The questionable virtue of social sector collaborations

Context: Collaboration is often seen as some sort of panacea, but the act of joining hands in itself means little.

The usefulness of collaboration as a virtue:

• Address the diverse challenges: related to socio-political aspects, fickle-mindedness of financial investors.
• Example of true collaboration:
  • A state department of education may start a programme with some people from within the department and from some civil society organizations.
  • This group could together develop textbooks, and then train government schoolteachers on these textbooks.

Issues with the virtues held by social sector organization:

• They have their own notion of the virtuous world: While their list of desired virtues includes resilience and connectedness to the ground, they often lack internal democracy.
  • Internal democracy is unattainable in any organization because of the very nature and constructs of an organization - based on hierarchy.
• Too much inclined on collaboration as a virtue: Issues with collaboration as a virtue include -
  • Over-extended definition of Collaboration:
    • A grant-making organization giving financial support or a Non-Governmental organization (NGO) is not a collaboration.
    • Development work around a factory by an NGO funded by a business is not collaboration; it is outsourcing of work.
  • Collaboration may limit the development: of one’s own capacity on what the other organization is strong in.
  • Forging collaboration implies accommodation of various kinds.
  • Collaboration is hardest to pull off when desperately required: Collaborating to restore the forest- rights of tribal communities is very hard, much more so than joining hands for a watershed.

Conclusion: It is to face and resist the power that collaborations are most needed, as collaboration for courage is more important than collaboration for capacity, but far more capricious.