Partner Strategic Capabilities for Capturing Value from Sustainability-Focused Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships
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Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge, 4401 University Drive W, Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4, Canada
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School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED), University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue W, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
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School of Business, State University of New York at Fredonia, 280 Central Avenue, Fredonia, NY 14063, USA
4
Kent Business School, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(3), 557; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030557
Received: 12 December 2018 / Revised: 16 January 2019 / Accepted: 17 January 2019 / Published: 22 January 2019
(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)
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.
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Keywords:
community sustainability plans; cross-sector social partnership; Local Agenda 21; multi-stakeholder partnerships; partner outcomes; resource-based view theory; strategic capabilities; sustainable development
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MDPI and ACS Style
MacDonald, A.; Clarke, A.; Huang, L.; Seitanidi, M.M. Partner Strategic Capabilities for Capturing Value from Sustainability-Focused Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships. Sustainability 2019, 11, 557. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030557
AMA Style
MacDonald A, Clarke A, Huang L, Seitanidi MM. Partner Strategic Capabilities for Capturing Value from Sustainability-Focused Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships. Sustainability. 2019; 11(3):557. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030557
Chicago/Turabian StyleMacDonald, Adriane; Clarke, Amelia; Huang, Lei; Seitanidi, M. M. 2019. "Partner Strategic Capabilities for Capturing Value from Sustainability-Focused Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships" Sustainability 11, no. 3: 557. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030557
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