Intangible economy : How can investors deliver change in businesses? Lessons from nonprofit-business partnerships

Investors traditionally prioritised tangible outcomes (money, land, machinery) in order to protect their financial assets. However, the intangible economy (trust, human resources, information, reputation) that co-exists draws attention to new expectations that request the continuous, active and within the public sphere involvement of investors in order to protect their assets by prioritising intangible resources. The paper argues that investors in intangible outcomes who aim to achieve change in corporations share the same limitations within the financial and non-financial field. The case of Nonprofit-Business Partnerships is employed in order to demonstrate how change can be achieved. The role of investors is crucial in facilitating the shift from the tangible to the intangible economy. Investment in the intangible economy is a mechanism of co-determining the priority of responsibilities in the context of corporate social responsibility

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

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

Circular economy inspired imaginaries for sustainable innovations

In this chapter, Narayan and Tidström draw on the concept of imaginaries to show how Circular Economy (CE) can facilitate values that enable sustainable innovation. Innovation is key for sustainability, however, understanding and implementing sustainable innovation is challenging, and identifying the kind of actions that could direct sustainable innovations is important. The findings of this study indicate that CE-inspired imaginaries enable collaboration and by relating such imaginaries to common and shared social and cultural values, intermediaries could motivate actors into taking actions that contribute to sustainable innovation.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Partnership Formation for Change: Indicators for Transformative Potential in Cross Sector Social Partnerships

partnerships, corporate social responsibility, NGO, formation, motives, longitudinal, cross sector social interactions, organisational characteristics, change,

Multi-Stakeholder partnerships (SDG#17) as a means of achieving sustainable communities and cities (SDG#11).

As social and ecological problems escalate, involving stakeholder groups in helping solve these issues becomes critical for reaching solutions. The UN Sustainable Development Goal #17 recognizes the importance of partnerships and collaborative governance. However, organizing large multi-stakeholder groups (or partnerships) requires sophisticated implementation structures for ensuring collaborative action. Understanding the relationship between implementation structures and the outcomes is central to designing successful partnerships for sustainability. In the context of sustainable community plan implementation, the larger research project of which the results presented in this book chapter are one part of, examines how stakeholders configure to achieve results. To date we have the data from a survey completed by 111 local governments around the world. The survey was offered in English, French, Spanish and Korean. Seventeen integrated environmental, social and economic topics are considered, including climate change, waste, ecological diversity and local economy. Despite the prevalence of sustainable community plan implementation in local authorities around the world there is scant empirical data on the topics covered in these plans internationally, the partners involved in implementation, and the costs and savings to the local governments that implement in partnership with their communities. The results presented in this book chapter show that sustainable community plans continue to be created and implemented in a diversity of communities around the world, are integrated in the sustainability topics that they cover, involve local organizations as partners in implementation, act as motivators of resource investment by the local government in community sustainability, and result in savings for the local government

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly XX(X)

Abstract This focused review of the nonprofitbusiness collaboration and related corporate social responsibility literature identifies problematic aspects of the treatment of value creation and, therefore, develops a conceptual and analytical framework to address them and the following research question: How can collaboration between nonprofits and businesses most effectively cocreate significant economic, social, and environmental value for society, organizations, and individuals? The first two components of the Collaborative Value Creation framework are presented in this first of two articles The Value Creation Spectrum provides new reference terms for defining and analyzing value creation, and Collaboration Stages reveals how value creation varies across different types of collaborative relationships. The framework's next two components, which are elaborated in the sequential article, are Partnering Processes, which reveals the value creation dynamics in the formation and implementation stages, and Collaboration Outcomes, which examines impact at the micro, meso, and macro levels