van Tulder, Rob

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ROTTERDAM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, ERASMUS UNIVERSITYThe business school that thinks and lives in the future Cross-sector partner-ships key to sustainable developmentRebecca Morris talks with Rob van Tulder  Using big data  analytics to solve  wicked problemsBy Wolf Ketter Value creation through  integrated reportingBy Steve Kennedy and Paolo Perego  Accounting fraud and the role of emotionsBy Frank Hartmann  How to build  ambidextrous teamsChris Murray talks with Justin Jansen  Why twice as fast doesn’t always mean twice the valueBy Stefano Puntoni  The potential of com-puter-aided applicant pre-screeningBy Colin Lee 2nd Quarter 2016Management Knowledge         RSM DISCOVERYwww.rsm.nl/discovery 2nd Quarter 2016   |   05Cross-sector partnerships key to sustainable developmentRebecca Morris talks with Rob van TulderAt the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, alliances between business, government and civil society were declared key to achieving sustainable development. Yet they are difficult to im-plement successfully. RSM's Partnerships Resource Centre is help-ing to change that. portunity for us as a business school: here was a demand and we had the expertise to meet it.’ Prof. van Tulder and his affiliates responded with the creation of the Partnerships Resource Centre (PrC), an academic consortium inaugurat-ed in 2009 and led by RSM, with ini-tial co-funding provided by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The cen-tre's goal is to fill the knowledge gap on cross-sector partnerships. From the outset, the emphasis was on impact. ‘When we started I didn't want to wait five years before establishing theories that organisations could use,’ says Prof. van Tulder. ‘Organisations couldn't wait and nor could we.’  Problems without solutions Beyond philanthropy, the incentives for companies to partner up are com-pelling. Consumers are demanding products that contribute to societal well-being. Employees are asking what their organisations are doing to address sustainability challenges. Changing regulations require compa-nies to adopt more sustainable practic-es. The result is that corporations are recognising the need for input from other sectors that have the comple-mentary skills needed for long-term growth. ‘Many of these new demands are better understood and implemented by government bodies and NGOs than by company executives,’ says Prof. van Tulder. ‘An NGO can point out flaws in a company's sustainability policy, for instance, that the company might not realise themselves.’ lenge for which there is no precedence and very little know-how – until now.‘From the moment the partnership movement began in 2002, it was clear there was a huge gap in knowledge and that this was a managerial chal-lenge,’ says Rob van Tulder, professor of international business-society man-agement at RSM. ‘It was an open op-The years since the 2002 summit have seen a surge in the number of cross-sector alliances. These partner-ships now sit at the heart of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, for-mulated in 2015. Yet for all their prom-ise, cross-sector partnerships are too often limited in scope and impact. They remain a complex managerial chal-www.rsm.nl/discovery NGOBUSINESSResearch is commissioned on the study of various aspects of multi-stake-holder engagement and management, involving top scholars around the world. Much of this is action research. ‘I want to get stakeholders directly in-volved in action research initiatives,’ says Prof. van Tulder. ‘For me this is the most important challenge.’ The PrC is now the leading centre in Europe in cross-sector partnership research, with a large number of publi-cations in peer-viewed journals. And its initiatives pave new ways of engaging stakeholders. ‘The PrC pioneers new formats for action research, teaching and stakeholder engagement,’ says Prof. van Tulder. New ways of engagingThe PrC website shows just how out-ward facing the organisation is. Services offered include executive training modules and workshops as well as custom-made programmes. Fact sheets are available to download on partnership models in Asia, Latin-America, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Research papers offer stakeholders insights into, for instance, the top-five success factors for partnering. Executives are invited to attend events such as Max Havelaar lectures on inclusive devel-opment. Eye-catching headlines in-vite stakeholders to participate in a “PPPCafe” event on Scaling, or one of six “Wicked Problems” meetings at the New World Campus in The Hague. These latter events are connect-ed to two of the centre's major ac-tion-research streams: the PPPLab NGOs and government bodies also lend credibility to a company's activi-ties, he says: ‘NGOs are the voice of civ-il society and society trusts what they say, as opposed to company leaders.’ But partnering across societal sec-tors is much easier to endorse than it is to implement. The problems are more complex than the typical ob-stacles found within traditional pub-lic-private partnerships. Cross-sector partnerships usually involve multiple stakeholders. Stakeholders are often “unusual suspects” – small NGOs and the like. Their objectives are less clear and broader in scope, addressing com-plex and often interrelated issues.One common challenge that arises is lack of trust, says Prof. van Tulder: ‘Companies often don't trust a govern-ment body or an NGO that talks about partners on the one hand, and on the other describes the private sector's ap-proach towards the environment as PR.’ Hence the legion of cross-sector partnerships whose impact is a scratch on the surface of what is required to meet sustainable development goals. ‘Everyone is trying,’ says Prof. van Tulder, ‘but no one knows what to do.’Establishing a platformThe PrC was formed at the request of a large number of stakeholders in-cluding the Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The demand was for a platform for the regular exchange of knowledge on cross-sector part-nerships and the development of new knowledge on a subject on which there existed very little literature. Led by Prof. Rob van Tulder, the PrC quickly established itself as a prolific resource centre with a broad portfo-lio of activities. It strives to help or-ganisations in several ways: through applied and action research, teaching and training, and knowledge exchange and networking.“Companies often don't trust a government body or an NGO that talks about partners on the one hand, and on the other describes the private sector's approach towards the environment as PR.” Rob van Tulder, professor of international business-society management06   |   2nd Quarter 2016Management KnowledgeRSM DISCOVERYCross-sector partnerships key to sustainable development (continued)Rebecca Morris talks with Rob van TulderBUSINESStion, advice and networking resource for organisations looking to partner. ‘I am very proud of this Promoting Effective Partnering (PEP) Initiative, it's a great collaboration to be part of,’ says Prof. van Tulder.Preparing to partnerCross-sector partnerships are challeng-ing, says Prof. van Tulder, but the ob-stacles are not insurmountable. The success of corporate giant Unilever in the sustainability stakes is largely down to effective partnering – offer-ing lessons from which we can learn. ‘Unilever understands that partner-ships take investment and are based on a common agenda and transpar-ency,’ says Prof. van Tulder. Respect is a key component of strong partnerships, he says. ‘Respect means that as a government organisa-tion you respect that a company needs profit to be sustainable and that, as a company, you understand that a gov-ernment body can be bureaucratic and must look at an issue from many dif-ferent angles.’and the Wicked Problems Plaza. The PPPLab, which stands for Private Public Partnership Laboratory, is an action research and joint learning in-itiative that focuses on partnerships within water and food sectors, specif-ically those funded by the Sustainable Water Fund (FDW) and the Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Food Security Fund (FDOV). The goal of the PPPLab is to en-hance the effectiveness and quality of these Dutch-supported public-private partnerships. It has produced no less than 75 research papers collating its findings and recommendations. The PPPLab website reflects its focus on its stakeholders, with accessible, rele-vant content such as latest events, in-terviews with policymakers, and pro-files of current initiatives. The Wicked Problems Plaza is a unique methodology that brings stake-holders together to collaboratively brainstorm a “wicked problem” and de-vise solutions. The term “wicked prob-lem” is used to describe the big issues related to sustainable development. Six Wicked Problem Plazas are sched-uled for 2016, each related to one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The events are organ-ised in conjunction with the New World Campus (NWC) and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).And if there were any further doubts as to the centre's focus on im-pact, its latest project will dispel them. The centre is collaborating with four other institutions to develop an online platform that will offer a full informa-The partnership must also be one of equals. If it is merely a company funding a charity, for instance, the charity is unlikely to give constructive criticism for fear of the funding being withdrawn. Unilever, for example, al-lowed Oxfam to carry out an in-depth review of one of its Vietnam factories, revealing poor labour practices. In a bid to be transparent, Unilever agreed that Oxfam could publish the report and return two years later to assess its progress.  ‘The CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, is considered by far the most sustain-able business leader in the world and what he says is that Unilever is not there yet. That's a sign of true leader-ship. Leaders accept criticism and grow from it. Partnerships offer a space for organisations to receive and discuss such criticism; to join forces for a bet-ter world.’ For more information on RSM's Partnerships Resource Centre, visit  WEB  www.rsm.nl/prc“I want to get stakeholders directly involved in action research initiatives. For me this is the most important challenge.” Rob van Tulder, professor of international business-society management2nd Quarter 2016   |   07www.rsm.nl/discovery Cross-sector partnerships key to sustainable development (continued)Rebecca Morris talks with Rob van Tulder

Cross-sector partnerships key to sustainable development

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Cross-sector partnerships key to sustainable development

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