Business-NGO Partnerships for Biodiversity Conservation and Third Parties
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2014-08-19
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en
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Abstract
A growing number of conservation NGOs and businesses are engaging voluntarily in strategic
collaborations to address the problem of biodiversity loss. ‘Strategic’ refers to collaborations that
transcend mere financial or transactional relationships and that touch upon the core business or
program of activities of both partners. Strategic partnerships involve organizations that have a
shared purpose or goal, often one that neither organization feels it can achieve on its own. The
combined strengths of both parties’ distinctive capacities may help them achieve their objectives
and might lead to the creation of innovative solutions. Both sides aim to enhance each other’s
capacities in order to fulfill a shared mission with a wider social or environmental impact. Risks
and benefits are shared between the partners, which makes the stakes high for both of them.
Increased collaboration between corporations and civil society organizations calls into question
the way we traditionally view the role of business in society and the relation between business
and NGOs. Besides the fact that the relationship between these organizations has often been of
antagonistic nature, contact between them has usually been limited to philanthropy- and
sponsorships based arrangements. The potential of partnerships to contribute to biodiversity
solutions depends on the proper functioning of the collaboration. Often, business-NGO
collaboration turns out to be challenging, particularly because partnerships involve a bringing
together of actors with incongruent core logics and with little experience in cross-sector
collaboration.
This study aimed to identify the challenges that partnering organizations encounter throughout
the partnership process – including the formation, implementation and evaluation stages – and
to analyze the potential roles external third party organizations could perform in order to
ameliorate those challenges. This aim can be summarized in the following research question:
What challenges do business corporations and nongovernmental organizations that engage in
strategic partnerships for biodiversity protection face during the formation, implementation and
evaluation stages of the partnership and to what extent could external third parties contribute to
alleviate these challenges?
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen