ABSTRACT
Many feel anxious about working with others in professional and organisational life. However, sport and recreation development work is such that organisations can no longer expect to be able to function and thrive in isolation. The need for partnership working has been emphasised by the successes of many joint ventures and the failures of many individual pursuits. This has led to an increasing compulsion for sports organisations to perform effectively in concert in order to obtain cultural, financial and political support, as confirmed by Slack (1997: 146):
No sport organization exists in isolation from the other organizations in its environment, the source of the material and financial resources a sport organization needs to survive.
