Business–nonprofit partnerships: a new form of collaboration in a corporate responsibility and social innovation context

Abstract

This research analyzes cross-sector partnerships as a new and powerful form of collaboration that encourages the development of social innovation practices. The study focuses on business-nonprofit partnerships and evaluates their influence on the nonprofit's development of innovations, capability building, and performance. Empirical research is based on a survey of a representative sample of 325 Spanish foundations. Structural equation techniques and multisample analysis served to analyze the data. The results show that close relationships based on trust and commitment foster the nonprofit's development of innovations, although the intensity of this effect depends on the type of firms' contribution to the partnership.

Lights and Shadows of Business-Nonprofit Partnerships: The Role of Nonprofit Learning and Empowerment in this Ethical Puzzle

“…This type of commitment means that an affective and moral predisposition to maintain the relationship exists because the organization develops emotional bonds and shares the partner's values. As a result, the level of identification of the nonprofit with the firm, as well as its loyalty toward the company, are reinforced, involving the partners in emotional, social, moral and physical ways [11,12,45].…”

“…), and satisfaction and identification with the nonprofit's values [11,12,14,[54][55][56]. Our last hypotheses posit that:…”

“…To test the research hypotheses, we conducted quantitative-based research and surveyed a representative sample of Spanish foundations, which has also been the origin of other previous works focused on analyzing (1) the effects of value-added partnerships on nonprofits' results [11]; (2) the moderating effect of the type of firm's contribution to the partnership [12], or the nonprofit's kind of funding strategy [14]; and (3) the extent to which the deployment of certain internal capabilities in nonprofits influences different kinds of innovations in these organizations [13].…”

“…Foundations are a particular type of nonprofit [57] that demand special research attention due to [11][12][13][14]: (1) the growth they have experienced in developed countries, e.g., the European Foundation Centre [58] estimates that there are approximately 110,000 foundations in Europe, whose projects and programs represent between 83 and 150 billion euros annually, and employ up to one million people; (2) their critical role as a funding source within the nonprofit sector [59]; and (3) the growing demands for their accountability, particularly from resource providers such as partners and donors [60].…”

“…First, a comprehensive revision of existing literature on cross-sector partnerships [6] shows that previous studies have analyzed typologies of business-nonprofit relationships; partners' motivations; the determinants of a predisposition to cooperate; the drivers of partnership building and the processes involved; organizational structures and governance mechanisms; managerial skills; the effect of power balances or imbalances between partners; and the impact of partnerships on performance, generally on the firm's results. These works are mainly conceptual or based on case studies, with a few exceptions [11][12][13][14][15]. In order to improve insights emerging from them, and following the suggestions provided by Austin and Seitanidi [2] (p. 744), we conduct a quantitative-based research based on a two-step survey to a representative sample of nonprofits involved in BNPP.…”