Cross-sector partnerships and collaborations
All too many of our current societal challenges —such as the environment, health care, and poverty—are complex, whether on a local, national, or international scale. Yet all too often we approach these issues with linear and even siloed solutions that aren’t sufficient to address the problems at the scale at which they exist. Successful outcomes from addressing these ‘wicked problems’ increasingly depend on the coordinated actions of decision-makers at different levels – from individuals and communities to enterprise and sector organisations, to region and nation (policy agents). This is where cross-sector partnerships and collaborations come into play. By sharing information, resources, activities, and capabilities we can achieve things together that we could never achieve alone. However, despite the billions of dollars invested in cross sector partnerships globally in recent years, there is general agreement from reviewers that the full potential of cross-sector partnerships is far from unlocked. The posts, reports and papers below provide recent thinking and research around approaches to improve the way that cross-sector collaboration is encouraged and managed.
Cross-sector partnerships
The need for cross-sector collaboration
This SSIR article by Jeanine Becker and David Smith addresses one of today’s most pressing challenges; developing the capacity to lead collaboratively and to effectively work across sectors.
Building engagement and social licence: Unpacking Social Licence to Operate (SLO) and partnerships – developing rubrics for guidance and assessment
This 2019 report by Will Allen and colleagues describes and develops rubrics as a tool for planning and assessing initiatives in SLO and engagement associated with systems change. The report focusses specifically on cross-sector partnerships as a particular form of engagement involving two-way communication and shared responsibility. An indicative rubric is provided as a start to help agencies and other practice change proponents to develop clarity around the different components that underpin partnerships, and as a tool to guide and evaluate progress in this areas.
Cross-Sector Partnerships for Systemic Change: Systematized Literature Review and Agenda for Further Research
Amelia Clarke & Andrew Crane (2018) Journal of Business Ethics
This paper presents evidence from a broad, multidisciplinary systematized review of the extant literature, develop an original definition of systemic change, and offers a framework for understanding the interactions between actors, partnerships, systemic change, and issues. The authors conclude with some suggestions for future research that they believe will enhance the literature in its next phase of development.
Capturing Collaborative Challenges: Designing Complexity‑Sensitive Theories of Change for Cross‑Sector Partnerships
This 2018 paper by Rob van Tulder and Nienke Keen applies recent insights into how to deal with complexity from both the evaluation and theory of change fields to studies investigating the transformative capacity of partnerships. This can (1) serve as a check to defne the challenges of partnering projects and (2) can help delineate the societal sources and layers of complexity that cross-sector partnerships deal with such as failure, insufficient responsibility taking and collective action problems at four phases of partnering.
The MSP Institute – MSP guidance
The MSP Institute is passionate about high-quality multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) for sustainable development. Meaningful participation, open dialogue and effective collaboration involving all sectors of societies will play a key role in achieving transformation towards sustainable development. They provide a useful listing of guidance handbooks, tools and other resources for developing and implementing high-quality multi-stakeholder processes.
Maximising the Impact of Partnerships for the SDGs.
This 2018 guidebook by Darien Stibbe and colleagues guidebook aims to support organisations and partnerships to maximise the value created by collaboration towards the Sustainable Development Goals. It suggests practical actions based around a typical ‘partnering cycle’, including a set of tools designed to support both the partnership, and the individual partners, to identify, define, and assess the types of value that the partnership will create overall, as well as the individual value each partner will gain from the collaboration.
Enhancing the Impact of Cross-Sector Partnerships
This 2016 paper by Rob van Tulder and colleagues links literature on both cross-sector partnerships and impact assessment. Building on these two areas the authors develop a framework to guide future research in partnership effectiveness and efficiency . Through this work they distinguish four basic impact pathways or loops of partnerships that create four different “orders” of impact.
Cross-Sector Collaborations And Partnerships: Essential Ingredients To Help Shape Health And WellBeing
This 2016 paper by Vivian Towe and colleagues looks at three constituent parts or drivers: the number, breadth, and quality of successful cross-sector partnerships; the adequacy of investment in these partnerships; and the adoption of policies needed to support them. The paper proposes the adoption of models better suited to supporting effective cross-sector collaborations.
Questions to understand a cross-sector collaboration
Cross-sector collaboration can be complex and sometimes opaque, bringing together multiple stakeholders with differing institutional logics, motivations, and practices, who are often navigating ambiguous decision-making processes with varying formality. The questions in this webpage (from The Intersector Project) are intended to help those interested or involved in a particular cross-sector collaboration better understand the complexities and nuances of the program or initiative.
Beyond Contracts: Governing Structures in Non-Equity Alliances
This 2012 paper by Jeffrey Reuer and Shivaram Devarakonda reminds us that cross-sectoral partnerships should not just rely on contractual collaborative agreements. We need to realise that partners also craft elaborate committee structures that serve as administrative interfaces for collaborative agreements. These committee structures have well-defined authority relationships
and oversight responsibilities and exhibit several key characteristics of hierarchy. These governance stuctures look to manage moral hazard and knowledge misappropriation risk, as well as coordination needs arising from increased partner interdependence, as key determinants of such administrative mechanisms in the governance of non-equity alliances. Another similar paper is
Anna Grandori and Marco Furlotti’s (2007) paper – Facio ut facias: Associational contracts and innovation.
The related page – Building networks for learning – provides a set of links to resources around how to build and map networks. A second set looks at institutional approaches for working across groups and organisations, including partnerships and boundary organisations.
