A Literature Review of Inter-Organizational Sustainability Learning

Abstract

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) have become increasingly important for today’s firms as they build sustainability strategies that integrate SDGs into their core activities. Addressing these goals collaboratively, in line with SDG 17—partnerships for the goals, has gained momentum, hence the growing literature on sustainability-oriented partnerships. However, addressing SDGs through partnerships is not straightforward. For firms, contributing to SDGs through alliances and partnerships requires building environmental capabilities and embracing new value frames; in other words, going through the complex process of inter-organizational learning. This paper reviews the literature on sustainability-oriented partnerships with a focus on the inter-organizational learning process. As a result of the review, a model of inter-organizational sustainability learning is presented. This model captures the different levels and types of the inter-organizational learning process; partner and partnership characteristics that impact learning; the environmental conditions that set the conditions for learning to take place; the catalyst and inhibitors of learning; and finally outcomes of learning. This model expands and re-organizes the existing scholarly conversation about inter-organizational learning in the context of sustainability-oriented alliances and partnerships and offers a learning-based understanding of sustainability partnerships to practitioners. Based on the review, the paper proposes ideas for future research and contributes to the development of a future research agenda in the area of sustainability-oriented alliances and partnerships.

From Barriers to Enablers: The Role of Organizational Learning in Transitioning SMEs into the Circular Economy

“…In fact, the more frequent participation in meetings (mean 3.05), single-project teams (mean 2.94), working groups (mean 2.80) and multi-project teams (mean 2.62) underline the importance of the discussion among organizational actors inside construction SMEs, as already highlighted from the literature [63]. At the interorganizational level, a high evaluation is given to the participation in professional association activities (mean 2.83), alliances (mean 2.80) and network contract (mean 2.32), confirming previous studies on interorganizational learning processes [59,67]. However, it is surprising that the collaboration with other partners, universities and research center for R&D project are rarely used for KT processes among construction SMEs.…”

“…The presented study offers the analysis of the processes oriented to stimulate a sustainable-oriented transition of SMEs, using an innovative theoretical background of OL [19,20,30]. The paper mainly focuses on the investigation of the role of OL processes and related contextual elements, contributing to a wider understanding of the preliminary phases of CE-related business models introduction [18] inside SMEs, as in the identification of intraorganizational and interorganizational learning processes that might support their sustainable evolution [13,44,67].…”

“…Following Wenger [59], also other studies have focused on the professional association context as a possible configuration of a CoP [66], shedding light of the potential role of this interorganizational setting for learning scopes. Specific interorganizational learning processes are at disposal for organizations to evolve into a sustainable and CE approach, such as alliances and networks [67]; in addition, those interorganizational solutions appear to be specifically useful to minimize the structural limitations of SMEs as they might offer resource and structure sharing [68]. Other networking solutions for organizations are represented by the participation in research projects carried out by universities or research centers [69] or activated by partner firms [70] which could be related to the development of OL processes focused on specific industrial applications.…”

“…As mentioned above, also the exploitation of the mentioned structures might be envisioned only after the activation of stakeholder engagement activities inside the sector, such as through communication campaigns from platform developers, green marketing strategies by networks and alliances [125], and the sharing of best practices [73] and CE-related knowledge diffusion via representative bodies and CoPs [59,66,123]. Those promotional activities among key SC stakeholders are shown to be particularly relevant in the construction sector for the achievement of green business model transformation [126], and would contribute to obtaining the desired attention and related beneficial outcome from CE-oriented partnership and alliances [67]. Once a CE-oriented stakeholders culture is developed, and SC collaborative structures are exploited, the activation of CBM-related processes appears to be eased and practically applicable both at in the SC context and at organizational level in this specific sector (see for example, a multiple case study analysis from [15]), and thus also interorganizational CBM-oriented OL processes might be easily implemented (Proposition 3).…”

Are partnerships in nonprofit organizations being governed for sustainability? A partnering life cycle assessment

“…The 17 SDGs are an urgent call to action by all countries to promote sustainable development in social, economic, and environmental aspects [ 5 , 6 ]. SDG 17, to "strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development", can be considered as a meta-goal for implementing the other SDGs [ 6 , 7 ]. Global partnerships facilitate the necessary institutional and organizational structures to foster the transformational changes required to achieve multiple SDGs [ 4 , 8 ].…”