Putting cross-sector social partnerships ‘global challenge outcomes to the test: developing a research agenda from an evidence-based, 20-year systematic literature review.

Knight, Helena ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8537-214X, Leigh, Jennifer, Seitanidi, May and Stadtler, Lea 2020. Putting cross-sector social partnerships ‘global challenge outcomes to the test: developing a research agenda from an evidence-based, 20-year systematic literature review. Presented at: 7th biennial International Symposium on Cross-Sector Social Interactions (CSSI 2020), Limerick, 23-26 June 2020.

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Abstract

Cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) are considered as key mechanisms to address societal challenges (George et al., 2016; Koschmann et al., 2012), yet little attention has been directed towards systematically analyzing their outcomes on global challenges. Such analysis seems critical to better position this form of organizing in the wider context of social change and to reach conceptual and empirical clarification of CSSPs’ realized and missed potential. Accordingly, in this research we seek to complement previous more “inward-looking” CSSP reviews (e.g. Austin & Seitanidi, 2012a, b; Branzei & Le Ber, 2014; Bryson et al., 2015; Gray & Stites, 2013; Selsky & Parker, 2005) with a more societal-oriented outcome view. To this end, we regroup multiple Sustainable Development Goals towards three central problem domains and ask: What do management studies reveal about CSSPs’ multi-dimensional outcomes when considering social inclusion, climate action, and health and wellbeing goals? Our objective is to contribute a multi-disciplinary and multi-level theoretical framework that synthesizes the empirical evidence on goal-related CSSP outcomes at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. Methods: We conduct a systematic literature review using a mixed qualitative and quantitative research design. To ensure an all-inclusive review, we performed a multifaceted search involving four steps and corresponding verifications checks. First, we conducted an extensive search of CSSP articles within the Scopus/EBSCO Academic Source Complete, Business Source Complete/ProQuest, and Web of Science databases, which yielded several thousand articles. Second, we filtered these articles with the criteria of being published (a) after 2000 to present, b) in English, and c) in a peer-reviewed publication. To supplement the database searches in a third step, we used specialist publications and special issues on cross-sector social interactions and partnerships. Fourth, we vetted these articles based on 3 and 4* ABS ranked management journals. As a result, we screened 1272 articles using CADIMA software and the two reviewers achieved a high degree of interrater agreement (Cohen’s Kappa = 0.89; Cohen, 1960). The review process is ongoing, with a projection of about 280 articles to be included in our analysis. Subsequently, by going through all articles, we will develop a coding protocol (Lipsey & Wilson, 2001) in order to code for the relevant 1st order concepts, 2nd order themes, and aggregate dimensions. We will cycle back and forth between independently coding studies and team discussions until we reach consensus on an encompassing coding structure to be applied to all selected articles and to capture specificities within each problem domain as well as the commonalities across them. We will use inductive reasoning as the interpretive tool for data analysis and theory development. Results: We group the outcomes associated with each of the three problem domains and demonstrate the links between the CSSP characteristics (e.g. number of partners, type, sectors, purpose, and timeline) and the level of the goal-related outcomes (i.e. individual, organizational, and societal levels within and outside the partnership boundaries). We elaborate this mapping by highlighting the theoretical underpinnings and connections between CSSPs characteristics and outcomes and how they compare across problem domains. On this basis, our review reveals important knowledge gaps within theoretical orientations by management scholars studying CSSPs, such as a multi-level perspective that adopts a nested and interlined perspective and does not stop at the inter-organizational level but also examines how CSSPs relate to broader problem-related systems. We integrate our reflections into a detailed research agenda that fosters a multi-level perspective and aims to integrate diverse theoretical propositions by identifying commonalities across disciplinary boundaries. We offer suggestions regarding the research design, assessment, and analytical approaches that will be instrumental in carrying out the proposed research agenda. Anticipated contributions: Our study helps move beyond the “dominance of incremental gap-spotting research in management” (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013: 128) and starts addressing the elephant in the room; that is, scrutinizing what extant management research allows to conclude regarding CSSPs and their often assumed rather than systematically analyzed effective addressing of complex social challenges (see George et al., 2016; Eisenhardt et al., 2016). Our conceptual and empirical clarification of CSSPs’ global challenge outcomes in scholarly journals helps position CSSPs in the wider field of social change, including their strengths and inherent limitations. Moreover, our study offers a framework that responds to growing calls for context consideration (e.g. Bitzer & Glasbergen, 2010) by differentiating between domain specific and overarching outcome patterns. Finally, as we outline, the intersection of CSSPs and their goal-related outcomes offers critical opportunities for management scholars to strike a balance between scientific and practical utility (Coorley & Gioia, 2011), with our suggested research agenda providing guidance for embarking on this endeavor.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Last Modified:	05 Jun 2023 10:47
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/159338

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