Alignment Through Value Consolidation Mechanisms—Focusing on Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration for Circular Economy

Abstract

The role of multistakeholder collaboration in solving complex sustainability challenges is emphasised across academic literature. Stakeholders from different sectors typically adhere to different institutional logics and create value in different ways. Alignment reflects how stakeholders orient themselves towards multiple institutional logics in collaborative value creation. By reviewing the extant research literature, we identify the value-consolidation mechanisms employed in aligning institutional logics in stakeholder engagement. We empirically examine these mechanisms in three key dimensions: stakeholders’ cognition, goals, and practices. Two multistakeholder collaborations for circular economy were selected for the case study. After collecting interviews and document data and conducting qualitative content analysis, we found that several value-consolidation mechanisms were applied side by side in dynamic ways to align the cognition, goals, and practices of the stakeholders. Findings indicate that perfect alignment in multistakeholder settings may be hard to reach, but this does not always hinder collaborative value creation. The proposed framework offers alignment instruments for practitioners pursuing stakeholder engagement in collaborative value creation. Scholars can use the framework to determine which conditions incite the use of certain value-consolidation mechanisms, as well as what kinds of impacts this has on collaborative value creation.