An interdisciplinary perspective on private sector engagement in cross‐sector partnerships: Thewhy,where, andhow

Abstract

Private sector engagement (PSE) is increasingly acknowledged in both literature and practice as a necessary mechanism to sustainably address development challenges. Despite increased practitioner and academic interest in these partnerships, there have been negligible attempts to systematically investigate crosssector partnerships to distill best practices from the multiple environments in which they are employed. This manuscript presents a robust review of the social science and business literatures on cross-sector partnerships, yielding an interdisciplinary, evidence-based framework detailing archetypes of three prominent partnership characteristics of purpose, context, and relationship enablers. This work integrates a wide range of best practices and values pertinent to businesses and society, enabling researchers, practitioners, and partnership managers to characterize and evaluate partnerships systematically. The introduced framework also enables partners to situate and evaluate their partnership activities to optimize outcomes for each partner and impact on the challenge at hand.

Investigating the robustness and relevance of an evidence‐based sense‐making construct to bridge the research‐practice gap in cross‐sector partnerships

“…In CSP practice, developing concomitant strategies to manage and navigate such dynamism and nuance in purposes for CSPs over the duration of engagement can be essential for good collaborative outcomes (Seitanidi et al, 2010; Selsky & Parker, 2005). Organizational interests can be difficult to discern as partners experience different levels of immersion and comfort with collaborative processes and outcomes over the engagement horizon (Klus et al, 2019; Laan et al, 2011; Sdunzik et al, 2022). PCT provides a complete list of CSP purposes that can inform diagnostic tools and templates for assessing shifting dynamics in partner motivations.…”

“…The purpose domain comprises the inherent motivations of stakeholders to seek out, engage, and maintain CSPs (Sdunzik et al, 2022).…”

“…Coalition frameworks identify cognitive, interpersonal, and behavioral dimensions of inter‐organizational relations as influential regulators of engagement (Huang et al, 2018; Seitanidi et al, 2010). Building on these cross‐linked themes, PCT provides an interdisciplinary, systematic, and holistic sense‐making view of CSP dynamics that harmonizes three cross‐cutting drivers of CSP dynamics partially discussed in other theoretical perspectives (Sdunzik et al, 2022): partnership purposes (Klus et al, 2019; Seitanidi et al, 2010), situational context (Al‐Tabbaa et al, 2019; Iurkov & Benito, 2018), and relationship enablers (Anzola‐Román et al, 2019; Findikoglu & Watson‐Manheim, 2015). We briefly describe the framework next.…”

“…The purpose domain comprises the inherent motivations of stakeholders to seek out, engage, and maintain CSPs (Sdunzik et al, 2022). Partner purposes for CSPs determine intra‐organizational incentives needed to meet a mutually defined set of expectations and establish engagement prerogatives and priorities (Lin & Darnall, 2015).…”

“…However, extant CSP models tend to be both discipline‐specific, and presented at a level of abstraction that limits practitioner adoption and translation to real‐world CSPs for development. Awareness of these limitations recently led to the development of partnership capacity theory (PCT)—an interdisciplinary, actionable model of collaborative CSP dynamics that integrates perspectives on CSP formation and strategic management from diverse views on inter‐organizational relations in management and social science scholarship (Sdunzik et al, 2022). PCT posits three critical drivers for CSP relationships: purpose (reasons organizations partner); context (environmental and organizational traits that mediate CSP and partner dynamics); and relationship enablers (inter‐organizational engagement strategies that drive inter‐partner relations).…”