Reconceptualizing accountability in NGO-corporate partnerships: an institutional logics perspective

Abstract

PurposeDeveloping economies often lack sufficient state regulation to encourage corporations to engage with environmental sustainability challenges. Environmental NGOs fill this vacuum but this relationship is fraught with challenges, linked to each party’s competing interests. This paper examines how an environmental NGO operating in a developing country manages such challenges.Design/methodology/approachA longitudinal case study, from 2017–2022, based on semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis, with the main periods of field work in 2017 and 2020.FindingsWe unravel nuanced dynamics of accountability within an NGOs collaborative ecosystem. Our findings reveal a web of interlinked obligations and expectations, strategically adopted to reconcile environmental and CSR logics fostering trustworthy partnerships with firms. Despite aiming for transformative change, the NGO made gradual initiatives, to meet the challenges of fostering systemic change in developing nations. Institutional logics of professionalism and development allowed NGO members avoid mission drift and realign upward accountability relations into lateral ones.Originality/valueThe study provides insight into successful NGO-corporate partnerships and illustrates how accountability is negotiated, upheld, and reconceptualized in such collaborations.