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

Adriane MacDonald, Amelia Clarke, Lei Huang and M. May Seitanidi
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Adriane MacDonald: Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge, 4401 University Drive W, Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4, Canada
Amelia Clarke: School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED), University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue W, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
Lei Huang: School of Business, State University of New York at Fredonia, 280 Central Avenue, Fredonia, NY 14063, USA
M. May Seitanidi: Kent Business School, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ, UK

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-19

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.

Keywords: community sustainability plans; cross-sector social partnership; Local Agenda 21; multi-stakeholder partnerships; partner outcomes; resource-based view theory; strategic capabilities; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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