The Collaborative Edge: Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Dynamic Societal Impact

Martina Hutton

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2026, vol. 11, issue 1, 65 - 77

Abstract: Multi-stakeholder partnerships comprising diverse stakeholders working across sectors to address a single and profound societal issue have received limited theoretical and empirical attention in consumer research. Integrating perspectives from partnering literature and social psychology, this article introduces a new exploratory concept in order to surface how stakeholders characterize and enact collaboration for enriched impact. Dynamic societal impact is the collaborative processes and actionable outcomes of multi-stakeholder partnerships addressing and solving a societal problem across community contexts. Empirical insights from a series of in-depth interviews with members of the Access to Good Food network, a complex food resilience collaboration, demonstrate how multi-stakeholder partnering is shaped through five integrated phenomena: (i) community clustering, (ii) correlation of resources, (iii) coalition of willing, (iv) collective advantage, and (v) cultivating diversity. Applying the lens of dynamic societal impact, this study contributes original theoretical and practical understandings of how working toward joint purposive action develops the collaborative edge.

Date: 2026
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