The Role of Institutional Context for Sustainability Cross-Sector Partnerships. An Exploratory Analysis of European Cities

Abstract

Institutional contexts influence structures and processes of any organizational system. Most of the research on cross-sector partnerships (CSSPs) has focused on their internal performance, methods, and effectiveness; however, the institutional contexts that allow or inhibit their development have been limitedly assessed. Many local CSSPs address sustainability issues, and this research explores Barcelona + Sustainable’s and Bristol Green Capital Partnership’s institutional contexts at the local, national, and international levels. Interviews were conducted with the leaders of the partnerships and responses were assessed using Scott’s (1995) institutional pillars. Findings show the cultural-cognitive and normative institutional elements of context as the most relevant for local sustainability CSSPs, with regulatory elements not existing at the national level nor cultural-cognitive at the international scale. More importantly, results highlight trust, diversity, communication channels, sense of place, changing perceptions, and coopetition as key learnings to be considered for other partnerships in their design. Finally, with cultural-cognitive and normative elements speaking of the power of local features, it is these partnerships the ones influencing others beyond their scopes of action, with the potential of leading sustainability even further. However, associated activities and resources to provide stability and meaning to sustainability partnerships must be satisfied for that to happen.

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

“…Risks and resources can be critical contextual influences on CSP activities, determining the quality of outcomes and scale of impacts in development‐focused CSPs (Nyamwanza & Bhatasara, 2017). While purposes and relationship enablers tend to drive collaborative dynamics, contexts can enable or encumber both partner‐ and CSP‐level strategic objectives and operations (Kuijpers & Meershoek, 2013; Ordonez‐Ponce, 2021). PCT provides the full range of contexts and corresponding substructure that can serve as a template for characterizing CSP contexts and cataloging their relative influence on partner‐ and CSP‐level processes and activities.…”

“…The context domain comprises factors in the working environment that affect CSP processes and functions, including economic, sociopolitical, and geophysical drivers of CSP dynamics (Ordonez‐Ponce, 2021; Sdunzik et al, 2022). Expositions on CSP environments in management and social science literature are often confined to specific case studies with few comprehensive discussions on influential contextual dimensions (van Tulder et al, 2016; Yang et al, 2013; Yuan et al, 2020).…”

Partnership Structure and Partner Outcomes: A Comparative Study of Large Community Sustainability Cross-Sector Partnerships in Montreal, Barcelona and Gwangju

“…As organizations are part of the external environment with which they interact and engage for resources and in which they have interests, they must structure themselves according to the contexts they face [18,19], and this is not different for partnerships [20]. Within the CSSP literature, structures are "a key driver of the way agendas are shaped and implemented"; they affect the things organizations do by determining key factors around influencing power and resources [21], p. 1166.…”

The role of local cultural factors in the achievement of the sustainable development goals

“…Cultural inputs were found to be positively related to the achievement of all the SDGs (Streimikiene et al, 2019;Zheng et al, 2021). For example, culture was found to be directly connected to the achievement of sustainable cities and communities (SDG#11) (Allam & Newman, 2018;Hosagrahar et al, 2016;Turner, 2017), to water issues (SDG#6) (Mascarenhas, 2021), to the development of renewable energy (Pelau & Pop, 2018) and to the role that partnerships play in sustainable development (SDG#17) (Movono & Hughes, 2020;Ordonez-Ponce, 2021). Furthermore, the integration of culture with nature has been highlighted so that ecological challenges such as those proposed by SDGs#13, 14, and 15 can be better addressed (Dangelico et al, 2020;Mi et al, 2020;Potts, 2017;Yuriev & Sierra-Bar on, 2020), When assessing culture more deeply, many researchers have used Hofstede's model of dimensions of national cultures (Hofstede, 2011), although with mixed results.…”