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Collaboration, (Dis)trust and Control in Brazilian Manufactured Public/Non-profit Partnerships

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Abstract

This study seeks to evaluate whether interorganizational trust and interpersonal trust influence the nature of state control in Brazilian public/non-profit partnerships (PNPs) by considering the social organization model with a non-profit partner that did not evolve organically from civil society as an equal and interdependent partner but instead was engineered by the state. We conducted qualitative research on two PNPs and analysed their historical trajectories through participant observation, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with the state and non-profit partners as well as other actors involved indirectly in the PNPs. Our findings call into question the assumption of current studies that trust tends to be built over time and reveal that PNPs embedded in state-dominant and low-social-capital contexts are more vulnerable to the effects of interpersonal trust. This vulnerability influences the volatile patterns of the PNPs’ trajectories and leads to strong informal state-partner control as reflected by PNP disruptions and lower levels of interorganizational trust.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the support of Evelyn Contreras Medrano during field research. We would like to thank the funding support of CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Tecnologico), Grant Number 310976/2014-6, and Faperj (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), Grant Number E_17/2012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation - EBAPE-FGV, Praia de Botafogo, 190, sala 525, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22250-900, Brazil

    Alketa Peci & Mirtha Iris Oquendo

  2. Universidade de São Paulo, Escola de Artes Ciências e Humanidades, R. Arlindo Béttio, 1000 prédio I1, sala 302 B, São Paulo, SP, 03828-900, Brazil

    Patrícia Mendonça

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  1. Alketa Peci
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Correspondence to Alketa Peci.

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Peci, A., Oquendo, M.I. & Mendonça, P. Collaboration, (Dis)trust and Control in Brazilian Manufactured Public/Non-profit Partnerships. Voluntas 31, 375–389 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-018-0027-6

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