Collaboration in practice
Jasper Kuipers, director of Dokters van de Wereld, shared a few examples showing that there are still many challenges when it comes to working together on integrity. He observes that while much has already improved in recent years, he also sees that the focus is mainly internal. How to organise integrity within collaborations should receive more attention. Especially as there are high demands from international organisations and donors.
The secret of working together with integrity
Jorrit Hoekstra of AlliantiePartners is an expert on collaboration. He gave many tips on how to
good cooperation and professionalise it. It is important to realise that cooperation is not static, but dynamic. Social changes can lead to changes in cooperation. Jorrit mentioned the example of the Hermitage in Amsterdam. Because of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, they broke off cooperation with the Hermitage in St Petersburg and entered into an alliance with three other museums, including Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Before entering into a collaboration, you need to have a clear understanding of your organisation’s role and identity. If the other organisations do the same, you can then have a conversation about shared values and norms. These form the basis for cooperation. Also make sure you discuss why you don’t want to cooperate.
Jorrit also talked about the different phases you can be in as an organisation when it comes to collaborations and showed a model you can use to design an alliance in a structured way.
Balancing trust and control
Liana Hoornweg, director of Partos, then engaged in a conversation with Jasper, Jorrit and the audience. In it, they discussed the need for the organisation to ensure a good balance between trust and control: it is impossible to put an integrity officer in every place. The conversation was also about how to deal with cultural differences. Jorrit advised understanding each other’s organisation and culture, without filling in or condemning anything. Look where the differences and similarities are and talk further from there. Do not think from ‘I/you’, but from ‘we’.
Incidentally, more cooperation should not necessarily be the goal, but better cooperation.
Roundtable discussions
The second part of the programme consisted of two rounds in which attendees talked in small groups about topics such
as how to get and keep the code of conduct alive within your organisation, how to set up an integrity system within small(er) organisations and how to make a moral dilemma discussable within your organisation. The participants exchanged experiences and shared their two main conclusions with the other participants. Then they indicated what they thought were the most important of all the points mentioned and what they expect from Goede Doelen Nederland and Partos in this respect. This provided us with a lot of useful information, which we will use to serve our members even better in the field of integrity. It was also nice to see that many contacts were made between our members.
