ABSTRACT
Partnership capital helps institutionalize the partnership and creates a basis for sustainability, regardless of shifts in resource availability, leadership turnover, and environmental turbulence. Partnership capital emerges as a unique form of resource for collaborators that builds on the trust, shared meaning, and strategic alignment generated by partners. Adaptive space in partnerships provides a neutral arena in which the partners have an opportunity to test new ideas and ways of operation. Partnership capital occurs when a partnership uses feedback loops to question underlying assumptions and invests in organizational learning. In the case of partnerships, single-loop learning might apply when potential partners court one another with an eye toward creating economic efficiencies of operations. Double-loop learning would be evident instead when new partners confront traditional modes of operation and work to create new ways to operate. The generation of partnership capital can occur when triple-loop learning is evident between and among partners.
