Taking environmental partnerships seriously |
| |
Institution: | 1. EMLYON Business School, 69130 Écully, France;2. John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, 1455 De Maisonneuve Boulevard West, Montréal, Québec H1H 1L8, Canada;1. Goizueta Business School, Emory University, 1300 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322, U.S.A;2. McCoy College of Business Administration, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, U.S.A |
| |
Abstract: | Increasingly, firms are integrating environmental sustainability into their business strategies. Yet, sustainability is a complex topic and many firms need to form environmental partnerships to access additional resources—in the form of investments, technologies, expertise, public image, and/or political influence—to develop competitive advantage. Environmental partnership decisions are difficult, however, because they often need to reconcile multifaceted sustainability issues with multi-level, and potentially divergent, strategic goals. To meet their intended objectives, companies should carefully consider the type of environmental partnerships and partners that can best meet their needs. Based on a review of the literature, interviews with executives responsible for environmental partnerships, and publicly available data, we find firms engage in three main types of environmental partnerships: innovation-seeking, legitimacy-building, and policy-influencing. Each type of partnership benefits from different types of resources and partner choices. Herein, we describe the advantages of each type of environmental partnership and partners that may best support them. Given that many firms develop environmental partnership portfolios, managing multiple environmental partnerships simultaneously, we also discuss the implications of our research for environmental partnership portfolios. |
| |
Keywords: | Environmental partnership Business environmentalism Company collaboration Corporate sustainability Competitive cooperation |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|