By Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen, Florian Lüdeke-Freund, Irene Henriques, & M. May Seitanidi

The world faces a vast number of sustainability challenges, including marine pollution, deforestation, water scarcity, food waste, and overconsumption. These complex challenges cut across organisations, industries, sectors and geographies, which have made collaborations and partnerships a key component in global efforts to step up the sustainability agenda. To quote the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

“The SDGs can only be realized with strong global partnerships and cooperation. A successful development agenda requires inclusive partnerships — at the global, regional, national and local levels — built upon principles and values, and upon a shared vision and shared goals placing people and the planet at the centre.”

Companies also increasingly recognise sustainability as a collaborative affair. They team up with non-profit organisations on greening their supply chains, work with charity organisations on circular economy solutions, and take part in multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainability. Where some collaborative efforts remain at the level of philanthropy and pilot testing, others hold potential for transforming the organisations and business models.

Collaboration is at the core of new sustainability-driven business models, yet limited knowledge exist on how these relationships are measured, managed, and organised. So, we guest edited a special issue of Business & Society to draw attention to collaborative cross-sector business models for sustainability. This special issue became the academic meeting point of three different streams of literature: sustainability, cross-sector collaboration, and business model innovation.

The special issue provides new conceptual and empirical insights on how broader collectives of organisations address complex sustainability challenges. From a variety of theoretical lenses, the authors deepen our understanding of these complex collaborative architectures, whether it relates to governance mechanisms or partner tensions. Theoretically, the special issue spans from resource-based view (RBV) to complex adaptive systems (CAS). Empirically, the special issue covers a diverse mix of cases, ranging from the textile industry to healthcare sector.

Today, collaborations have become the sine qua non for addressing “wicked” sustainability problems, i.e., complex challenges without clear solutions that cut across organisational, sectoral, and national boundaries. Hopefully, the special issue can stimulate future academic discussions on how cross-sector cooperation can inspire sustainability-driven innovation that benefits business as well as society.

Reference:

Pedersen, E.R.G., Lüdeke-Freund, F., Henriques, I, Seitanidi, M.M. 2021. Toward Collaborative Cross-Sector Business Models for Sustainability, Business & Society, 60(5), 1039–1058, DOI: 10.1177/0007650320959027