School district central offices regularly engage with external partners in improvement efforts, but these partnerships are not always productive. Indeed, little is known about under what conditions partnerships are likely to lead to organizational learning outcomes. We conducted a longitudinal comparative case study of two departments in one urban school district central office, both working with the same external partner. Data included 131 interviews and 372 hours of observations as well as artifacts and social network data. While one department did not incorporate the partner’s ideas into policies and routines, the other demonstrated greater integration. We argue this difference is due to organizational conditions that foster absorptive capacity and to the nature of department–partner interactions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.