Cross-sector Social Partnerships Research Articles

Promoting Economic Empowerment Through Effective Implementation and Linking Social Capital in Urban Agriculture Programs

Promoting Economic Empowerment Through Effective Implementation and Linking Social Capital in Urban Agriculture Programs

Partnership Structure and Partner Outcomes: A Comparative Study of Large Community Sustainability Cross-Sector Partnerships in Montreal, Barcelona and Gwangju

The aim of this research was to understand the structural features of large cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) and their resulting partner outcomes. This study analyzed and compared the partnership structures of three large CSSPs, each from a different continent: Barcelona + Sustainable in Barcelona, Spain; Gwangju Council for Sustainable Development in Gwangju, South Korea; and Sustainable Montreal in Montreal, Canada. Based on a survey of the partners in each of the three partnerships, the partner outcomes were also determined and compared. Building on these findings and using abductive analysis, the relationships between the partnerships’ structural features and partner outcomes are considered. An updated set of seven structural features for studying large cross-sector partnerships is offered. The empirical findings show some differences between the partnership designs and between the partner outcomes of the three partnerships. The experiences of the civil society, private sector and public sector partners in each of the cases were relatively similar, showing that in large partnerships, the sector was less relevant than in small partnerships.

Open strategy as a catalyst for innovation: Evidence from cross-sector social partnerships

A principal advantage of open strategy as a decision-making paradigm is the magnification of both the accumulation and heterogeneity of knowledge. Since a key to innovation is the coalescing of dispersed knowledge, open strategy has been an attractive area of scholarly management research over the past two decades. Despite this attention, there has been a paucity of empirical studies on open strategy. Its predictions have not been adequately tested, its boundaries have not been enumerated, nor is the science settled on its application in organizational decision-making. To address this lacuna and to further explore the links between open strategy and innovation, we develop and refine the construct of open strategy and assess its relationship with a common predictor of innovation, absorptive capacity. Within this research, we assess the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the open strategy construct to theoretically refine, validate, and measure it for use in future analysis.

The Role of Community Participation in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships

Communities, intended as self-organized informal groups, are much less structured than nonprofit organizations typically considered by Cross-Sector Social Partnership (CSSP) studies. Building on the empirical investigation of a real CSSP, this article offers an in-depth analysis of the ambivalent dynamics implied by partnership with such communities. Our findings indicate that the mechanisms that create room for innovative collaboration opportunities made available by these communities (such as co-innovation, pricing co-determination, co-financing, and democratic decision making) can also, over time, adversely affect the partnership and cause it to permanently lose its shared purpose. In our conclusion, we provide potential remedies for the latter scenario and discuss how they may enrich CSSP literature.

Business contributions to the sustainable development goals through community sustainability partnerships

PurposeThis study aims to understand how businesses can contribute to the achievement of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) by implementing Local Agenda 21 (or equivalent) plans in partnership with other organizations situated in their city. To this end, the present study examines drivers and outcomes from the perspective of business partners, as well as their relationships to the SDGs.Design/methodology/approachThrough a mixed-methods approach this research studies 71 businesses from four large cross-sector partnerships formed to achieve local sustainability goals. Data were collected through a survey to determine why firms partner and what outcomes they obtain from partnering. Qualitative content analyses are used to determine the relationships between business drivers and outcomes from partnering for local sustainability and the SDGs.FindingsFrom a resource-based view (RBV) perspective, findings show the value of local sustainability partnerships in relation to the SDGs. Many SDG targets are aligned with the top reasons why businesses join large community sustainability partnerships. Also, through the outcomes achieved by participating in the partnership businesses can further the SDGs.Research limitations/implicationsThis research contributes to the literature and to practice through the understanding of businesses partnering for local sustainability, and its relationships to global sustainability. Firstly, the connections of business partners to local and global sustainability are better understood. Of note is the contribution made to the literature on sustainability-related drivers and outcomes expanding and refining RBV literature. Secondly, a positive connection has been established between businesses and the SDGs, proposing a virtuous model of relationship that summarizes the findings from this research. And thirdly, large cross-sector social partnerships are better understood.Practical implicationsSmall- and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations with local offices can further both local and global sustainable development by engaging in local cross-sector sustainability partnerships.Social implicationsThese research findings are crucial for those leading sustainability initiatives, so they can engage businesses actively in light of the important role they play in society improving their contributions and the chances for sustainability partnerships to achieve their goals.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the scale conversation by exploring community sustainability partnerships as a means to understand how business engagement in sustainability at the local level can contribute to the achievement of the SDGs and, ultimately, to global sustainability.

Change through chaos: using bricolage in cross-sector social partnerships

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore bricolage as the missing link in understanding how cross-sector social partnerships form and operate in response to grand challenges. It is proposed that the weaving together of resources employed by members of cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) is bricolage in action and can be linked to Gray's (1985) facilitating conditions for collaboration. While existing research examines bricolage primarily at the individual level, this research studies collective bricolage, as implemented by a cross-sector social partnership in its process to address a grand challenge.Design/methodology/approachThe authors follow the evolution of a Midwestern initiative aimed at the grand challenge of generational poverty. The deductive case study approach identifies the mechanisms of bricolage being employed in the initiative's evolution and ties these to Gray's (1985) seminal paper on interorganizational collaboration.FindingsThis case study has implications for academics conceptually struggling to understand grand challenges and the role of entrepreneurial initiatives in the public and nonprofit sectors, as well as practitioners currently involved in collaborative efforts to address said challenges.Originality/valueThis study enriches the discussion and enhances the link between the CSSP literature and new notions of social entrepreneurship that embrace the collective as their unit of analysis. This is the first work of its kind to link bricolage to a nascent CSSP and demonstrate how the entrepreneurial concept of bricolage is an inherent part of CSSP formation and operation.

Factors impacting success of cross-sector social partnerships for corporate social responsibility: an Indian perspective

Factors impacting success of cross-sector social partnerships for corporate social responsibility: an Indian perspective

Influence of Partner Characteristics and Relational Capital on the Success of Business/Nonprofit Organization Partnerships

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the largest framework of global cooperation for human and environmental development on a global scale. This framework requires new responses in the social and political spheres. To a large extent, these can come from different economic and social sectors working together to create synergies that will allow quantitatively significant progress to be made towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Because of that, in the last few decades, the number of cross-sector social partnerships, and, in particular, partnerships between businesses and nonprofit organizations (NPOs), has increased enormously. However, despite their importance, a large proportion of these partnership processes have been unsuccessful due to the different characteristics of the partners and the relational complexity involved in the multiple factors that affect the collaboration over time. In this regard, the business-NPO literature has stressed the importance of improving the existing understanding of the main factors which favour a partnership’s success as well as the interrelationships among those factors. Following different theoretical perspectives used mainly in the context of business-to-business collaborative relationships, the authors test how partner characteristics indirectly influence the success of the partnerships through relational capital. The results, based on a sample (n = 102) of Spanish businesses in collaboration relationships with NPOs, show that partner characteristics (shared values and resource complementarity) help in the formation of relational capital (trust, information sharing, and commitment), and that this positively influences the success of such partnership processes (achievement of objectives and satisfaction of the partners).

Cross-Sector Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Understanding Community (dis)Engagement

The growing complexity of grand challenges such as sustainable development has drawn attention to cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) as platforms to solve wicked problems. In management studies in general, and in CSSP studies in particular the “local” and the “community” have reemerged as operational spaces and units of study, yet the lack of a clear definition and the interchangeable use of community in the literature presents an opportunity for management scholars. By using an alternative conceptualization of community, which emphasizes communities as relational systems between actors relative to the purpose of the CSSP, this paper uses a case-study approach with three embedded units CSSPs for sustainable development of the bamboo industry in an indigenous region in Mexico. I propose a typology for the different types of engagement and disengagement of actors that affect and are affected by the CSSP relational system which goes beyond the partners and beneficiaries. I look at the factors that explain these different types of engagement and disengagement and how they affect the CSSP. This study contributes to the CSSP literature by broadening the scope of how we define CSSP communities and by deepening our understanding of interactions between system context, CSSP antecedents and the different types of engagement of the CSSP community.

Collaborative Sustainable Business Models: Understanding Organizations Partnering for Community Sustainability

Cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) are relevant units of analysis for understanding sustainable business models (SBMs). This research examines how organizations value their motivations to participate in large sustainability-focused partnerships, how they perceive the value captured, and their structures implemented to address sustainability partnerships. Two hundred and twenty-four organizations partnering within four large sustainability CSSPs were surveyed using an augmented resource-based view (RBV) theoretical framework. Results show that partners were motivated by and captured value related to sustainability-, organizational-, and human-oriented resources, and that organizations prefer more informal than formal structural elements to implement their partnerships’ sustainability strategies. Contributions to SBM and CSSP fields are revealed. SBM thinking is a provocation toward seeking integrated sustainable value creation, helping show the value of large CSSPs. Conversely, by conceiving of large, pluralistic CSSPs as “collaborative SBMs,” we extend the idea of the “business model” to the societal level, exploring how value is captured in partnership.

Collide or Collaborate: The Interplay of Competing Logics and Institutional Work in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships

An increasing body of institutional research has examined organizations’ response to conflicting institutional logics, but few studies have looked into how cross-sector organizational actors experiencing institutional complexity strategize their response mechanisms to create value in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We conduct a comparative case study of nine social partnerships between multinational companies (MNCs) and nonprofits in China. We identify a partnership logic among the value-creating partnerships where partners guided by an either/and mindset take joint ownership of the social or sustainability issue/cause and integrate it into their core set of activities and goals. By contrast, the less successful partnerships guided by an either/or mindset pursue a substitution logic in which the issue and project are kept separate and marginalized from core activities and goals. We contribute to an understanding of the value creation of cross-sector social partnerships by revealing the institutional embeddedness of such partnerships and deriving a process model of collaborative value creation through institutional works in social partnerships.

Not a panacea, but vital for improvement? Leadership development programmes in South African schools

The performance of South Africa’s educational system in national and international tests indicates that a large proportion of its public schools are underperforming. Ineffective leadership has been put forward as one reason. This paper analyses a leadership development programme, Partners for Possibility (PfP), which seeks to strengthen leadership in underperforming schools. PfP employs a one-year, cross-sector social partnership that pairs school principals with business leaders. Literature on leadership development attests to the problem of learning transfer. Interviews were conducted with 9 PfP principalbusiness leader dyads and 4 PfP unpaired participants. The research also included observations of PfP meetings and analysis of PfP reports. Although PfP’s partnerships were found to support the school principals’ learning, the cost of the programme limits its scalability. PfP’s group learning component was also found to sometimes divert partnerships from transformational to transactional forms. This study contributes to the understanding of learning transfer within social partnerships. It also highlights a limitation of programmes such as PfP, which aim at school improvement, but are not focused on instructional practice. The article explores ways in which partnership programmes could be strengthened. Keywords: cross-sector social partnership; leadership development; learning transfer; Partners for Possibility; principals; school improvement; school leadership

Factors Impacting Success of Cross-Sector Social Partnerships for Corporate Social Responsibility: An Indian Perspective

Factors Impacting Success of Cross-Sector Social Partnerships for Corporate Social Responsibility: An Indian Perspective

Cross-Sector Social Partnerships for Social Entrepreneurship Organizing

Organization scholars have considered social entrepreneurship (SE) an important tool for catalyzing social and institutional change. However, a coherent theoretical framework that captures the uniq...

Partner Selection in Social Entrepreneurship Collectives: How Team Selection Control Can Enhance Satisfaction in Cross-Sector Social Partnerships

Cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) represent a unique form of collective social entrepreneurship. This research explores team selection control – the ability of an entrepreneurial social collective to provide input into the selection of team members – as an important antecedent of team and job satisfaction. Additionally, this study considers the role of justice in moderating these relationships. The role of team selection control was tested in a sample of cross-sector social partnerships spanning all three economic sectors and divergent social objectives. Primary study results indicate that team selection control is important to individuals participating in CSSPs and that perceived levels of justice can moderate the relationships between team selection control and job and team satisfaction. The implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

Navigating tensions in a cross‐sector social partnership: How a convener drives change for sustainability

AbstractIn this paper, we study conveners' work in establishing change towards sustainability through cross‐sector social partnerships (CSSPs). Applying a paradox lens, we offer a new perspective on tensions in CSSPs: These are not hurdles or challenges to overcome in order to reach success but endure throughout the entire CSSP process. This insight changes the role of the convener, who no longer has to overcome but has to navigate tension. We focus on two tensions related to the convener role: the convener as leader but without formal authority over CSSP‐partners and the convener as both stakeholder and (neutral) facilitator in the process. Through a case study on a CSSP in the Dutch timber sector, we explain how a convener (Forest Stewardship Council Netherlands) responded to these tensions over time. We add to literatures on CSSPs and convening by outlining the relevance of a paradox perspective in this domain.

Formation and Function of a Collegiate Athletics Sustainability Committee

Institutions of higher learning may be considered dual-identity organizations because of the perceived distinctiveness between universities’ academic and athletic missions. One way in which these barriers can be weakened is through cross-sector social partnerships (CSSP), a form of collaborative engagement aimed at achieving a common societal goal. In this study, we examine the formation of a university-directed CSSP focused on enhancing environmentally sustainable initiatives within the athletic department. Interviews with 11 members of a so-called Green Team illustrate the processes of boundary spanning and boundary blurring. As demonstrated in the article, boundary spanning occurred under the leadership of a “champion” who assembled a team of stakeholders to assist with the major renovation of a pro-environmental football stadium. Though the sustainability committee has a common goal, not all experiences of Green Team members have been the same. In light of these differences, we identify key barriers and prescribe solutions that can lead to the realization of a new organizational form.

Does Cross-Sector Collaboration Lead to Higher Nonprofit Capacity?

Cross-sector social partnership (CSSP) case-based theory and research have long argued that nonprofits that engage in more integrative and enduring cross-sector partnerships should increase their organizational capacity. By increasing their capacity, nonprofits increase their ability to contribute to systemic change. The current research investigates this claim in a large-scale empirical research study. In particular, this study examines whether nonprofits that have a greater number of integrated cross-sector partnerships have greater capacities for financial management, strategic planning, external communication, board leadership, mission orientation, and staff management than nonprofits that have other types of interorganizational relationships. Moreover, it examines whether the length of these partnerships is associated with better capacity. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis drawn from surveys of 452 nonprofit organizations suggests that cross-sector collaboration is not systematically related to increased capacity. However, the results suggest that more enduring relationships between government and nonprofit organizations that extend beyond funder–recipient relationships are related to greater strategic planning capacity. Implications for CSSP research are drawn from the results, especially those concerned with the outcomes of CSSPs.

Cross‐Sector Partnerships: An Examination of Success Factors

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the drivers involved in an alternative business model: cross‐sector social partnerships (CSSPs) between for‐profit, predominantly multinational corporations (MNCs) and nonprofit organizations (NPOs). We explore these cross‐sector social partnerships (CSSPs) from the perspective of these primary stakeholders, examining the questions of power differentials and the definitions and determinants of success. In order more deeply to understand these drivers, we review the evolution of the concept of “value” and the perception of the value that each stakeholder brings to the partnership. We then describe and offer the results of an empirical, qualitative study of 18 CSSPs, where we analyze each partner's representations of success, outcomes sought and distinctions in determinants of value within the partnerships.

Cross-Sector Social Partnerships for Social Change: The Roles of Non-Governmental Organizations

Complex social and environmental issues call for broader collaboration across different sectors so as to instigate transformative social change. While previous scholars have emphasized the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in facilitating social change, they have not provided a nuanced assessment of NGOs’ different roles. We use the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario (PEPSO) research partnership as a study case and explore NGO partners’ different roles in a large cross-sector social partnership (CSSP). By interviewing 12 NGO partners and 4 non-NGO partners involved in the PEPSO research partnership, our research results show that NGOs primarily have 10 roles in a CSSP. They include enabling roles such as consultant, capacity builder, analyst, and funder; coordinating roles such as broker and communicator; and facilitating roles such as initiator, leader, advocate, and monitor. These roles allow NGOs to fulfil their duties to make substantial contributions to a CSSP.