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Cross-Sector Partnerships for Sustainability: How Mission-Driven Conveners Drive Change in National Coffee Platforms

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have deployed various strategies in motivating businesses to source sustainably, such as the co-development and promotion of sustainability certification and direct collaboration in cross-sector partnerships (CSPs). This is an important current-day priority, given the ambitions set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Increasingly, NPOs have taken up a role as conveners of such CSPs. Research on CSPs has, to date, often considered conveners as a ‘resource’ to the CSP, contributing to its effectiveness. In this study, we shift the focus towards the convener by considering a case of a ‘mission-driven convener’, an NPO that initiates CSPs as a strategy to realize its own sustainability objectives. Our explorative case study—comparing the NPO’s efforts across six countries in setting up national coffee platforms—reviews the concept of a mission-driven convener vis-à-vis established notions on convening and identifies which strategies it applies to realize a CSP. These strategies comprise productively combining certification-driven efforts with CSPs, combining process and outcomes of CSPs, and drawing on cross-level dynamics derived from outsourcing of convening work to local actors. With our study, we contribute to research on CSP conveners by offering an alternative interpretation to the relation between the CSP and the convener, attributing more agency to the convener as a mission-driven organization. Strengthening our understanding of CSPs and conveners is an important means to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Shaping sustainable business models

Recent economic crises, environmental problems and social challenges have urged us to drastically change our consumption and production patterns and transform organisations to contribute to socio-technical transitions that positively impact these challenges. Therefore, sustainable development and the transition towards a circular economy are gaining increased attention from academics and are being widely adopted by national and local governments, companies and other organisations and institutions. Since the implementation of more sustainable solutions lags behind expectations and technological possibilities, scholars and practitioners are increasingly seeing sustainable business model innovation as the key pathway to show the value potential of new sustainable technology and stress the importance of integrating the interests of multiple stakeholders and their economic, environmental and social value goals in the business model’s development. However, there is limited research that elucidates which stakeholders are actively involved, how they interact and what the effect is on the collaborative business modelling process for sustainability. This thesis addresses this research gap by building on the notion of business models as boundary-spanning activity-systems and studies stakeholder interaction from the level of a focal firm, as well as from the level of cross-sector actors collaborating in innovation ecosystems. Through four independent studies, three empirical studies and a design science study, this thesis aims to provide a better understanding of how stakeholder interaction affects collaborative business modelling for sustainability.The first study (Chapter 2) took a process perspective on interaction with network ties from the perspective of a focal firm. Based on two case studies of SMEs successfully introducing sustainable technology in the market, value shaping was identified as the operative mechanism describing the relation between networking and business modelling, from ideation to growth of the business. A stage model with five successive forms of value shaping describes how, in each stage, interaction with network ties help firms to clarify the types of economic, environmental and social value that a sustainable technology can deliver and who possible beneficiaries are. In return, changes in the business model clarify what other network ties are needed, demonstrating how the boundary-spanning function of business models spurs firms to expand and strengthen the value network.The second study (Chapter 3) focused on the commercialisation stage, in which a cognitive change in the manager’s mind was found during the development of a sustainable business model. Based on three empirical cases of business model innovations for sustainability, the study explored how stakeholder interaction may trigger and support managerial cognitive change and hence business model innovation. The findings suggest that the influence of stakeholders on the manager’s understanding of the business runs via three interrelated shaping processes: market approach shaping, product and/or service offering shaping and credibility shaping. In these shaping processes, new or latent stakeholders are found to have a bigger impact than existing ones. A research agenda is presented to further unravel the role of stakeholders affecting managerial cognition around business model innovation for sustainability.The third study (Chapter 4) examined innovation ecosystems’ processes of developing a collaborative business model for sustainability. Based on a study of four sustainably innovative cross-sector collaborations, this chapter studied how innovation ecosystems resolve the tensions that emerge from the collaborating actors’ divergent goals and interests. This study finds that innovation ecosystems engage in a process of valuing value that helps the actors to manage the tensions and find a balance of environmental, social and economic value creation and capture that satisfies all involved actors. The findings reveal that valuing value occurs in two different patterns – collective orchestration and continuous search – that open up a research agenda that can shed further light on the conditions that need to be in place in order for an innovation ecosystem to develop effective sustainable business models. The final study (Chapter 5) used a design science approach, developing a tool for innovation ecosystems’ actors to manage the degree to which stakeholders are involved throughout the process of collaborative business modelling for sustainability. The resulting ‘degree of engagement diagram’ and accompanying stepwise approach makes it possible to identify stakeholders from six cross-sector stakeholder groups that represent economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable value and visualise their roles. By discriminating between four concentric and permeable circles of engagement, the tool integrates different degrees of involvement of stakeholders and enables users of the DoE diagram to accommodate changes that may occur in the evolving business model and its context. The tool enables innovation ecosystems’ actors to keep the collaboration manageable during the development of a joint and viable sustainable business model. Overall, this thesis extends the understanding of the dynamics of collaborative business modelling for sustainability and the role of stakeholder interaction therein. The research makes three key contributions to the sustainable business model innovation literature. First, it extends the literature by exploring the interplay between stakeholder interaction and business modelling over time. It establishes that stakeholder interaction and business modelling have a reciprocal relationship and contributes with two frameworks – value shaping and valuing value – that explain this reciprocal relationship for firms and innovation ecosystems. Second, the thesis unravels the micro-processes and mechanisms that elucidate how stakeholder interaction actually influences the direction into which the sustainable business model develops. Third, this thesis enriches the scholarly understanding of stakeholder interaction by identifying the main contributors to business model innovation for sustainability, by differentiating between stakeholders and their roles and by providing a tool that accommodates this. The research contributes to practice by offering practitioners useful insights on how they can increase, improve and effectuate stakeholder interaction in order to develop viable business models for sustainability and hence contribute to the desired socio-technical transitions.

Governing Collaborative Value Creation in the Context of Grand Challenges: A Case Study of a Cross-Sectoral Collaboration in the Textile Industry

The aim of this study is to understand how governance mechanisms in cross-sector collaborations (CSCs) for sustainability affect value creation and capture and subsequently the survival of this organizational form. Drawing on a longitudinal, participatory, single-case study of collaborative action in the textile industry, we identify three governance mechanisms—safeguarding, bundling and connecting—that coevolve with the rising and waning of collaborative tensions and the shifting levels of action in the CSC we studied. These mechanisms aided value creation and helped facilitate private value capture. We integrate these insights into a process model that visualizes the interplay between governance mechanisms of tensions and systems of value creation and capture in CSCs for sustainability. Our study contributes to the cross-sector collaboration literature by providing a dynamic and nuanced understanding of how governance mechanisms influence outcomes in CSCs for sustainability. We also add to the business model for sustainability literature by theorizing the value creation and capture system of collaborative rather than individual organizations. Our findings have important implications for policymakers who fund collaborative organizations and practitioners who manage or participate in them.

Creating Multiple Value Through Social Business Collaboration

There is increasing evidence of inter-organizational or cross-sector collaboration between social enterprises and for-profit companies to address sustainability challenges. Despite the emerging interest in such collaboration, the actual processes behind it often remain a ‘black box’. This case study contributes to filling that gap in the literature, by zooming in on the multi-faceted collaboration between IKEA —a global home furnishings retailer— and i-did, a small but ambitious Dutch social enterprise. This case shows that despite significant joint value creation, the collaboration so far has mainly impacted the social enterprise and has not had noticeable wider outcomes on IKEA or beyond the partnership. Nevertheless, continued collaboration can provide a basis for the generation of mutual value and to further explore and innovate around social and circular business models. We conclude by summarising lessons-learned for the benefit of for-profit companies and social enterprises exploring partnerships to address sustainability challenges.

Achieving greater sustainability impact from cross-sector collaborations