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University partnerships have been promoted and implemented a good deal in Europe since the approval of the Bologna Declaration of June 19, 1999 (Bologna Declaration, 1999). Over the past two decades, the University of Prishtina has developed many bilateral and multilateral initiatives to strengthen cooperation and partnership among universities from different countries and regions (University of Prishtina, 2004, p. 2). The University of Prishtina embraced the Bologna Declaration in 2001, and since then has established several partnerships aimed at strengthening its capacities and improving the quality assurance of its higher education (Brunnhofer, 2010, p. 107). In the recent years, the University of Prishtina has given priority to the area of research, aiming to increase the quality and quantity of research conducted by its faculty. The quality and relevance of the international partnerships of the University of Prishtina is the main focus of this paper, including the current state of research among the faculty. The researcher used a qualitative method for conducting this research. It shows the institutional and individual benefits of those partnerships. Finally, it presents the impact of cooperation on developing research and improving the quality of education in Kosovo.

Higher education institutions possess a plethora of knowledge at the institutional, departmental and individual levels. Therefore, knowledge management plays a vital role in assisting partnerships to synergise knowledge and strengthen market competitiveness when working collaboratively. The purpose of this study is to identify and critically discuss the role of knowledge management concepts that support development of UK higher education partnerships. This knowledge management research was undertaken with the purpose of exploring components of behavioural constructs in assisting the development of successful partnerships between higher education institutions.

This research embraces a qualitative methodology and makes use of an expert panel method to gather field data and assess the relevance, robustness and applicability of a conceptual model developed in the context of higher education partnerships. Guided by two research questions, the researchers elicited knowledge from eight experts, academics and practitioners, who had initiated and led partnership development between UK higher education institutions. The experts were invited and selected to attend the panel using the criteria of “Years of Experience in the Higher Education sector”, “Job Positions and Experiences” and the “Partnership Scope and Impact”.

Depicting in a tree analogy, the conceptual model indicates that effective knowledge management will require higher education executives, managers and practitioners to centre on nurturing “tree roots” presented as behavioural knowledge management constructs and include institutional culture, trust, absorptive capacities and communication channels. The research findings elaborate on previous research and provide a categorisation of partnership outcomes between higher education institutions, explaining that partnership outcomes can be of an “Academic”, “Marketing and Finance” or “Managerial” nature. Importantly, practical use of the model could be implemented using audit methods or benchmarking methods, whereby the categorised elements of the model are used as a criterion of assessment for audit teams.

The conclusion extracted experiential insights to provide guidance as to how higher education executives, managers and practitioners can make use of knowledge management behavioural constructs and activities to assist collaborative undertakings in the higher education sector. This paper provided a new, modified, knowledge management higher education partnership tree, thus giving researchers and academic practitioners a holistic viewpoint of important partnership knowledge management factors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence based guidance to researchers and practice personnel about forming and carrying out effective research partnerships.

A review of the literature, interviews and discussions with colleagues in both research and practice roles, and a review of the authors' personal experiences as researchers in partnership research.

Partnership research is, in some respects, a distinct “approach” to research, but there are many different versions. An analysis of research publications and of their research experience led the authors to develop a framework for planning and assessing the partnership research process, which includes defining expected outcomes for the partners, their roles, and steps in the research process.

This review and analysis provides guidance that may reduce commonly-reported misunderstandings and help to plan more successful partnerships and projects. It also identifies future research which is needed to define more precisely the questions and purposes for which partnership research is most appropriate, and methods and designs for specific types of partnership research.

As more research moves towards increased participation of practitioners and patients in the research process, more precise and differentiated understanding of the different partnership approaches is required, and when each is most suitable. This article describes research approaches that have the potential to reduce “the research-practice gap”. It gives evidence- and experience-based guidance for choosing and establishing a partnership research process, so as to improve partnership relationship-building and more actionable research.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how a manufacturer's relationship with firms operating in different institutional logics can facilitate or hinder the outcomes of research partnerships.

The paper tests the study hypotheses based on a survey of 345 Chinese manufacturers.

Results reveal that a manufacturer's partnerships with private firms and government institutions are both directly related to the manufacturer's innovation performance. However, the effectiveness of the research partnerships depends on the different institutional logics within which these organizations operate.

This study used a binary variable to capture the existence or absence of the partnership types examined implying that this variable does not capture the quantity of R&D relationships the firm is engaged in or the time period of such engagements.

It is important for management to take into account the joint effect of both the firm and its partner's underlying institutional logics in establishing partnership relationships since the juxtaposition of different institutional logics can affect the outcomes of the relationship.

This research draws from institutional theory to contribute to knowledge in the area of innovation by emphasizing the importance of the overarching institutional logic on the effectiveness of different types of innovation‐driven research partnerships.

This scoping review utilizes findings from 80 articles to build a research model to study research-practice-policy networks in K-12 education systems. The purpose of this study was to generate a broad understanding of the variation in conceptualizations of research-practice-policy partnerships, rather than dominant conceptualizations.

Arskey and O'Malley's (2005) five stage scoping review process was utilized including: (1) a consultative process with partners to identify research questions, (2) identify relevant studies, (3) study selection based on double-blind peer review, (4) charting the data and (5) collating, summarizing and reporting the results in a research model identifying key dimensions and components of research-practice partnerships (RPPs).

Coburn et al. (2013) definition of RPPs arose as an anchoring definition within the emerging field. This article proposes a model for understanding the organization and work of RPPs arising from the review. At the core lies shared goals, coproduction and multistakeholder collaboration organized around three dimensions: (1) Systems and structures: funding, governance, strategic roles, policy environment, system alignment; (2) Collaborative processes: improvement planning and data use, communication, trusting relationships, brokering activities, capacity building; (3) Continuous Learning Cycles: social innovation, implementation, evaluation and adaptation.

By using a common framework, data across RPPs and from different studies can be compared. Research foci might test links between elements such as capacity building and impacts, or test links between systems and structures and how those elements influence collaborative processes and the impact of the RPPs. Research could test the generalizability of the framework across contexts. Through the application and use of the research model, various elements might be refuted, confirmed or refined. More work is needed to use this framework to study RPPs, and to develop accompanying data collection methods and instruments for each dimension and element.

The practical applications of the framework are to be used by RPPs as a learning framework for strategic planning, iterative learning cycles and evaluation. Many of the elements of the framework could be used to check-in with partners on how things are going – such as exploring how communication is working and whether these structures move beyond merely updates and reporting toward joint problem-solving. The framework could also be used prior to setting up an RPP as an organizing approach to making decisions about how that RPP might best operate.

Despite increased attention on multistakeholder networks in education, the conceptual understanding is still limited. This article analyzed theoretical and empirical work to build a systematic model to study RPPs in education. This research model can be used to: identify RPP configurations, analyze the impact of RPPs, and to compare similarities and differences across configurations.

The author feels haunted; troubled by the ethnography that the author conducted some years ago of a new partnership group that was attempting to set up a community learning centre. The author is aware that it doesn’t sound like a particularly alarming research topic, and perhaps that is where some of the issues began. The author did not expect an ethnographic haunting to occur. The partnership recruited the author less than a year into the creation of the project and spent two years as a sort of ‘researcher in residence’. The original idea was that the author would observe the initial development of the project and then, when the community learning centre was established, the author would research the centre’s activities and how they were experienced by village residents. However, fairly soon into the project, problematic dynamics developed within the group, leading to irreconcilable conflict between members. The community learning centre was never established and the author was left to piece together an ethnography of a failed partnership. Researching an increasingly dysfunctional partnership was an emotionally exhausting activity, especially when relationships between members became progressively hostile. Managing data collection and analysis at this time was difficult, but the author was shocked that, a number of months (and now years) later, revisiting the data for publication purposes remained uncomfortable. The author managed to produce the PhD thesis on the back of this study, but the author has not felt able to go back to the data, despite there being findings worthy of publication. This ethnography is in a state of limbo and is at risk of becoming lost forever. In this chapter, the author explores the reasons for this and discusses lessons learned for future projects.

GM has initiated partnerships with firms and research institutions at a rapid pace. One effort of the multi‐disciplinary research team involved the construction of a relationship dynamics model to assist in partnership planning and management. Earlier research on private‐sector partnerships indicated that partnership success is largely dependent upon the development and maintenance of strong, productive relationships between the partners. Therefore, modeling efforts focused on the relationship itself. To increase the likelihood that the resulting model is realistic, valid and representative, empirical data was combined with a systems‐dynamics approach, and the model is being validated with feedback from study participants.

Academic researchers are increasingly required, and rightly so, to demonstrate the impact of their work beyond the gates of the university. This has led to an increasing focus, especially in response to funded calls, on developing research partnerships that cross disciplines, sectors and borders to help address our grand societal challenges. The purpose of this paper is to set out learning from the work of the organisation the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI) and reflections on how to bring forward effective research partnerships involving users.

This paper is based on reflections and learning from the organisation CARDI which delivered a highly successful programme of interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral and cross-country research partnerships in both rural and urban areas between 2007 and 2015, across the island of Ireland.

Research partnerships that wish to involve users require time, commitment, support, understanding and a willingness to change and be challenged. This paper highlights that there are methodological, philosophical, moral, economic and of course, practical aspects to be considered.

This reflective paper is based on a case study from the island of Ireland during the period 2007–2015 working in the area of ageing and older people.

The author emphasises that for research partnerships involving users to be successful, they need to not only consider the most effective research methods but also focus on the overarching purpose of the work and adopt an ethos and practice that maximises each partner’s knowledge and expertise to their full potential.

This reflective paper focused on the characteristics associated with partnership success, i.e. communication style, values, philosophy and practice and argues that establishing effective and inclusive partnerships requires time, the appropriate framework and reviewing the process on an ongoing basis.

The issue of user involvement in research partnerships requires much more consideration. Researchers, government, funders, businesses and service providers are increasingly recognising the benefits of “user” involvement to help design programmes and services that are most effective. Nowhere is this more important than in planning and delivering services, policy and programmes for our ageing population.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the development of the final outputs of a research project looking at partnerships between technology‐based start‐ups and large firms (“asymmetric” partnerships). It presents the stage of the research aimed at understanding how best to design outputs to assist firms in managing such partnerships.

A combination of company case studies, company workshops, an end‐user survey and pilot dissemination programme were used to identify an appropriate form for the packaging and delivery of the research findings (i.e. what problems can be encountered in such partnerships, and what approaches companies have implemented to overcome these problems).

A range of approaches for overcoming the problems of managing partnerships between firms whose age and size are markedly different were catalogued. The research presented in this paper revealed that companies felt best able to learn from the experiences of others through a combination of direct support, multi‐company workshops, and online access to selected materials.

The generalisability of the findings may be limited by the fact that the majority of the organisations collaborating in this research either were located in the high‐technology business cluster in and around the city of Cambridge, UK or had formed partnerships with companies in this geographic region.

Partnerships between technology‐based start‐ups and technology‐intensive large firms can provide an effective means of accessing and integrating the complementary assets required to bring a novel technology to market. This research will help firms overcome the numerous challenges involved in setting up and managing such partnerships by providing stakeholders with easier access to academic research findings. It will assist researchers who are considering how to disseminate research outputs to industry.

There is a strong body of work on improving the performance of partnerships in general, but less on overcoming the practical challenges of managing partnerships between firms of markedly different age and scale. In addition, the selection of the optimum process for ensuring that the findings of such research are used to support implementation remains a topic of debate. This work helps to address both gaps.

This paper aims to investigate sustainability research collaborations between the City of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia (UBC), as a case study to better understand how to use city–university partnerships to advance effective urban sustainability policy and practices. The study compiles a basic inventory of partnerships since 2010, describes their benefits, areas for improvement, barriers to collaboration and proposes ways to increase and improve future collaborations.

The study draws on an electronic survey completed by 58 individuals and interviews with 13 such participants who were faculty members and staff at UBC and Vancouver.

Most collaborations responded to climate change in some way, were initiated through informal professional relationships and involved single departments in each organization. Projects ranged in size, duration and level of municipal funding. Although project participants were generally happy with past experiences, future collaborations could be improved by increasing leadership commitment and resources and producing more mutually beneficial outcomes. Barriers included lacking awareness of potential partners, difficulty aligning municipal needs with academic research interests and divergent expectations about project resources. The study recommends introducing formal processes to help identify overlapping interests and opportunities, enhance co-creation of projects and increase leadership and resources.

The findings may inform the development and implementation of future city–university partnerships to advance sustainable policies and practices in urban areas.

This paper contributes by reviewing experiences with city–university collaborations and offering evidence-based recommendations to improve them, thereby increasing opportunities for more effective urban sustainability solutions.