Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Society, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 24;17(6):e0270574. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270574. eCollection 2022.
The partnerships between agricultural cooperatives and development actors play a critical role in meeting development challenges and building cooperative sustainability. The objective of this study was to analyze the key characteristics of engagements established between agricultural cooperatives and other actors and determine their success level. An analytical framework was developed to highlight nine areas, namely partnership configuration, stakeholders, objectives of the partnerships, partnership types, partnership stages, communication methods, achieved outcomes, partnership evaluation, and partnership sustainability. The targets were all agricultural cooperatives building associations with other actors between 2016 and 2020 in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the study covered 69 partnerships founded by 32 agricultural cooperatives. The results revealed that the cooperatives involved in partnerships essentially provide farming inputs and equipment for their stakeholders and capacity building and training purposes. The public sector was the leading actor that collaborated with agricultural cooperatives in inter-sector partnerships. The findings also showed that 55.1% of the partnerships were "strategic partnerships" in cases of both independent value formation and integrative partnerships. By focusing on mapping the partnerships, this study presents beneficial information for policy-makers working on how agricultural cooperatives dealt with the other actors and the lessons gathered to build future sustainability collaborations.
农业合作社与发展参与者之间的伙伴关系对于应对发展挑战和建立合作社可持续性至关重要。本研究的目的是分析农业合作社与其他参与者之间建立的参与关系的关键特征，并确定其成功水平。开发了一个分析框架来突出九个方面，即伙伴关系配置、利益相关者、伙伴关系目标、伙伴关系类型、伙伴关系阶段、沟通方式、实现的成果、伙伴关系评估和伙伴关系可持续性。目标是在沙特阿拉伯 2016 年至 2020 年间与其他参与者建立协会的所有农业合作社。因此，该研究涵盖了 32 个农业合作社成立的 69 个伙伴关系。研究结果表明，参与伙伴关系的合作社主要为其利益相关者提供农业投入和设备，并进行能力建设和培训。公共部门是与农业合作社在跨部门伙伴关系中合作的主要参与者。研究结果还表明，在独立价值形成和综合伙伴关系的情况下，55.1%的伙伴关系是“战略伙伴关系”。通过重点绘制伙伴关系图，本研究为政策制定者提供了有益的信息，这些信息涉及农业合作社如何与其他参与者打交道，以及为建立未来可持续性合作而吸取的经验教训。
