Stakeholder Partnerships Impact on the Research by International Non-Governmental Organizations; Case of Centre for International Forestry Research, Kenya

A Research Project Report Submitted to the Chandaria School of Business in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration (MBAScientific research has been instrumental in finding solutions to the current problems of the world, explaining the occurrence of specific phenomenon and coming up with new ideas. Most research organizations have embraced collaboration and partnerships with different stakeholders in the last decade in a bid to ensure an improved output of their research work. In this study, the main objective therefore was to find out the impact of international, regional and local strategic partners on quality of research carried out by the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), an international research NGO. A sample size of 30 respondents was used for this study. It consisted 12 respondents from the CIFOR Nairobi hub directly involved in scientific research and 18 respondents from the different strategic partners. Both open and close ended questionnaires was used in data collection and analysis done using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 17) at 95% level of confidence and results presented in the form tables and graphs The study showed that most of the CIFOR Nairobi’s strategic partners were local including local research institutions and universities. Additionally, the study showed that most of the CIFOR partnerships have lasted for less than 5 years and several of them lasted for more than a decade. This can be explained by the fact that CIFOR established an office in Kenya barely five years ago (in 2012). Those with partnerships of over a decade were established by the scientists while in the CIFOR Headquarters in Indonesia before relocated to the Nairobi Hub. Generally, the both the CIFOR staff and the strategic partners acknowledged value of the partnerships since all the respondents said it was either significant or very significant. No single respondent said the partnership was slightly significant or insignificant. Findings from this study were significant in informing CIFOR on the significance of current partnerships in place, addressing the challenges facing research partnerships and the organizations they need to partner with for a better quality scientific research output. From the study it was evident that strategic partnerships was significant for CIFOR as for the partners in relation to the quality of research that the organizations produces. Both parties enjoyed a number of benefits ranging from: co-publications; knowledge and data sharing; funding and co fundraising; facilitating outreach, especially for local and regional partners; feedback for improving research; and expertise and skills sharing. Notable partnership challenges included financial constraints; poor communications; language and culture diversities; conflicting interests; delayed feedbacks; and varying methodologies of conducting research. Minimization of the challenges and maximization of the benefits is paramount for better scientific research outcomes from the partnerships. . this can be achieved if both CIFOR and its strategic partners strive to improve on communication methods while maintaining transparency; strengthen the existing partnerships while widening the organizational strategic partnerships by adding relevant private sector organizations; and members of the strategic partnerships should consider co-designing of research methods to eliminate methodology ambiguities