Cross-sector partnerships (CSSPs) are alliances of organizations from across sectors who collaborate to achieve common goals. CSSPs have become increasingly popular for addressing sustainability challenges1 such as climate change2, the Sustainable Development Goals3, or even COVID-194, representing an opportunity for Sustainable Business Models (SBMs) to achieve integrative value, i.e., that which encompasses the creation of social, ecological, and economic value for all stakeholders. However, among the values created by SBMs for society and the natural environment5, the value least developed is where these are integrated6,7. While SBMs are commonly articulated at the organizational level, integrative value creation depends on partnering across sectors, which usually compete with diverse interests or value logics8. We aimed to extend our understanding of integrative value creation through connecting the SBM perspective to the study of CSSPs.
In this study9, we examined four large CSSPs for community sustainability to understand the perceived value of resources to the participating organizations, as well as their implemented structural features. The four CSSPs (associated to Barcelona, Bristol, Gwangju, and Montreal) have each more than one hundred partners from the private, public and civil society sectors; they have been around for at least fifteen years and their individual strategies aim to impact more than a million people. The total number of partners who responded to our survey was 224 (26% response rate), 65% with up to 50 employees and 20% with more than 500, 46% have partnered for more than a year and 45% for more than 5 years, and those who responded were mostly middle and senior level managers (77%). More than half of the respondents were civil society organizations and a third from the private sector. The survey asked them to value resources to partner for community sustainability, and the structural features they implemented when partnering.
Results showed that the most valuable resources for partnering organizations were sustainability- (e.g., contributing positively to environmental and community sustainability), human- (e.g., sharing their own experiences, gaining knowledge, learning and expertise), and organizational-oriented resources (e.g., engaging with the community, building new relationships, collaborating with others, and networking). Conversely, financial- and physical-oriented resources were the least valuable including having access to funding opportunities, developing new products or services and making new businesses, and improving physical process and increasing physical resources. We also found that partnering organizations implemented mostly informal structural features10 when partnering for sustainability (e.g., partnering with others; implementing plans, policies, reporting, and monitoring and controlling practices; and having cross-functional teams), instead of formal features (e.g., creating new positions; assigning more budget; generating revenue; creating a department; acquiring debt; or assigning infrastructure, an office, or machines)11. Finally, organizations from the private, public, and civil society sectors valued resources similarly and implemented comparable informal structural features when partnering for sustainability.
Our research suggests that large CSSPs can help SBMs in the achievement of integrative value creation, as sustainability-, human, and organizational-related resources are the most valuable for organizations. The partnership context contributes to highlighting resources not traditionally associated with business and gaining competitive advantage, but a collaborative advantage that would benefit all partners as well as society. Sustainability is the glue that keeps them together towards a common goal, where SBMs can create integrated value. CSSPs represent a space beyond the boundaries of organizational contexts and what defines them, giving partners the chance of merging their value logics and creating integrative value. Similarly, the business model approach, which is limitedly anchored at the organizational level, can be overcome through CSSPs as a way to integrate SBMs. We propose CSSPs as “the collaborative SBM”. While SBMs are about the creation, delivery, and capture of ecological, social, and economic value for all stakeholders12, through extending its notion to the partnership level, we contribute to the integrative dimension of sustainable value creation7,13. In practical terms, this means the integration of all stakeholders in a collaborative manner for the delivery of value that would benefit partnering organizations as well as society so that the pressing sustainability challenges we currently face can be better addressed.
(1) Gray, B., & Stites, J. P. 2013. Sustainability Through Partnerships; Network for Business Sustainability: London, ON.
(2) UNEP. Climate Change Initiatives and Partnerships https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/climate-change/about-climate-change/climate-change-initiatives-and-partnerships.
(3) UN. Goal 17: Revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/globalpartnerships/.
(4) WHO. Partners Platform for Health in Emergencies https://covid19partnersplatform.who.int/en/.
(5) Schaltegger, S., Lüdeke-Freund, F., & Hansen, E. G. 2016. Business Models for Sustainability: A Co-Evolutionary Analysis of Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Transformation. Organization & Environment, 29 (3): 264–289. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026616633272.
(6) Bocken, N. M. P., Short, S., Rana, P., & Evans, S. 2014. A Literature and Practice Review to Develop Sustainable Business Model Archetype. Journal of Cleaner Production, 65: 42–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.11.039.
(7) Lüdeke-Freund, F., Carroux, S., Joyce, A., Massa, L., & Breuer, H. 2018. The Sustainable Business Model Pattern Taxonomy – 45 Patterns to Support Sustainability-Oriented Business Model Innovation. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 15: 145–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j-spc.2018.06.004.
(8) Laasch, O. 2018. Beyond the Purely Commercial Business Model: Organizational Value Logics and the Heterogeneity of Sustainability Business Models. Long Range Planning, 51: 158–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2017.09.002.
(9) Ordonez-Ponce, E., Clarke, A., & Colbert, B. A. 2021. Collaborative Sustainable Business Models: Understanding Organizations Partnering for Community Sustainability. Business & Society, 60 (5): 1174–1215. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650320940241.
(10) Casson, M. C., Della Giusta, M., Kambhampati, U. S. 2010. Formal and Informal Institutions and Development. World Development, 38 (2): 137–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2009.10.008.
(11) Ordonez-Ponce, E., & Clarke, A. 2020. Sustainability Cross-Sector Partnerships: The Strategic Role of Organizational Structures. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 27 (5): 2122–2134. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1952.
(12) Kurucz, E. C., Colbert, B. A., Lüdeke-Freund, F., Upward, A., & Willard, B. 2017. Relational Leadership for Strategic Sustainability: Practices and Capabilities to Advance the Design and Assessment of Sustainable Business Models. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140: 189–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.03.087.
(13) Schaltegger, S., & Burritt, R. L. 2005. Corporate Sustainability. In The International Yearbook of Environmental and Resource Economics 2005/2006: A Survey of Current Issues; Folmer, H., Tietenberg, T. H., Eds.; Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.: Cheltenham, UK; pp 185–222.