Article2013

Creating partnering space: exploring the right fit for sustainable development partnerships

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Public Policy and Administration Research Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Community Health and Development

Abstract

The rationale of cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) suggests that collaboration has an impact for the society going beyond benefits for the individual partners and creating“new socio-economic developmental models” (Googins and Rochlin, 2000: 127) in which not separate actors, but their relationships shape the relevant change (Glasbergen, 2011).This change is facilitated by“collaborative advantage” (Huxham andVangen, 2005), or the synergy that is created through organizations bundling their “core complementary competencies” (Warner and Sullivan, 2004). Borrowing from resource dependency literature, we can talk of different types of “organizational fit”between partners in the partnering space.“Organizational fit”describes the internal match or the compatibility between organizations, taking into account “organizational processes, such as culture, human resources, policies, and administrative systems” (Kim et al., 2012; 136, referring to Saxton, 1997).The degree of fit enables the generation of synergistic value – the better the fit, the greater the value creation (Austin and Seitanidi, 2012). From a management perspective this means that the more appropriate roles are aligned, the greater the chance for value creation. From a societal perspective,organizational fit defines the preconditions for sustainable development, which requires a proper alignment between the interests of the three most important institutional spheres: state, market, and civil society.The reverse argument is that the smaller the fit, the bigger the chance of misalignment, role conflicts and skewed development trajectories. In essence, CSSPs can therefore be considered as a necessary institutional innovation to address complex sustainability problems and provide new ways to govern and manage relations in societies.But they – when ill designed and ill-fitted – can also prolong problems or create new ones. Literature on partnerships has mainly focused on bilateral interfaces, in particularon interfaces between the market and the state (PPPs); the state and civil society(nPPPs) and between the market and civil society (PnPPs).Most of these interfaces have been studied from the perspective of one actor: either the firm, the civil society organization, or the government.The number of studies that actually consider the interaction (the interface) as level of analysis still remains limited.The implication of this is that profit-nonprofit partnership studies concentrate on the question whether cross-sector partnerships produce “social good” or create “shared value” without considering whether this good/value represents a “public” or a “private” good or value and thus a primary responsibility (source of legitimacy) for a specific actor. CSSPs, however, are potentially problematic as the partners assume roles and responsibilities that may be incompatible with their core logics (Glasbergen, 2011 referring toWaddell, 2005).As Glasbergen describes “NGOs are bound by their identification with and loyalty to civic values; the market mechanism forces businesses to act in their own economic interest; governments are responsible for the public good and need to consider implementation gaps in their policies” (2011: 5). Societal identities of actors are restricted; therefore, their roles and responsibilities in a partnership should be aligned to their core complementary competencies. Finding the “golden fit” and developing reciprocal relationships is then the only way for developing effective partnerships. “Crowding-out” is thereby one of the most recurring effects of misconfigurationof societal roles in a partnership. Ill-conceived bilateral partnerships aim at output that is not in their direct sphere of influence or line of responsibility and legitimacy. Profit-non-profit partnerships (PnPPs) that aim at the provision of public goods may crowd out governments, with the result of inadequate governance. Public-private partnerships that (also) aim at the provision of community goods can remove important incentives of communities and citizens to take up responsibility for their own interests. Government-NGO partnerships (nPPP) aimed at the provision of private goods (often subsidized), disrupt the functioning of markets and thereby can limit efficiency.These examples of misalignment are not theoretical.The various types represent different levels of commitment to engage in mutually dependent positions resulting in different potential collaboration types along the “collaborative continuum” by Austin and Seitanidi (2012). It can be summarized that discussing partnerships is about the debate on public and private responsibilities, profit and nonprofit interests, their relationships and how to configure actors and their roles most effectively for stimulating change for sustainable development (cf.Glasbergen,2011). In the management literature, the argument has been put forward for theintegration of resource-based (power bases) and institutions-based (societal position) views (Peng,2002). In the public management and development literature comparable arguments have been used to plead for the integration of various coordination mechanisms in society, based upon the roles taken by their most important agents of change (firms,governments, civil society organizations).Only a minor group of CSSP scholars have however linked the organizational and the institutional perspective and investigated the effects of prevailing institutional logics on the configuration of partnerships (see Vurro et al., 2010). Institutional logics provide a framework of meaning for roles and actions to organizations, which “represents a source oflegitimacy and appropriateness for agents to identifying with” (Vurro et al., 2010: 43, referring to March and Olsen, 1989). By introducing the concept of the “partnering space” as a frame in which to consider the positioning games played by actors from different societal sectors in order to contribute to sustainable development,our contribution distinguishes partnership types by focusing on roles and responsibilities of societal actors in CSSPs. Understanding the basic roles of each party in cross-sector partnerships should also lead to a more fine-grained understanding on the “fit” between partners and finally, the “synergistic relationships” based on which partners aim to create value for sustainable development.As our framework identifies a set of different partnering types in the partnering space, we are also able to develop propositions on the possibility of partners to reach a specific stage of the“collaborative continuum” (Austin and Seitanidi, 2012). With this largely taxonomical activity we aim to contribute to a more compre-hensive analytical framework in which to document the nature of the dynamic interactions between organizations (firms, NGOs, governments) and institutions (formal and informal constraints, rules, relationships, and roles) in which strategic choices are created. From an analytical perspective, this exercise should make it possible to link meso-level interactions at the partnership level to macro-level assessments of their contribution to sustainable development. From a managerial perspective, this exercise should inform parties on how to create “organizational fit” for effective sustainable development partnerships. As an answer to the conceptual and theoretical ambiguities around the conceptof “cross-sector partnerships” this contribution first comes up with a relatively simple actor-based classification of four types of cross-sector partnerships and three types of coordination mechanisms (section 2),which consequently define what we can call the“partnering space” for development relevant partnerships.The dynamics of these collaborations that develop in this space and their function for sustainable development can be assessed in a more idealistic and more realistic manner.We argue that balancing these two angles requires a deeper understanding of the roles which societal actors adopt in a partnership (section 3).We develop a framework which leads to a more fine-grained taxonomy of partnership types which captures the natures of the dynamic interactions of organizations and institutions in collaborations for sustainable development. Specific partnerships can be expected to make different contributions to sustainable development.