NN41, December 2008
The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?
Partnership in Research Programmes ? A Case Study of Albanian-Swiss Cooperation
By Blendi Gerdoçi, University of Shkodra and Dieter Zürcher, KEK-CDC Consultants, Bern
Email: gblendi@yahoo.comEmail: zuercher@kek.ch
Keywords
Partnership, research programmes, Albania, Switzerland
Summary
Using the example of an educational partnership between a university in Switzerland and one in Albania (2005-2007), this article describes the experience of partnership from the Albanian side. It notes that while the success of institutional partnerships depends a lot on personal relationships between individuals, there is scope for such time-limited partnerships to trigger more long term institutional dynamics.
Context
Within the SCOPES programme the Post-Graduate Course on Developing Countries (NADEL/ETH) at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (Zurich) entered an institutional partnership with the University of Shkodra, a regional University in Northern Albania. The cooperation lasted from October 2005 until September 2007 and the main aim was to conduct capacity building of lecturers as well as gaining knowledge about the decentralisation process in a previously highly centralised country. The output of this small project consisted of a series of research papers which can be downloaded from the following homepage http://www.cis.ethz.ch/publications/publications. The following represents mainly the view from the partner in Albania. Mr. Blendi Gerdoçi was the responsible research coordinator at the Economic Faculty of the University of Shkodra which offers various Bachelor and Master studies.
View of the partner
In order to overcome the lack of most of the lecturers? experience in research a training on methodological approaches was conducted and a network consisting of local consultants and representatives of authorities was established in order to function as an Advisory Board for the selection/coaching of the studies. The work programme and thus the partnership faced various challenges right from the beginning: the lecturers of the Economic Faculty had an extremely high teaching load hindering their participation in the project, the salary level was very low (without scope of complementing it from the project), and the family and career obligations of the mostly female lecturers were substantial. Finally, progress was hindered by logistical shortcomings such as drastic electricity cuts during most of the winters, no internet access at the beginning, and difficulties in physically reaching out to the municipalities because of bad infrastructure.
But the greatest challenge and disappointment emerged when the cooperation with some representatives of local government units (LGUs) was extremely difficult and time consuming because of a lot of mistrust and misunderstandings. This resulted in the collection or submission of a lot but often irrelevant or inconsistent data. Despite some very large databases they were not linked with the key question of the studies. The lack of experience of the lecturers in such studies became evident. The performance-based remuneration of the lecturers was founded on the submission and approval of research proposals and papers. Although this was effective to reach the goal it created difficulties for some lectures who wanted be part of the project but could not contribute in time for several reasons. Great care was dedicated from the local coordinator for the process of evaluating those studies that ought to be published. The publication per se represented a great stimulus for the lecturers because the majority of them were following their PhD career, where publications represent an important criterion. A huge challenge was then the translation of the papers into English, and the debate whether the quality of the papers (data) was adequate or whether the translation was not up to standards provoked heated debates. The publication process and related efforts to guarantee a certain quality were foreseen but heavily underestimated.
Concluding remarks
In a more general framework, the cooperation and exchange of experiences between local research groups and exposing lecturers to Swiss audiences were a good approach with a satisfactory outcome on both sides. A greater amount of meetings, discussions and feedback, as well as a coaching of the research work would have encouraged left-behind groups but would have required higher resources for the local coordinator.
The lecturers grasped well the importance and dimensions of the study after a conference was held. The majority of them still consider participating in this project their best experience which helped solidify their professional profile, as well as the reputation of the institution they represent. Many of them are searching, or applying, to get involved in similar projects by the sheer motivation of the experience they had, but also with the belief that their work can be applied in the decision-making of LGUs.
An open issue is, of course, the sustainability of such a project. With changing positions of key staff the institional geometry is changing and a lot depends on personal relations. Yet, this case illustrates the institutional dynamics which a time-limited partnership can trigger.
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