in the UK, see PACAC (2018); Wong (2019) for example). Furthermore, development studies point to historical power disparities within the same category (between low- and high-income states) such that state-state partnerships might display the same asymmetries of power in traditional development aid (Dietrich, 2021) or in global partnership boards (Faul & Tchilingirian, 2021b), or unequal contracts may be imposed on ‘partner’ states by China in their Belt and Road Initiative (Ndii, 2018). Faultlines based on race, gender and age within the private sector have been extensively studied in corporate governance research (Bernstein & Bilimoria, 2013), but not yet in partnership research. Moreover, in the sociology of expertise, diverse educational, political and professional identities are seen as significant (Eyal, 2013; Eyal & Pok, 2011). Thus, the importance of other aspects of diversity within sectors may matter in partnerships and yet remains under-researched in the partnership effectiveness literature (Faul & Boulaguiem (2022) provide a rare exception). Assumption 3: Partnership effectiveness is a technical question Assessing the effectiveness of partnerships presents numerous methodological technical challenges (Guarini & Battisti, 2014). Much of the research into partnership effectiveness appears to assume that effectiveness is a technical question. Thus, in the majority of cases, the methods employed in research are those appropriate to rational, linear change processes. Yet, this stands in contrast to the increasing recognition that partnerships for sustainable development are intervening in complex systems that are likely to show nonlinear dynamics and follow nonlinear change pathways (Faul, 2016b). This view is present in ecological framings of sustainable development (Forsyth, 2003; Söderbaum, 1999); in the growing application of complexity science concepts to sustainable development (Boulton et al., 2015; Faul and Savage, 2023); and in the meaningful evaluation of complex sustainable development interventions (Connick & Innes, 2003; Klijn, 2008). The centrality of metrics and measurement to many accounts of effectiveness betrays the assumption that concepts of effectiveness must be countable in order for partnerships to be accountable for its effectiveness. Bosworth (2011) dubbed this ‘quantifilia’ (p.382) or the fetishisation of data as a disciplining mechanism (Bandola-Gill et al., 2022). Thus, many researchers promote certain evaluation frameworks and methods over others. And yet, the conceptual framework of the effectiveness of partnerships developed by Andonova & Faul (2022, figure 7) indicates that different effectiveness measures and methods may be required for the different pathways to effectiveness identified, and may give rise to different challenges. Furthermore, even if a method is appropriate to certain aspects of effectiveness, it might not tackle the complexity in that aspect, much less the complexity of others, or of the interactions between pathways. While evaluation methods is a research area in its own right, one favoured method or another cannot account for effectiveness in all pathways to effectiveness (Underdal & Young, 2004). Assumption 4: Academic research from one discipline can answer the partnership effectiveness question There are two aspects to this assumption that require separation: first that that building a body of evidence on partnership effectiveness in one discipline is sufficient, and secondly that academic literature has (or should have) greater influence on partnership effectiveness than grey literature (such as evaluations paid for by partnerships). We identified the first assumption from the bibliometric analysis; the second was surfaced during the thematic coding of the larger sample. Originally, the dataset comprised 453 ontologically and disciplinarily diverse entries, selected for their contribution to the cross-disciplinary literature on the effectiveness of partnerships. However, due to the constraints of online indexing techniques, this sample was eventually reduced to 293, excluding a wide variety of sources. The bibliometric analyses were conducted on publications for which we had Web of Science metadata, which is heavily skewed towards academic journal articles. Despite addressing a cross-disciplinary question disciplinary fragmentation in the academic literature was strongly indicated in the co-citation analyses, with researchers mainly citing their disciplinary literature in preference to others as identified in the keyword analysis.[ii] Citing publications within your discipline indicates a strong disciplining effect of both the instrumental and symbolic functions of citations (Small, 2004; White & Griffith, 1981). Additionally, the preponderance of research from high-income country researchers (50%) or including high-income researchers (another 40%) reflects academic research production more widely and betrays the assumption that global north research is sufficient to address the globally relevant questions posed. The Web of Science skews towards academic literature, mirroring the assumed superiority of academic research over other types of so-called ‘grey’ literature; examples of which were in the full sample used for the qualitative thematic analysis. And yet this ‘grey’ literature includes evaluations, that can be considered an important mechanism in making partnerships more effective and accountable internally and externally through the complexity of evaluation influence (Appleton-Dyer et al., 2012). Evaluations may be used for decision-making (instrumental use), to justify existing views (symbolic), and for process learning during the evaluation or conceptual learning from the findings (Patton, 2008; Scott, 2017). Towards a future research agenda Identifying these four assumptions in the current partnership effectiveness literature has surfaced four future research directions: moving beyond one-size-fits-all partnership model to empirically examine specificities; recognising and tackling the complexity in and of partnerships for sustainability; taking a more deliberately interdisciplinary approach; and systematically examining the impacts of research on partnership effectiveness. Despite their shared interest in partnerships, and overlapping research agendas, it appears that researchers in each discipline are mainly isolated from the others. Further research is required that teases apart the discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary definitions, concepts and questions with regard to the effectiveness of partnership. Most importantly, interdisciplinary research is needed that brings diverse disciplinary questions and methodologies into dialogue with each other on this key question of partnership effectiveness (Andonova et al., 2022). Our findings do not uncritically endorse contemporary ‘model mongering’ (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, p, 594) of partnership as a one-size-fits-all model for achieving sustainability. Partnership is touted as a widely replicable model of international cooperation; in contrast, we demonstrate the significance of the micro-foundations of partnerships, based on multiple dimensions of diversity that might affect a partnership’s impact on external collaboration and institutions. Researchers could also usefully examine identify, disentangle and theorise which aspects of diversity matter in partnership effectiveness and how. Rather than assuming an ideal-type of within sector homogeneity, faultlines within sectors matter and require research attention (Faul & Boulaguiem, 2022). The complexity inherent in collaborating across sectors is recognised by many researchers, and examining partnership relations – and their effects on partnership functioning and outcome – requires further empirical research attention, most particularly through studies that apply complexity-sensitive theories and methodologies. Inside partnerships, future research could seek to develop a more complete picture of the complex interplay of structure and agency of partners whose individual behaviours and motivations may undermine institutional design ideals. Partnership impacts and processes need to be studied with regard to their stated objectives, and also their unintended consequences on target populations, partners, their home sectors, and associated governance systems. Thus, ecological and complexity framings of partnerships highlight that (1) sustainable development problems cannot be defined separately from the system from which they emerge, (2) public- private partnerships are complex interventions into those systems, (3) partnerships are complex systems in their own right, and (4) partnerships are typically a sub-system of larger governance systems (Faul, 2016b). Attributing effectiveness, therefore, implies the ability to operationalize and track each of these four aspects of complexity, and to disentangle the additional (if not truly independent) effects of partnership activity. To further the development of partnership effectiveness research, we encourage theoretical and methodological strategies that investigate the complexity of partnerships, the complexity of the governance and delivery systems into which partnerships intervene, and the complexity of sustainable development more generally. Future research could also investigate the extent to which research impacts partnership decision making and effectiveness. Despite claims to affect (as well as analyse) partnerships, research that is appropriate to an academic audience may be more or less useful to policy or practice audiences (Oliver et al., 2014). More research is therefore required into the role of academic research in improving partnership processes and impacts, tracking changes in policy and practice, and the practices of academics who successfully influence them (Oliver & Faul, 2018; Boaz et al., 2021). In addition, the monitoring and evaluation sub-industry that is contracted – and paid – to assess the effectiveness of partnerships tends to be ignored in current academic research. Notable exceptions to this are Federo & Saz-Carranza (2018) and Lall (2017) who used evaluations undertaken by the Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN, 2018) as data, while Kent Buse & Tanaka (2011) synthesised the results from eight external evaluations of global health partnerships. A healthy scepticism towards the claims made by partnerships and their evaluators is necessary; nevertheless, ignoring these as data sources to be analysed critically appears counterproductive. Future research could therefore usefully track the ways in which evaluations of partnerships may change partners’ behaviours, alongside evaluating the changes wrought by the broader requirement for reporting and transparency. Limitations of bibliometric research Technical progress in search functions has contributed to more easily identifying and accessing an increasing number of publications: the original dataset for this study comprised a range of publication formats (including journal articles, conference proceedings, policy briefs and reports, books and book chapters) that was geographically representative of empirical research and theoretical contributions around the globe. However, when we sought to standardise the bibliographic metadata, many forms of published work could not be incorporated in a bibliometric study. Services such as Scopus and Web of Knowledge opt for a standardised interface for the most common type of academic contribution (journal articles). The combination of Web of Knowledge’s arrangement of metadata, paired with the pre-assigned tokens for the classification of each publication, and its way of indexing its metadata entries results in a data structure (particularly citations) that is difficult to manually replicate for entries that are not already present in this database. Therefore, books, book chapters and grey literature are systematically under-represented in the registry of the Web of Knowledge, as is much of the literature published in journals dedicated to or located in the Global South. The unifying characteristic of the final bibliometric dataset is that the metadata of every entry can be found on the Web of Knowledge, the global leading aggregator of peer-reviewed publications. The final dataset for bibliometric analysis necessarily reflects the anglophone and high-income country bias of academic literature and its scientific databases. This systematic under-representation of certain types of literature and knowledges skews the process and results when working with any pre-constructed academic citation database, that is overlooked in many bibliometric analyses. We sought to counterbalance this bias by including the works that had been excluded from the bibliometric analyses in the qualitative thematic analysis of underlying assumptions. [i] For more information, please see Andonova et al., (2022). [ii] With the caveat that explicitly interdisciplinary publications (in the Web of Science categories interdisciplinary social and natural sciences) ranked 8 th and 9 th respectively. Conclusion Our focus on the effectiveness of partnerships arises from several unanswered – and frequently unasked – questions, which take us beyond noting the rise of discourses, policies and practices of partnerships to examining the extent to which partnerships effectively contribute to sustainable development. In so doing, we seek to gain a more complete overview of the full gamut of relevant partnership effectiveness research. We are not the first to identify these issues, nor are these research practices and assumptions universally shared among partnership effectiveness researchers. Nevertheless, the practices and assumptions we identify require critical interrogation in order to move forward the partnership effectiveness research agenda. What is required is collaboration between scholars from different disciplines and with researchers in low-income countries who address questions of partnership effectiveness, alongside a more thorough engagement with the micro-foundations of partnerships and their complexity, and the ways in which research might impact partnership practices and effectiveness. Declarations The author(s) declare no competing interests. This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. 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The Quarterly Journal of Economics 128 (3):1321–1364. doi: 10.2307/26372524 Additional Declarations (Not answered) Supplementary Files Appendices.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-3763996","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":389844343,"identity":"792d76a7-243c-4e4c-9491-5985e6837b0a","order_by":0,"name":"Moira 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1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":55804,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eComparison of publications on partnership and partnership effectiveness\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/f4114a7c8852e99c8d4da33c.png"},{"id":71524074,"identity":"54f566f8-7a0d-4752-91b8-bdd2b9948993","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:09:55","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":158428,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eSummary of the sampling and analysis process\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/2ed066f4267a90642fa6b9c5.png"},{"id":71524069,"identity":"40e7eb1e-8c59-462b-a630-923d57925ff3","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:09:55","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":57849,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eAnnual scientific production\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/8565d26472349f183c3020b7.png"},{"id":71524343,"identity":"7126760c-73cd-4f02-af67-68b1e0d39bc5","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:17:55","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":45960,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eInternational collaborations\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/7989879ee4e228fbc4c9b51d.png"},{"id":71524346,"identity":"fbb8116a-2c72-4048-b1c4-440fe421e076","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:17:55","extension":"png","order_by":5,"title":"Figure 5","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":69798,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eKeyword co-occurrences \u003cem\u003eNote: More detail on synonymisation (e.g., health and healthcare) in Appendix 2.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure5.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/b0c02bba3bc352d8cc636bf9.png"},{"id":71524073,"identity":"0fa30b6d-a6fe-4588-a84b-a8f560660e1b","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:09:55","extension":"png","order_by":6,"title":"Figure 6","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":232363,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eCo-citation network of sample cited references\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure6.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/4c93a942bc0b095f369aa66b.png"},{"id":71526076,"identity":"6955d7b3-8734-4b7d-82d4-044dfdd8fdae","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:25:55","extension":"png","order_by":7,"title":"Figure 7","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":44190,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003ePathways to effectiveness of sustainability. Source: Andonova and Faul (2022, p. 26)\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"Figure7.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/c1c07091074518c4099bbaa5.png"},{"id":71526534,"identity":"1d728042-4c77-4409-8b97-f4e2b6f6ba13","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:33:59","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1417604,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/619888b1-0817-42f2-8d51-768b63d8e785.pdf"},{"id":71524067,"identity":"d2b907fc-f385-4eca-8ee5-b0c4a0f22431","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2024-12-16 12:09:55","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":16587,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Appendices.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3763996/v1/9f406d4e1f744a0989f70600.docx"}],"financialInterests":"(Not answered)","formattedTitle":"The Effectiveness of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Mapping the Literature; Questioning the Assumptions","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003ePartnerships have become the default mode of addressing sustainability challenges. Researchers have heralded the utility of partnerships in correcting for market or regulation failures. Thus, Benner et al. (2004) argued that partnerships that encourage relationships between public, private and civil society organisations provide a ‘new mechanism that helps to bridge diverging problem assessments and interest constellations.’ (p. 197). Most recently, public-private partnerships are increasingly considered to provide a new paradigm in governance and are considered a core instrument for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs (UN: General Assembly, 2015).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this paper, we report on a bibliometric and thematic study of a sample of publications that address partnership effectiveness. The bibliometric analyses provide (1) a peak in partnership effectiveness studies in 2011 and a recent rise, with a high incidence of international collaboration in the Global North, (2) five disciplines lead in publications and citations: health, public administration, management, environmental sciences and international relations, (3) common issues in partnership effectiveness research, despite (4) research being largely confined to disciplinary clusters, with two instances of cross-disciplinary citations. In addition, the inductive thematic analysis of a larger sample of existing partnership effectiveness research across several disciplines reveals — and challenges — four underlying assumptions: (1) partnerships are the new paradigm, (2) between sector differences and within sector cohesiveness, (3) effectiveness is solely a technical question, and (4) that academic research in one discipline is sufficient to address the effectiveness question.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Background and context","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe rise of public-private partnerships as instruments of international governance and public service delivery is frequently justified with reference to their anticipated effects. In theory, partnerships facilitate collective action by enabling diverse actors to negotiate objectives and terms of engagement towards social, economic or environmental goals. In turn, successful partnership experiments are thought to enlarge the scope of collaboration through learning-by-doing and updating the beliefs and interests of relevant actors (Andonova 2017). Partnerships are thus considered to provide new venues for collective action (at global, regional, national and local levels) on economic, environmental and social issues that are part of the global sustainability fabric, such as health, education, humanitarian issues, or clean energy (for example, Andonova \u0026amp; Carbonnier, 2014; Brown \u0026amp; Held, 2017; Faul, 2014; Szlez\u0026aacute;k et al., 2010). Contemporary global policy documents (such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN: General Assembly, 2015) and the Addis Ababa Agenda on Financing for Development (UNDESA, 2015) emphasize the role of partnerships in achieving global objectives. While studies exist that evaluate goal achievement of partnerships, the role or functioning of the partnership itself in achieving those goals are frequently overlooked (Mkperedem et al., 2023; Khan \u0026amp; Han, 2023 for example).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003ePartnership effectiveness literatures\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEffectiveness is frequently\u0026nbsp;differentiated from efficiency. Efficiency might be characterised as \u0026lsquo;doing things right\u0026rsquo;, whereas effectiveness focuses more on \u0026lsquo;doing the right thing\u0026rsquo; (Drucker, 1967).\u0026nbsp;Nevertheless, while considerable research has been carried out into the rise of partnerships and the increasing range of social, economic and environmental problems they are purported to solve, the question of their effectiveness requires more research attention (figure 1).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo date, the literature on partnership effectiveness has\u0026nbsp;developed in a variety of disciplines, and is characterised by a plurality of definitions, methods and theories as well as divergent assessment methodologies. At first glance, different disciplines appear to emphasise different aspects of partnership effectiveness. In broad-brush terms, the business management literature appears to focus more on the internal workings of partnerships and the value they may create for partners (Stadtler \u0026amp; Van Wassenhove, 2016; Wang, 2018). Furthermore, the international relations and development literatures tend to examine how partnerships might advance credible cooperation and advance sustainable development solutions (Andonova, 2017; Faul, 2016a). In public policy and administration, similarly, the main concern is how a partnership contributes demonstrable progress towards achieving its goals, and how those goals contribute to solving specific problems of public interest (Garon et al., 2014; Nolte \u0026amp; Boenigk, 2011). However, researchers may see this account of research in their discipline as if through a distorting mirror. These disciplinary caricatures caused by the fragmentation of partnership effectiveness literature are precisely the analytic motivation of this review: to address the thus-far limited systematic assessment of the apparent disjunctures and links between partnership effectiveness research that is undertaken in diverse disciplines.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe time has come for comprehensive review that maps existing research into partnership effectiveness across disciplines. The objective of this paper is therefore to illuminate what is shared \u0026ndash; and not shared \u0026ndash; in extant partnership effectiveness research across several disciplines. We address this broad question in two findings sections that use different methods to address the following sub-questions: What is the intellectual structuring of research into partnership effectiveness, revealed through the bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in Web of Science? What assumptions tend to be shared across different disciplines, surfaced through inductive thematic coding of journal articles, books and book chapters, and grey literature?\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis paper draws on diverse disciplines that currently engage with research into the effectiveness of partnerships, while questioning the key assumptions underpinning partnership effectiveness research. By contributing a review of key texts in several disciplines, our intention is to stimulate, on the one hand, debate as to what is shared \u0026ndash; and not \u0026ndash; across various disciplines\u0026rsquo; research into partnership effectiveness, and on the other, further multidisciplinary research to answer the partnership effectiveness problems we examine. Throughout, we argue for the utility of recognising and using the contributions of multi-disciplinary and multi-theoretical perspectives, explore the complexity of the effectiveness of partnerships, and open new directions of analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eApproach\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile much has been written about the rise and promise of partnerships, a systematic overview of research into the effectiveness of partnerships has been lacking. Moreover extant research tends to be scattered among the many academic disciplines that study partnerships, including business and management studies, economics, international relations and politics, law, natural sciences, and public administration and policy. This article seeks to contribute to these academic debates by providing bibliometric and qualitative thematic analyses of research outputs on the effectiveness of partnerships.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBibliometric analyses are used to study patterns of publication on topics as diverse as education and financial technology (Afjal, 2023; Samsul et al., 2023). In our bibliometric study of partnership effectiveness, we quantify overall and disciplinary production and geographical collaboration, we employ keyword and citation analyses to map social and intellectual structures of academic research into partnership effectiveness. Citations are considered to denote the academic value and influence of a paper and its author (Merton, 1996), and therefore co-citation analyses are considered critical to mapping the intellectual structure of a field or in an issue (Garfield \u0026amp; Merton, 1979). Academic publications serve instrumental purposes in transmitting information as well as in academic career paths, with tenure and promotion cases built on so-called \u0026lsquo;high-impact\u0026rsquo; publications (Nowotny et al., 2001). In addition, academic publications also fulfil the symbolic function of acknowledging researchers\u0026rsquo; intellectual property and prestige and positioning within their communities (Small, 2004; White \u0026amp; Griffith, 1981) (table 1).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch citation analysis is undertaken to define a field of study or area of science (for example, Lin \u0026amp; Cheng (2012) on strategic alliance research), or to examine one discipline\u0026rsquo;s perspective on an issue that is explored in many others (such as Wang et al.\u0026rsquo;s (2018) bibliometric analyses of public-private partnerships only in the public administration literature). Yet, research on the same topic can be undertaken in several academic disciplines. Thus, the bibliometric analysis we present makes a contribution towards understanding the disciplinary dynamics of the effectiveness of partnerships literature.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eTable 1: Instrumental and symbolic functions of citation in academia\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv align=\"Left\"\u003e\n \u003ctable border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"520\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 133px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFunction of citation\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eInstrumental\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSymbolic\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 133px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFor cited author\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBuild case for promotion\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eIndicate prestige\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 133px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFor citing author\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBuild patronage\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eIndicate insider status and belonging\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 133px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eOf text\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTransmit information\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"bottom\" style=\"width: 216px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDesignate intellectual property\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n \u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSources: Nowotny et al., 2001; Small, 2004; White \u0026amp; Griffith, 1981\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are not judging the relative validity of knowledge claims but rather using robust methods to surface the existing hierarchy by mapping the structuring of the research field in question. An evaluation of the effectiveness of the partnerships analysed in the research we draw on for this review lies beyond the scope of this paper. What is at stake here is the examination of the structuring of the intellectual field of partnership research across the main disciplines that contribute analyses, and the identification of the key assumptions underlying the production of academic research into partnership effectiveness. Drawing on bibliometric analyses and inductive content analysis, this article shows that despite studying similar research questions, with very few exceptions research on the effectiveness of multistakeholder partnerships rarely recognises the contribution of other disciplines studying similar phenomena. Simultaneously, researchers across all disciplines tend to share four key assumptions. We thus contribute to the partnership and multistakeholder governance literature by surfacing the intellectual structure of and assumptions underlying much research into the effectiveness of partnership, within and across diverse disciplines that do not engage with each other.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eSample\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe sample of publications used in the analyses of this paper was compiled through the manual selection of relevant papers through Google Scholar. The Google Scholar search query using the following search terms returned approximately 17,000 records:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCONTAINS: partnership, public-private\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMUST CONTAIN: \u0026ldquo;effectiveness\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMUST NOT CONTAIN: \u0026ldquo;infrastructure\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeta-data was then compiled for the resulting sample using Clarivate Analytics\u0026rsquo; Web of Science (WoS). Web of Science was selected for data collection as it is the most extensive generalist database for research/research metadata (summarised in figure 2).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile some argue that an electronic search provides objectivity, it can also include titles irrelevant to the research question. We reviewed all titles and abstracts to screen for inclusion based on predetermined decision rules, excluding from the dataset publications that focused on: infrastructure, violence in intimate partnerships, \u0026lsquo;partner\u0026rsquo; countries in the development literature (where relations are within one sector: states), where author affiliation was a partnership, references to \u0026lsquo;research partners\u0026rsquo; for effectiveness evaluation where no partnership was involved, the comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of public vs. private sector provision or of privatisation in different territories, where partnership is merely recommended as a solution to the effectiveness challenge, and finally where the case study was a partnership but the analysis was not examining effectiveness. In addition, we consulted a cross-disciplinary group of experts in environmental and social partnerships to identify what they considered to be core texts.[i]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis resulted in an initial sample of 453 papers, which formed the basis of the qualitative analysis. To explore the structural characteristics of this sample, we manually reconstructed this sample by consulting the Web of Science database. Of the 453, 50 records were compiled on Google Scholar but not on the Web of Science, and a further 110 records featured incomplete meta-data (e.g. missing publication information, bibliography entries). Filtering incomplete bibliometric information from this sample, 293 documents represent the working sample for our inquiry using bibliometric analytical techniques.\u0026nbsp;We return in the Discussion to the restrictions imposed by the constraints of the database used and the implications of our research decisions based on these constraints.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eBibliometric analyses of partnership effectiveness across diverse disciplines\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBibliometrics is defined as the quantitative study of scientific production (Broadus 1987) using primarily statistical analysis and network mapping (Kajikawa et al., 2007). Bibliometric methods allow researchers to assess the structuring of one or multiple academic fields, which then allows the assessment of technical and political aspects that may contribute to that structuring. Bibliometric analyses were conducted using Aria \u0026amp; Cucurrullo\u0026rsquo;s (2017) Bibliometrix package for R, as well as its proprietary extension BiblioShiny.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKey findings\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eI. \u0026nbsp;Bibliometric mapping of the partnership effectiveness literature\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe conducted the following bibliometrics analyses, which structures this section, mapping: (1) scientific production and collaboration, (2) disciplinary composition of publications and their references, (3) key themes through keyword co-occurrence, and (4) intellectual structure of the partnership effectiveness research through a co-citation analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eMapping scientific production and collaboration\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScientific production from 1987-2022 is characterised by a relatively high degree of co-authorship and international collaboration (table 2).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eTable 2: Descriptive statistics of the sample\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"312\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDescription\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eResults\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTimespan\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1987:2022\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSources (journals, books, etc.)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e179\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePublications\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e293\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAuthors\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e837\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAuthors of single-authored publications\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e75\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSingle-authored publications\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e78\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCo-authors per publication\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3.54*\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eInternational co-authorships %\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e29.69\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eReferences\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e13177\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAverage citations per publication\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e65.89\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e* After discounting the 78 single-authored publications\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnalysing annual production shows a rapid growth of total publications since 2008, with 67% of the sample published between 2008 and 2013 (figure 3).\u0026nbsp;Partnerships as a new institutional form in the context of the multilateral system underwent significant growth towards the end of the 1990s and primarily in the first decade of the millennium (Andonova 2017), followed by a peak of policy and academic attention. For example, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) partnerships were formally recognized in 2003, boosting attention and academic interest, followed by global partnerships in health and other MDGs. Andonova and Levy (2003) provided the first systematic data collected on environmental partnerships, and became the baseline for Bierman \u0026amp; Pattberg\u0026rsquo;s (2008) data and project. The upward trend until 2013 was then reversed until 2017, followed by an increase to above 2008 levels that continues today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMapping international collaboration frequency reveals that collaborations between researchers in high-income countries account for more than half of scientific collaboration within the sample, whereas less than ten percent occurs exclusively between low- and middle-income countries (figure 4). This reflects a broader academic publication dynamic that is skewed towards high-income country researchers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eMapping the disciplines involved\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnalysing our sample against Web of Science\u0026rsquo;s (WoS) disciplinary categorisation scheme identifies different disciplinary patterns in the volume of publications as compared to citations. In Table 3, we compare rankings of publications (on the left) and citations (on the right). The three top-ranked research categories in both publications and citations (health, public administration and management) together account for 64% of the publications in the sample and 67% of the cited reference sources. Equally, the rankings of environmental sciences, international relations and social issues are very similar in production and citations. In contrast, development studies, education and nutrition are highly productive, appearing in the top ranking of publications, and yet are underrepresented in the citations ranking, indicating that there is substantial scholarship on partnership effectiveness in these literatures which is not cited, or indeed, known. In contrast, publications from the disciplines of law, and interdisciplinary natural and social sciences are cited comparatively more than these disciplines are productive, while economics is relatively productive (rank 8) but its rank in citations is higher (6). This would indicate that these four disciplines are influential in their own and also other disciplines.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eTable 3: Ranking of sample publications and citations by disciplinary categorisation\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"536\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 227px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublications\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRank\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 260px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCitations\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 2px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWoS Disciplinary Category\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003en=293\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003en=5543\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWoS Disciplinary Category\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHealth\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e94\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e1\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e1619\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eManagement\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePublic administration\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e48\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e2\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e1059\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePublic administration\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eManagement\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e46\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e3\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e1032\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHealth\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEnvironmental sciences\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e28\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e4\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e356\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eInternational relations\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eInternational relations\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e14\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e319\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEnvironmental sciences\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSocial issues\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e10\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e6\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e157\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEconomics\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cem\u003eEducation\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e9\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e7\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e150\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSocial Issues\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEconomics\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e8\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e8\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e143\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cem\u003eInterdisciplinary Social Sciences\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cem\u003eDevelopment studies\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e6\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e9\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e107\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cem\u003eMultidisciplinary Natural Sciences\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 170px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cem\u003eNutrition\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e10\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 57px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e86\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd colspan=\"2\" style=\"width: 205px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cem\u003eLaw\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eItalics indicates disciplines that appear in one ranking but not in the other (either publications or citations), based on the categorisation of 100% of sample publication sources, and all cited reference sources with at least 10 occurrences in all of the reference lists in the sample. Disciplinary aggregation decisions are available in Appendix 1.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eMapping common issues\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKeyword co-occurrence analysis identifies co-occurring clusters of author-selected keywords and can therefore help identify substantive links in research questions and concerns within and across different disciplines. Keywords are connected when they systematically co-occur with others in other publications in the sample. Figure 5 was constructed by mapping the 50 most frequently co-occurring keywords connected to at least one other keyword, with thicker lines indicating a higher rate of co-occurrence. The nodes were clustered by colour using the Walktrap community detection algorithm (Pons \u0026amp; Latapy, 2006). The algorithm makes \u0026lsquo;random walks\u0026rsquo; across the network until a maximum number of connections are within the same communities, and as few as possible occur across different communities.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnalyses of keyword co-occurrences thus indicate the dominant and marginal issues addressed in the sample publications. Chief among these are partnership means (shown in red in figure 5) and partnership outcomes (in purple). It is likely that partnership means and ends are considered to be interwoven features that are frequently studied as indicative of partnerships\u0026rsquo; effectiveness. Also present are relatively self-contained literatures dealing with public health partnerships (in green) and global governance (in yellow), and a smaller cluster related to questions that mainly arise in the management literature (blue) as well as a series of papers on tuberculosis research (brown), and isolates dealing with good governance (pink) and community (grey).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eMapping the structure of partnership effectiveness research\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCo-citation analysis is helpful in determining the structural characteristics of the research field by mapping the papers that are cited together in the publications in the sample. Mapping the 500 most frequently co-occurring citations reveals four interlinked clusters (figure 6). Despite the keyword analysis showing shared research questions and issues, citation practices appear to follow disciplinary structures and strictures. Of particular interest is the management and business literature\u0026rsquo;s relatively interstitial relationship to global health, international relations and public administration literatures, sharing citations from all three other communities.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eB\u0026auml;ckstrand (2006) and Bryson et al. (2006) appear to have crossed over into other disciplines because they filled a need in those literatures as the disciplines evolved to address new research questions (table 4). The nascent management literature focusing on public purpose (in outlets such as \u003cem\u003eBusiness Ethics\u003c/em\u003e or \u003cem\u003eBusiness and Society\u003c/em\u003e) leant on literature from the administration of public services (\u003cem\u003eAdministrative Science Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e).\u0026nbsp;In the same way, the emerging literature on global environmental issues in international relations looked to the environmental literature (\u003cem\u003eEuropean Environment\u003c/em\u003e). At the same time, the publication of environmental issues in core disciplinary outlets in international relations is more recent, as these have historically focused on diplomacy, international organisations and security. Global health publications are interstitial to international relations, management and public administration literatures since they share citations with those disciplinary literatures as well as citing their own publications (which are not highly cited outside this issue focus). The centrality of an environmental paper to the international relations literature alongside a separate cluster in health indicates the continuing disciplining function of international relations outlets, which are now more welcoming to the former topic than the latter.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eTable 4: Most central cited references in each co-citation community\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"586\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAuthors\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 217px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTitle\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 93px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSource\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCitations\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 122px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCommunity\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eB\u0026auml;ckstrand, 2006\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 217px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eMulti‐stakeholder partnerships \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;for sustainable development: rethinking legitimacy, \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;accountability and effectiveness\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 93px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEuropean environment\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1025\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 122px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEnvironmental sciences; became widely used in international relations\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBryson, \u0026nbsp;Crosby, \u0026amp; \u0026nbsp;Stone, 2006\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 217px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eThe design and implementation of cross‐sector collaborations: propositions from the literature\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 93px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePublic administration review\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e3519\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 122px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePublic administration\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eProvan \u0026amp; Milward, 1995\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 217px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA preliminary theory of interorganizational network effectiveness: a comparative \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;study of four community mental health systems\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 93px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAdministrative science quarterly\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2924\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 122px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAdministrative science; became widely used in business and management\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 85px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBuse \u0026amp; Harmer, 2007\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 217px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSeven habits of highly effective global public\u0026ndash;private health partnerships: practice and potential\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 93px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSocial science \u0026amp; medicine\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e422\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 122px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eGlobal health\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll citations transmit information; citing within disciplines indicates a lack of knowledge of literatures outside the authors\u0026rsquo; disciplines alongside the disciplining practices of symbolic citations (Small, 2004; White \u0026amp; Griffith, 1981).\u0026nbsp;The academic research reviewed here appears to speak to debates within individual disciplines (organisation studies and management, political science and international relations, public policy and administration) or individual SDG issue areas (such as education, environment or health) rather than contributing to a wider interdisciplinary dialogue about partnerships.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eII. \u0026nbsp;Questioning the assumptions underlying partnership effectiveness research\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn addition to the bibliometric analysis reported above, we undertook qualitative thematic coding of the core sample of 453 publications, identifying four assumptions underpinning partnership effectiveness research. Much of the literature recognises the complexity of stakeholders, processes, impacts and measures of effectiveness. Nevertheless assumptions remain that require more critical examination in order to move forward the agenda of partnership effectiveness research. Here we focus on four such assumptions: (1) partnerships should be accepted as the new governance and delivery paradigm, (2) within partnerships, the \u0026lsquo;clash of civilisations\u0026rsquo; between public, private, and voluntary sectors is the most important faultline in their functioning and ability to support sustainable development solutions, (3) effectiveness is a technical question, and (4) academic research in one discipline is sufficient to address the effectiveness question.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eAssumption 1: Partnerships are accepted as the new paradigm\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile some research maintains a critical tone, much of the current partnership effectiveness literature appears to start from the assumption that partnerships should be accepted as the new paradigm for the governance and delivery of public and common goods and services for sustainable development. Partnerships, along with other transnational initiatives, have created alternative platforms to advance collaboration (Andonova et al., 2022). At the same time, the private sector claims to be taking the social and environmental effects of their economic activity more seriously (Karakulak \u0026amp; Faul, 2023), or to be efficiently providing for local and global needs while turning a profit (Werhane et al., 2009) or promising finance for sustainability (Faul \u0026amp; Tchilinigirian, 2021a). The literature on partnership effectiveness tends to view these new modes of organising uncritically, reflecting the policy discourse (for example in the SDGs) that partnerships integrate the perceived strengths of public, private and voluntary sectors to correct for market or regulation failure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd yet there are alternatives. The public, private and voluntary sectors could individually carry out their core activities in ways that are coherent with achieving sustainable development, in the absence of \u0026ndash; or parallel to \u0026ndash; partnerships. Thus, businesses could independently realign their core activities to deliver on a \u0026lsquo;triple-bottom line\u0026rsquo; (Elkington, 1998, p. 2), delivering economic, environmental and social co-benefits as was the norm before maximising shareholder value became the single bottom line in the 1970s (Friedman, 1970; Stout, 2012). Equally, the role of the state in changing the regulatory environment in which private and voluntary sector providers operate could be modified in ways that foster sustainable development (rather than the partnerships they might choose to participate in). This would entail social and environmental protections (Mazzucato, 2018; Raworth, 2017) and regulations to govern illicit financial flows (Brandt, 2023).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, rather than promoting sustainable development regulation, in many contexts the state may be functionally absent (Batley \u0026amp; Mcloughlin, 2010), may manipulate governance and service provision (Herrera, 2017), may promote anti-sustainability policies (Leach et al., 2013) or use public finances for personal gain (Andersen et al., 2020; Zucman, 2013). Thus, researchers could show more sensitivity to different contexts, inquiring if partnerships are more effective in creating a public or common good or reducing a public bad compared to existing private interventions or public institutions in different contexts.\u0026nbsp;In this reading, the contemporary focus on partnerships may obscure the changes in practice that each sector \u0026ndash; separately \u0026ndash; could make to contribute meaningfully to sustainable development objectives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eAssumption 2: Divisions between public, private, and voluntary sectors represent the most important faultline in partnership effectiveness\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePartnership effectiveness research across all disciplines considers that conflicts and tensions between public and private sectors is the most significant issue at stake \u0026ndash; and therefore to be researched \u0026ndash; in partnership processes and impacts. Across the disciplines, partnerships are assumed to bring together individuals and organisations with different societal rationales, interests and principles, and therefore distinct ways of behaving and organising (Andonova, 2017; Clarke \u0026amp; Crane, 2018; Wang et al., 2018). Nevertheless, research in single sector business alliances indicates that difficulties also arise in such collaborations (Jiang et al., 2010; Zimmermann et al., 2015), and there is evidence that large corporations engaged in public-private partnerships can defraud smaller firms in their supply chains as well as their public sector partner and taxpayers (in the case of Carillion in the UK, see PACAC (2018); Wong (2019) for example). Furthermore, development studies point to historical power disparities within the same category (between low- and high-income states) such that state-state partnerships might display the same asymmetries of power in traditional development aid (Dietrich, 2021) or in global partnership boards (Faul \u0026amp; Tchilingirian, 2021b), or unequal contracts may be imposed on \u0026lsquo;partner\u0026rsquo; states by China in their Belt and Road Initiative (Ndii, 2018). Faultlines based on race, gender and age within the private sector have been extensively studied in corporate governance research (Bernstein \u0026amp; Bilimoria, 2013), but not yet in partnership research. Moreover, in the sociology of expertise, diverse educational, political and professional identities are seen as significant (Eyal, 2013; Eyal \u0026amp; Pok, 2011). Thus, the importance of other aspects of diversity within sectors may matter in partnerships and yet remains under-researched in the partnership effectiveness literature (Faul \u0026amp; Boulaguiem (2022) provide a rare exception).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eAssumption 3: Partnership effectiveness is a technical question\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAssessing the effectiveness of partnerships presents numerous methodological technical challenges (Guarini \u0026amp; Battisti, 2014). Much of the research into partnership effectiveness appears to assume that effectiveness is a technical question. Thus, in the majority of cases, the methods employed in research are those appropriate to rational, linear change processes. Yet, this stands in contrast to the increasing recognition that partnerships for sustainable development are intervening in complex systems that are likely to show nonlinear dynamics and follow nonlinear change pathways (Faul, 2016b). This view is present in ecological framings of sustainable development (Forsyth, 2003; S\u0026ouml;derbaum, 1999); in the growing application of complexity science concepts to sustainable development (Boulton et al., 2015; Faul and Savage, 2023); and in the meaningful evaluation of complex sustainable development interventions (Connick \u0026amp; Innes, 2003; Klijn, 2008).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe centrality of metrics and measurement to many accounts of effectiveness betrays the assumption that concepts of effectiveness must be countable in order for partnerships to be accountable for its effectiveness. Bosworth (2011) dubbed this \u0026lsquo;quantifilia\u0026rsquo; (p.382) or the fetishisation of data as a disciplining mechanism (Bandola-Gill et al., 2022). Thus, many researchers promote certain evaluation frameworks and methods over others. And yet, the conceptual framework of the effectiveness of partnerships developed by Andonova \u0026amp; Faul (2022, figure 7) indicates that different effectiveness measures and methods may be required for the different pathways to effectiveness identified, and may give rise to different challenges. Furthermore, even if a method is appropriate to certain aspects of effectiveness, it might not tackle the complexity in that aspect, much less the complexity of others, or of the interactions between pathways. While evaluation methods is a research area in its own right, one favoured method or another cannot account for effectiveness in all pathways to effectiveness (Underdal \u0026amp; Young, 2004).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eAssumption 4: Academic research from one discipline can answer the partnership effectiveness question\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are two aspects to this assumption that require separation: first that that building a body of evidence on partnership effectiveness in one discipline is sufficient, and secondly that academic literature has (or should have) greater influence on partnership effectiveness than grey literature (such as evaluations paid for by partnerships). We identified the first assumption from the bibliometric analysis; the second was surfaced during the thematic coding of the larger sample. Originally, the dataset comprised 453 ontologically and disciplinarily diverse entries, selected for their contribution to the cross-disciplinary literature on the effectiveness of partnerships. However, due to the constraints of online indexing techniques, this sample was eventually reduced to 293, excluding a wide variety of sources.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe bibliometric analyses were conducted on publications for which we had Web of Science metadata, which is heavily skewed towards academic journal articles. Despite addressing a cross-disciplinary question disciplinary fragmentation in the academic literature was strongly indicated in the co-citation analyses, with researchers mainly citing their disciplinary literature in preference to others as identified in the keyword analysis.[ii] Citing publications within your discipline indicates a strong disciplining effect of both the instrumental and symbolic functions of citations (Small, 2004; White \u0026amp; Griffith, 1981). Additionally, the preponderance of research from high-income country researchers (50%) or including high-income researchers (another 40%) reflects academic research production more widely and betrays the assumption that global north research is sufficient to address the globally relevant questions posed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Web of Science skews towards academic literature, mirroring the assumed superiority of academic research over other types of so-called \u0026lsquo;grey\u0026rsquo; literature; examples of which were in the full sample used for the qualitative thematic analysis. And yet this \u0026lsquo;grey\u0026rsquo; literature includes evaluations, that can be considered an important mechanism in making partnerships more effective and accountable internally and externally through the complexity of evaluation influence (Appleton-Dyer et al., 2012). Evaluations may be used for decision-making (instrumental use), to justify existing views (symbolic), and for process learning during the evaluation or conceptual learning from the findings (Patton, 2008; Scott, 2017).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eTowards a future research agenda\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIdentifying these four assumptions in the current partnership effectiveness literature has surfaced four future research directions: moving beyond one-size-fits-all partnership model to empirically examine specificities; recognising and tackling the complexity in and of partnerships for sustainability; taking a more deliberately interdisciplinary approach; and systematically examining the impacts of research on partnership effectiveness.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDespite their shared interest in partnerships, and overlapping research agendas, it appears that researchers in each discipline are mainly isolated from the others. Further research is required that teases apart the discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary definitions, concepts and questions with regard to the effectiveness of partnership. Most importantly, interdisciplinary research is needed that brings diverse disciplinary questions and methodologies into dialogue with each other on this key question of partnership effectiveness (Andonova et al., 2022).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur findings do not uncritically endorse contemporary \u0026lsquo;model mongering\u0026rsquo; (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, p, 594) of partnership as a one-size-fits-all model for achieving sustainability. Partnership is touted as a widely replicable model of international cooperation; in contrast, we demonstrate the significance of the micro-foundations of partnerships, based on multiple dimensions of diversity that might affect a partnership\u0026rsquo;s impact on external collaboration and institutions. Researchers could also usefully examine identify, disentangle and theorise which aspects of diversity matter in partnership effectiveness and how. Rather than assuming an ideal-type of within sector homogeneity, faultlines within sectors matter and require research attention (Faul \u0026amp; Boulaguiem, 2022).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe complexity inherent in collaborating across sectors is recognised by many researchers, and examining partnership relations \u0026ndash; and their effects on partnership functioning and outcome \u0026ndash; requires further empirical research attention, most particularly through studies that apply complexity-sensitive theories and methodologies. Inside partnerships, future research could seek to develop a more complete picture of the complex interplay of structure and agency of partners whose individual behaviours and motivations may undermine institutional design ideals. Partnership impacts and processes need to be studied with regard to their stated objectives, and also their unintended consequences on target populations, partners, their home sectors, and associated governance systems. Thus, ecological and complexity framings of partnerships highlight that (1) sustainable development problems cannot be defined separately from the system from which they emerge, (2) public- private partnerships are complex interventions into those systems, (3) partnerships are complex systems in their own right, and (4) partnerships are typically a sub-system of larger governance systems (Faul, 2016b). Attributing effectiveness, therefore, implies the ability to operationalize and track each of these four aspects of complexity, and to disentangle the additional (if not truly independent) effects of partnership activity. To further the development of partnership effectiveness research, we encourage theoretical and methodological strategies that investigate the complexity of partnerships, the complexity of the governance and delivery systems into which partnerships intervene, and the complexity of sustainable development more generally.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFuture research could also investigate the extent to which research impacts partnership decision making and effectiveness. Despite claims to affect (as well as analyse) partnerships, research that is appropriate to an academic audience may be more or less useful to policy or practice audiences (Oliver et al., 2014). More research is therefore required into the role of academic research in improving partnership processes and impacts, tracking changes in policy and practice, and the practices of academics who successfully influence them (Oliver \u0026amp; Faul, 2018; Boaz et al., 2021). In addition, the monitoring and evaluation sub-industry that is contracted \u0026ndash; and paid \u0026ndash; to assess the effectiveness of partnerships tends to be ignored in current academic research. Notable exceptions to this are Federo \u0026amp; Saz-Carranza (2018) and Lall (2017) who used evaluations undertaken by the Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN, 2018) as data, while Kent Buse \u0026amp; Tanaka (2011) synthesised the results from eight external evaluations of global health partnerships. A healthy scepticism towards the claims made by partnerships and their evaluators is necessary; nevertheless, ignoring these as data sources to be analysed critically appears counterproductive. Future research could therefore usefully track the ways in which evaluations of partnerships may change partners\u0026rsquo; behaviours, alongside evaluating the changes wrought by the broader requirement for reporting and transparency.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eLimitations of bibliometric research\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTechnical progress in search functions has contributed to more easily identifying and accessing an increasing number of publications: the original dataset for this study comprised a range of publication formats (including journal articles, conference proceedings, policy briefs and reports, books and book chapters) that was geographically representative of empirical research and theoretical contributions around the globe. However, when we sought to standardise the bibliographic metadata, many forms of published work could not be incorporated in a bibliometric study. Services such as Scopus and Web of Knowledge opt for a standardised interface for the most common type of academic contribution (journal articles). The combination of Web of Knowledge\u0026rsquo;s arrangement of metadata, paired with the pre-assigned tokens for the classification of each publication, and its way of indexing its metadata entries results in a data structure (particularly citations) that is difficult to manually replicate for entries that are not already present in this database. Therefore, books, book chapters and grey literature are systematically under-represented in the registry of the Web of Knowledge, as is much of the literature published in journals dedicated to or located in the Global South. The unifying characteristic of the final bibliometric dataset is that the metadata of every entry can be found on the Web of Knowledge, the global leading aggregator of peer-reviewed publications. The final dataset for bibliometric analysis necessarily reflects the anglophone and high-income country bias of academic literature and its scientific databases. This systematic under-representation of certain types of literature and knowledges skews the process and results when working with any pre-constructed academic citation database, that is overlooked in many bibliometric analyses. We sought to counterbalance this bias by including the works that had been excluded from the bibliometric analyses in the qualitative thematic analysis of underlying assumptions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[i] For more information, please see Andonova et al., (2022). \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[ii] With the caveat that explicitly interdisciplinary publications (in the Web of Science categories interdisciplinary social and natural sciences) ranked 8\u003csup\u003eth\u003c/sup\u003e and 9\u003csup\u003eth\u003c/sup\u003e respectively.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eOur focus on the effectiveness of partnerships arises from several unanswered \u0026ndash; and frequently unasked \u0026ndash; questions, which take us beyond noting the rise of discourses, policies and practices of partnerships to examining the extent to which partnerships effectively contribute to sustainable development. In so doing, we seek to gain a more complete overview of the full gamut of relevant partnership effectiveness research. We are not the first to identify these issues, nor are these research practices and assumptions universally shared among partnership effectiveness researchers. Nevertheless, the practices and assumptions we identify require critical interrogation in order to move forward the partnership effectiveness research agenda. What is required is collaboration between scholars from different disciplines and with researchers in low-income countries who address questions of partnership effectiveness, alongside a more thorough engagement with the micro-foundations of partnerships and their complexity, and the ways in which research might impact partnership practices and effectiveness.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe author(s) declare no competing interests.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAcar M, Guo C, Yang K (2012) Accountability in Voluntary Partnerships: To Whom and for What? \u003cem\u003ePublic Organization Review\u003c/em\u003e \u003cem\u003e12\u003c/em\u003e(2):157\u0026ndash;174 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-011-0169-0\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAndersen JJ, Johannesen N, Rijkers B (2020) \u003cem\u003eElite Capture of Foreign Aid Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts\u003c/em\u003e. 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The Emergent Charter Definition Process. \u003cem\u003eOrganization Science\u003c/em\u003e. \u003cem\u003e26\u003c/em\u003e(4):1119\u0026ndash;1139 https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2015.0971\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eZucman G (2013) The Missing Wealth Of Nations: Are Europe And The U.S. Net Debtors Or Net Creditors? \u003cem\u003eThe Quarterly Journal of Economics 128\u003c/em\u003e(3):1321\u0026ndash;1364. doi: 10.2307/26372524\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-3763996/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3763996/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003ePartnerships that bring together public, private and voluntary sectors are increasingly promoted as a key tool in addressing sustainable development. Paradoxically, however, knowledge of the effectiveness of partnerships is limited, and fragmented across several academic disciplines despite their common research topic. As research into the effectiveness of partnerships is developing in this disjointed manner, it is important to surface the structuring of the academic landscape of partnership effectiveness research, and the assumptions on which it rests. We therefore map the partnership effectiveness research across several disciplines, question the main assumptions made by partnership effectiveness researchers, and propose new directions for partnership effectiveness research. By centering effectiveness, our article moves the field beyond discipline-centric, issue-specific questions to call for interdisciplinary, cross-cutting analysis that challenges assumptions in the existing literature.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"The Effectiveness of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Mapping the Literature; Questioning the Assumptions","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2024-12-16 12:09:50","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-3763996/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"e7a41aa9-3fbd-490b-97db-32c3e631e5f9","owner":[],"postedDate":"December 16th, 2024","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":41552276,"name":"Social science/Politics and international relations"},{"id":41552277,"name":"Business and commerce/Business and management"},{"id":41552278,"name":"Social science/Development studies"},{"id":41552279,"name":"Social science/Environmental studies"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2024-12-16T12:09:51+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2024-12-16 12:09:50","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-3763996","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-3763996","identity":"rs-3763996","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"qtupq5eGEP_6zYnWcrvyt","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}