Paper short abstract:

Pharmaceutical companies and NGOs are increasingly entering into partnerships to address a health related issues. This paper researches some of these partnerships and asks who benefits from them and how; and who holds the power in the relationship.

Paper long abstract:

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been cited as business goals and many companies are now including statements regarding their role in implementing and helping to achieve the SDGs in their Corporate Social Responsibility statements. The companies involved include those in the pharmaceutical sector who have been partnering with a variety of NGOs. Key examples include the GlaxoSmithKline partnership with Save the Children aimed at reducing child mortality and Novo Nordisk's partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide insulin to migrants at favourable prices. This paper investigates the partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and NGOs to assess who has really benefited from these partnerships and how they impact the states that they are trying to help. It is based on interviews with representatives of the pharmaceutical companies and NGOs, as well as documents relating to these partnerships. It attempts to assess how the power relationships are balanced between the actors, as well as assess the challenges and possibilities which have emerged from these partnerships.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses why and how the EC started to promote blended finance as an innovative financial tool to support the role of the private sector to push for the bloc´s policy agenda for international development.

Paper long abstract:

Blended finance is now the current trend in international development finance to help raising additional resources to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda by 2030. It involves the combination of grant aid sourced from official ODA with other private or public sources of finance, such as loans, risk capital and/or equity. The European Commission (EC) has been leading this push since 2007 with the creation of several regional-focused blended finance instruments. This paper discusses why and how the EC started to promote blended finance as an innovative financial tool to support the role of the private sector to push for the bloc´s policy agenda for international development.

Paper short abstract:

DFID's relationship with the Big Four management consultancy firms has received little attention, despite DFID awarding them £517m worth of contracts between 2015 and 2018. In this paper, we examine the influence played by these firms in the construction and roll-out of the UK's development agenda.

Paper long abstract:

Between 2015 and 2018 the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) awarded £517m worth of contracts to the 'Big Four' audit and management consultancy firms - KPMG, PwC, EY & Deloitte. DFID's relations with the Big Four have been criticised by campaigners for promoting the privatization of public services in the global South (Hilary 2005). However, the Big Four's involvement in development now extends far beyond this, to include the co-construction of development agendas (PwC 2017), implementing business environment reform (KPMG 2016), and facilitating the roll-out of welfare programmes (EY 2014). Meanwhile, Government's broader use of management consultants has been criticised by the National Audit Office, casting doubt on the competitiveness of tendering and 'value for money' (Shaoul et al. 2007), and Parliament has raised concerns regarding DFID's outsourcing of expertise (House of Commons International Development Committee 2017). Nonetheless, studies of the relationship between donor agencies and management consultants are few and far between. Organization and management scholars have only recently begun to ask how consultants position themselves in development networks and disseminate evaluation and implementation frameworks to NGOs (Hayes & Westrup 2014). In this paper, we draw on industry and government reports and open data to examine DFID's use of Big Four consultants. In doing so, we shed light on forms of expertise, managerial techniques and accountability processes that characterise management consultancies' involvement in development contracting, locating the rising influence of management consultants in the specific geographies of multinational consulting firms and the UK's unique history of government contracting.

Paper short abstract:

The role of CSR as a discourse and practice for driving, as well as limiting, partnerships for development, is the focus of this paper. Drawing on empirical work in horticultural and mega-event supply chains, we evaluate the benefits and risks from such partnerships framed in terms of CSR.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a discourse and practice for driving, as well as limiting, partnerships for development. Given the ever increasing penetration of CSR as a conduit for development initiatives in the Global South, it is vital that critical analysis is applied to the activities of the CSR profession within development practice. We consider the role of CSR in negotiating and navigating private sector partnerships for development. Drawing on empirical work in horticultural and mega-event supply chains, we evaluate the benefits and risks from such partnerships framed in terms of CSR. Examples we draw upon include: (i) a multi-stakeholder partnership between Marks and Spencer, the Shell Foundation and a South African conservation NGO which led to the initiation of a 'sustainable' cut-flower supply chain; and (ii) multi-stakeholder initiatives to promote positive CSR development legacies from the 2010 World Cup and the London 2012 Olympic Games. From these cases, we draw out the benefits to be gained by utilising CSR as a frame for business involvement in development work, as well as the risks involved due to power imbalances between business, the state and civil society. Our analysis shows that the potential value of CSR as a development tool is constrained by an over-focus on gaining a corporate licence to operate within the Global South and by the dominance of corporate versions of the CSR agenda and practice.

Paper short abstract:

Ghana adopted collaborative forest management initiatives to build sustainable partnerships among actors. However, its forest management faces many problems, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the partnership. The study examined factors influencing sustainable forest management partnership.

Paper long abstract:

The realisation of the SDGs requires partnership across sectors and actors in an integrated manner by sharing knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources. The 17th Goal particularly promotes effective public-private partnerships for sustainable development of all countries. However, in Ghana, most of these partnerships had not been entirely successful. Notable among them were Aqua Vitens Rand Limited in the water sector, West African Gas Pipeline Company in the energy sector, and STX Engineering & Construction Limited in the housing sector.

Ghana adopted collaborative forest management initiatives in the 1990s to build sustainable partnerships among various stakeholders from national to local levels and between private and public sectors. Notwithstanding these efforts, forest management in Ghana is plagued with numerous problems, including poor benefit-sharing systems, and weak implementation and enforcement of institutional laws and structures. This raises concerns about the effectiveness and sustainability of the partnership in forest management. This study examined the elements influencing sustainability of the partnership in forest management in Ghana's Central Region regarding the Kakum National Park and Pra Suhien Forest Reserve.

Cluster and purposive sampling techniques were used to select respondents. Descriptive statistics, interest analysis and narrative enquiry were used to analyse the data. The study found that sustainable partnership in forest management was influenced by interest management, equity in benefit sharing, clearly-defined roles and responsibilities, rewards and punishment schemes, monitoring and evaluation, and stakeholder capacity in executing their functions. The study recommended that these elements should critically be featured in partnerships for development initiatives for sustainability.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is built around a case study of a project supporting social enterprise development in Rwanda, which is used as a vehicle to explore the contested nature of public-private partnerships more generally. It highlights the practical and institutional challenges and how these might be overcome.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of the paper is to critically reflect on the challenges of PPPs in a developing country context, using as a case study a project initiated by University of Westminster in 2017. The project involved teams of students from the UK and Rwanda working collaboratively on the development of sustainable social enterprises. The University of Westminster entered into agreements with the University of Rwanda, the country's only public sector university, the Business Development Fund (BDF) and, from the private sector, the Development Bank of Rwanda (BRD). This pilot project has subsequently led to the development of a broader programme for Rwandan entrepreneurs, known as 'Shibuka'.

Rwanda is seen as an economic 'success story' in Sub-Saharan Africa, with GDP per capita now growing by over 7% per year (World Bank, 2018). The Government of Rwanda, a part of its National Strategy for Transformation (2018-2024), expects the catalyst for growth and poverty reduction to be an emerging 'middle class' of Rwandan entrepreneurs. This project revealed many of the possible challenges, not least the institutional barriers and limited support for entrepreneurship development in the 'formal' sector. Lessons from the project included the necessity of cross-cultural collaboration, the importance of stakeholder engagement in obtaining local commitment and the need for effective communication to ensure that partner needs were being addressed. The paper uses a mixed-methods approach to explore how issues of power and inequality were confronted, to reveal the contested nature of PPPs and make recommendations for future PP projects of this kind.

Paper short abstract:

This paper uses the diversity of 'trust fund' models adopted by sub-national governments in Nigeria to show the flexibility of 'really existing' public private partnerships and how power relations and outcomes vary according to how PPPs are mobilised for different political projects.

Paper long abstract:

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) highlight the fundamental disagreements that persist over the ultimate aims of governance reform whether in developing countries like Nigeria or the West. Where the pro-market good governance camp sees PPPs as a way to harness the efficiency of the private sector for the goal of public interest, others - for whom democratic institutionalisation is the aim - see it as a liability for corruption and a disruption to rule-bound decision-making by a Weberian state. By contrast really existing PPPs in Nigeria defy simple dichotomies of public and private: diverse actors come together in a patch-work or 'bricolage' to deliver services, arbitration and governance.

Since the widely publicised success of the Lagos state Security Trust Fund, other states in Nigeria have adopted the 'trust fund' model: a board of trustees, comprising businessmen and civil servants, fund-raising to secure donations from the private sector for public services. Across the country similar 'on-paper' institutional arrangements have led to divergent outcomes in practice. In Oyo State alone, the health, education and security trust funds represent three different models: ranging from philanthropic "old boys" groups competing to out-do each other in donations to their alma maters to highly professionalized collaborations between military staff and transnational private security companies. Based on scoping research including desk reviews and fieldwork, this paper will present work in progress on how power relations, and allocations of risks and benefits vary across cases, showing the fluidity and flexibility of the 'partnership' model to meet different political agendas.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the question of how international benefit-sharing instruments translate into practice within wind power investments located in indigenous communities. The study uses Mexico's wind energy sector and its resent introduction of Free Prior Informed Consent processes as a case study.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the question of how international benefit-sharing instruments translate into practice within wind power investments located in indigenous communities. Promoting common interest in sustainable development and environmental problems would be more effective if solutions resulted in everyone being better off. However, this is rarely the case since strategies to reduce carbon emissions usually result in winners and losers (WCED, 1987), and renewable energies are no exception. The adoption of ambitious renewable energy targets has had profound social, economic and environmental implications that operate at scales ranging from local to global, and have raised questions about governance and decision-making in capitalist societies (Shearman and Smith 2007). Therefore, identifying key issues related to legislative instruments that address the distribution of benefits and burdens of energy services has become hugely important in advancing the proliferation of clean energy.

Benefit-sharing arrangements are increasingly used to address the social impacts of renewable energy generation projects around the world, building on practices developed in the extractive and mining sectors. This paper looks at the practice of benefit-sharing - why it is being done, by whom and in which context - to make sense of the normative contours of extant arrangements, pursuant to a case-study approach. Looking at Mexico's growing wind energy sector, the paper considers benefit-sharing arrangements in indigenous peoples' lands, and their interplay with and Free Prior Informed Consent processes. The aim is to establish how well these arrangements respond to Social Licence to Operate-related requirements in international instruments.