Abstract:

Partnerships with Higher Education in the United Kingdom are becoming more prevalent and are seen as an important element of corporate social responsibility implementation (Seitanidi and Crane, 2008) . They are viewed as collaborations where two or more institutions join together to achieve objectives. This paper aims to explore collaboration between two Business Schools: Cass Business School in London and Nottingham Business School, the partnership evolved as both parties are Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Champions, this means that both schools had a strong track record in delivering innovative student focused initiatives that aim to realise the sustainable development goals through responsible management education. In 2009, Cass Business School commenced a philanthropic project that embeds coaching and mentoring provided by Cass students to local students in secondary schools within their local communities, encouraging social mobility, building aspiration and driving innovation in teaching methods. In 2015, Cass began the process of sharing this learning with Nottingham Business School enabling them to embed the coaching and mentoring project into their curriculum to benefit both the next generation of future leaders and also extend the social mobility opportunities into a broader community context. Both Cass and NBS have developed relationships with other partners to implement the projects and these relationships will also be considered.

This paper will examine the antecedents of the partnership at both institutions using an adapted version of the Partnership Model Development (Amery, Eddy and Ozaki, 2007).There are five key areas to be examined:
1. What was the motivation to initiate the partnership and what were the reasons for joining? (Gray, 1989; Russell and Flynn, 2000)? What is the motivation for each partner to participate and how these align to economic, political, and sociocultural circumstances?
2. How is the partnership framed by the leading members and how is it understood by others partners and actors? How do the various members make sense of their part in the partnership (Dima et al., 2016)?
3. What are the outcomes, benefits, and costs of the partnership? Are these factors considered within the normal partner interactions and will this feedback inform future interactions (Kotter and Cohen, 2012)?
4. What resources are required to sustain the partnership? If it is decided to continue the partnership, how will this be accomplished (Goldman and Schmalz, 2008)?
5. What are the key learnings about partnerships, the enablers and inhibitors what is required for a partnership to thrive (Glasbergen et al 2007)?

The coaching and mentoring projects have been successful in both institutions but an unexpected feature of the collaboration has been the learning derived from the partnership and this paper draws out the key features of a successful partnership to transfer this knowledge across other corporate social responsibility projects.

Keywords:

Coaching, mentoring, partnership, collaboration, resources, motivation, trust.