Combating climate change through collaborations? Lessons learnt from one of the biggest failures in environmental entrepreneurship

Abstract

Responses to climate change have shifted significantly towards renewable energy, even while progress remains slower than predicted. Improving advances here requires joint efforts by private, public and social sector organizations. Yet, many of these collaborations fail or fall short of their potential. This in-depth case study of the electric vehicle infrastructure provider Better Place finds that creating successful stakeholder commitment across sectors has a paradoxical outcome. While collaboration allows for resource mobilization and legitimacy creation as theorized in prior literature, this contribution uncovers two types of tension related to gaining stakeholder commitment which lead to negative organizational outcomes: flexibility-stakeholder commitment tensions and learning-stakeholder commitment tensions. The article contributes to environmental entrepreneurship literature by showing how successful partnership creation can limit the creation of sustainable solutions to extensive environmental challenges; and it proposes how new forms of organizing can assist environmental entrepreneurs in creating the impact they wish to achieve.