AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF A COMMUNITY-BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP IN TRIOMF, GAUTENG

Over the last decade, communities and corporates have been encouraged toinitiate partnerships with one another as part of a Corporate SocialResponsibility (CSR) initiative in South Africa. Historically, community-businesspartners have experienced tensions in their working relationships, and soughtways in which they could deal with these tensions to create a beneficialcommunity-business partnership. The purpose of this study has been to gaininsights into a particular community-business partnership in Triomph, namely,the Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre, and Landelahni Recruitment Servicespartnership. In this qualitative ethnographic study I explore three centralquestions related to community-business partnerships: What is the nature of acommunity-business partnership? What factors promote and inhibit acommunity-business partnership? What kinds of adult learning happen within acommunity-business partnership?This study presents a case study for adult educators who are interested incommunity-business partnerships. An ethnography was used to gain insight intothe partnership. Data have been collected from documents, interviews, andobservations within the context of the Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre andLandelahni Recruitment Services.Results reveal that the nature of the community–business partnership wascharacterised as a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship. This beneficialrelationship was influenced by the following: the socio-economic contextparticular to this partnership, a formal Corporate Social Responsibilityagreement, which emphased development and empowerment, and finally therole of financial contributions by Corporates. The factors that promoted thepartnership were an awareness by both partners of power and how power playsout, the community organisation’s ability to understand their circumstancesand negotiate and make decisions, and the partner’s ability to assist oneanother, while accessing each others networks through trust and reciprocalassistance based on shared norms and values. A factor that inhibited thepartnership was the assumption that the partner with the most resources wasthe most powerful. Another factor that inhibited the partnership was whenpartners’ emphased social capital as being more important than other forms ofcapital in the partnership. There were two forms of adult learning present inthe partnership, namely, nonformal learning which aims at empowering peoplein both organisations, as well as incidental learning that occurred throughinteraction with each other at an unconscious level. Both these forms oflearning were not isolated from the influence of power.This study concludes by recommending certain principles, to guide acommunity-business partnership. Recommendations relate to:• The nature of an ideal partnership• Enhancing factors that promote a partnership• Mitigating factors that inhibit a partnership• Achieving the benefit from nonformal and incidental learningwithin community-business partnerships