Partner Strategic Capabilities for Capturing Value from Sustainability-Focused Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships

Abstract

As social and ecological problems escalate, the role of collective capacity and knowledge is becoming more critical in reaching solutions. This capacity and knowledge are dispersed among diverse stakeholder organizations. Thus, organizations in the private, public and civil society sectors are experiencing pressure to address these complex challenges through collaborative action in the form of multi-stakeholder partnerships. One major challenge to securing and maintaining partner engagement in these voluntary collaborative initiatives is defining the value proposition for prospective and existing partner organizations. Understanding the relationship between different forms of partner involvement and the subsequent resources that partners stand to gain is necessary to articulate the value proposition of the partnership to partners. This study conducts a survey of partner organizations from 15 different sustainability-focused multi-stakeholder partnerships in Canada. We compare three partner strategies for implementation and value capture and discover that each strategy is associated with different partner-level resource outcomes. Our findings indicate that product stewardship strategies are associated with financial and organizational capital, marketing and promotion with human capital, and internal implementation structures with shared capital. This study has implications for multi-stakeholder partnership researchers and practitioners because it suggests the possibility that certain partner-level outcomes could rely on the partner, as well as partnership implementation strategies.

Implementing Community Sustainability Plans through Partnership: Examining the Relationship between Partnership Structural Features and Climate Change Mitigation Outcomes

“…However, the literature shows that actual effects of adopting proactive climate actions on the individual organization can be both positive and negative. Research on sustainability in organizations shows that, on the one hand, the proactivity of sustainability actions can bring long-term benefits, such as eco-efficiency, reduction of GHG emissions, and improvement of impact and reputation [28,30,79,82], whereas that research also indicates that, on the other hand, proactive climate actions can increase operation costs, decrease competitive advantage, and negatively affect capital market returns [76,83]. Such a contradiction is a challenge to the adoption of proactive community-wide climate actions because not all partners will be willing or capable of adopting such proactive measures.…”

“…There is, however, the possibility that the abovementioned challenges preventing partners from adopting proactive actions can be addressed through partnership-level efforts. At the partnership level, partners have the opportunity to share knowledge and experience, which reduces human capital barriers to adopting proactive climate actions [30]. Moreover, partnership communication mechanisms, such as awards nights or positive public recognition for sustainability achievement, offer the possibility of reputational benefits to partners, which has been shown to attract funding, as well as talented employees [30,70].…”

“…At the partnership level, partners have the opportunity to share knowledge and experience, which reduces human capital barriers to adopting proactive climate actions [30]. Moreover, partnership communication mechanisms, such as awards nights or positive public recognition for sustainability achievement, offer the possibility of reputational benefits to partners, which has been shown to attract funding, as well as talented employees [30,70]. Through well-structured partnerships, organizations can more readily realize the social and economic advantages to their organization of adopting proactive climate actions, as well as gain awareness of and confidence in pursuing such actions [27,30].…”

“…Past research on collaborative approaches to address sustainability issues have primarily focused on understanding the new governance structures that form to coordinate partner action [26]. Few studies have examined how different features of collaborative governance structures influence outcomes [23,27], and the studies that have tended to focus on partner outcomes, such as human or social capital accrued by partner organizations as a result of partnering for sustainability [28][29][30]. Very little, if any, research has been done to understand how structure affects plan outcomes, such as reductions in GHG emissions [20,21].…”

The Impact of Core Technological Capabilities of High-Tech Industry on Sustainable Competitive Advantage

“…Of course, China is not falling behind since it is working hard to develop new technologies gradually. Therefore, scientific and technological innovation and technological development have quietly coincided with the topic of the rise of the great powers with the trajectory of national scientific and technological innovation, which is also a key factor repeatedly emphasized by the government and enterprises in recent years [1].…”