Understanding the different faces of partnering: a typology of public-private partnerships

The popularity and prevalence of public-private partnerships for problem-solving has been well documented in prior research. While there is widespread agreement that all partnerships are not the same, the partnership hierarchies offered by past research assume that some alliances are somehow 'better' than others. This article offers a new typology based on findings from our research on partnerships in education, in which we conducted a national study of charter schools in the United States. We found that partnerships can be differentiated based on how they are initiated, what services are provided, the form of the partnership and the depth of organizational involvement.