Cross-sector partnerships and collaborations
Cross-sector partnerships and collaborations allow us to achieve together what we cannot accomplish alone. Many societal challenges—such as environmental degradation, healthcare, and poverty—are complex, spanning local, national, and international scales. Yet, these issues are often addressed with siloed or linear solutions, which fail to match their complexity.
Successful outcomes increasingly depend on the coordinated efforts of individuals, communities, organisations, and policymakers. Cross-sector partnerships enable stakeholders to share information, resources, and capabilities, fostering innovative and scalable solutions. However, despite significant investments globally, much of the potential for cross-sector partnerships remains untapped.
This Learning for Sustainability site itself is a key resource for practitioners and researchers looking to build and manage effective partnerships and collaborations. Along with offering curated resources and practical tools, many of the site’s blog posts provide actionable insights to support cross-sector collaboration. Explore the resources below for further research and tools to enhance the success of your partnerships.
Cross-sector partnerships
The need for cross-sector collaboration
This Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Jeanine Becker and David Smith (2018) highlights the importance of developing collaborative leadership and working effectively across sectors to address pressing global challenges.
The MSP Guide: Designing and facilitating effective multi-stakeholder partnerships
The MSP Guide website provides free resources for designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). It includes key publications such as the MSP Guide by Herman Brouwer, Jim Woodhill and colleages, and the accompanying MSP Tool Guide, along with principles and methods for enhancing collaboration across sectors.
The Intersector Project Resource Library
The Intersector Project Resource Library comprises hundreds of quality resources relevant to the field of cross-sector collaboration from research organizations, advisory groups, training organizations, academic centers and journals, and other sources. Another useful page on this site – Questions to understand a cross-sector collaboration – provides a set of guiding questions to help stakeholders navigate the complexities of cross-sector collaborations, including motivations, decision-making processes, and institutional practices.
The Collaboration Playbook: A Leader’s Guide to Cross-Sector Collaboration
The Collaboration Playbook by Ian Taylor and Nigel Ball provides practical guidance for leaders on cross-sector collaborations. It focuses on leadership, trust, culture, power, and learning, with “plays” and case studies to navigate challenges and drive transformative outcomes.
Building engagement and social licence: Unpacking Social Licence to Operate (SLO) and partnerships
This 2019 report by Will Allen and colleagues introduces rubrics as tools for planning and assessing cross-sector partnerships. It focuses on engagement and shared responsibility in systems change, providing an indicative rubric to guide organisations in evaluating and improving partnerships.
Cross-Sector Partnerships for Systemic Change
This Journal of Business Ethics paper by Amelia Clarke and Andrew Crane (2018) reviews cross-sector partnership literature, develops a definition of systemic change, and proposes a framework to understand the interactions between partnerships, systemic change, and broader societal issues.
The MSP Institute – MSP guidance
The MSP Institute focuses on high-quality multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) for sustainable development. It offers a collection of handbooks, tools, and resources to support meaningful participation and effective collaboration.
Maximising the Impact of Partnerships for the SDGs.
This 2018 guidebook by Darian Stibbe and colleagues outlines actions for maximising the value of partnerships targeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It includes tools to help organisations identify and assess both individual and collective benefits.
Enhancing the Impact of Cross-Sector Partnerships
This 2016 paper by Rob van Tulder and colleagues develops a framework linking cross-sector partnerships and impact assessment. It identifies four impact pathways or “orders” that contribute to partnership effectiveness.
Cross-Sector collaborations and partnerships: essential ingredients to help shape health and wellBeing
Vivian Towe and colleagues (2016) explore the drivers of effective cross-sector partnerships, including breadth, quality, and investment. The paper highlights models better suited to supporting successful collaborations in health and well-being.
Perspectives on partnership: A literature review
Doug Horton, Gordon Prain, and Graham Thiele review the literature on partnerships, identifying key success factors and gaps in knowledge. A wide range of research-based publications is reviewed, including studies in such fields as management and organizational development, public administration, economics and international development. This 2009 report highlighted the lack of empirical studies at the time, and offers recommendations for future research to enhance partnership outcomes.
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.
