Challenges for NGOs Partnering with Corporations: WWF Netherlands and the Environmental Defense Fund

Abstract

As the market and civil society sectors reflect different core logics, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that partner with companies need strategies to cope with these differences. This paper seeks to provide insight into the coping strategies of environmental NGOs that partner with corporations. We present an assessment framework to analyse the strategies of the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature Netherlands as case studies. The analysis demonstrates that the strategic options for a partnering NGO are guided and constrained by the choices the NGO makes with regard to its action strategy towards companies. Although individual NGOs manage to cope adequately with the challenges that the partnership trend poses to their organisations, we argue that the partnering trend also creates challenges for the NGO field as a whole.

EMERGING DISCOURSE INCUBATOR: Cross‐Sector Relations in Global Supply Chains: A Social Capital Perspective

“…In concert with this collaborative sea change, around the turn of the twenty‐first century many NGOs began to think and strategize explicitly in terms of supply chains (Rondinelli & London, ; van Huijstee, Pollock, Glasbergen & Leroy, ). Indeed, the supply chain perspective shares much in common with a dominant methodology in industrial ecology, life cycle analysis, insofar as both emphasize the importance of a holistic understanding of activities that span the production, distribution, use and disposal (or reuse) phases of products and services (Gereffi & Lee, ).…”

Effective Green Alliances: An analysis of how environmental nongovernmental organizations affect corporate sustainability programs

“…In what some researchers deem as the “second wave of environmentalism” in the 1960s, ENGOs progressed from being the classical and strictly conservation‐oriented NGOs that rose into existence during the first wave in the end of the 1900s (van Huijstee et al, ). ENGOs have been regarded as authorities in uncovering corporate greenwashing schemes, while relationships between corporations and ENGOs have traditionally been antagonistic in nature when they started to come into existence in the 1990s (Arts, ; Delmas & Burbano, ).…”

“…Agenda 21, a product of Earth Summit in 1992, was pivotal as a cornerstone to a conceptual shift for ENGOs (van Huijstee et al, ). As opposed to being segregated notions of public and private domains, stewardship efforts emerged as “institutionalization of governance practices in the form of cooperative arrangements,” one notable form of which is the ENGO‐corporate collaboration (van Huijstee et al, ).…”

“…Agenda 21, a product of Earth Summit in 1992, was pivotal as a cornerstone to a conceptual shift for ENGOs (van Huijstee et al, ). As opposed to being segregated notions of public and private domains, stewardship efforts emerged as “institutionalization of governance practices in the form of cooperative arrangements,” one notable form of which is the ENGO‐corporate collaboration (van Huijstee et al, ). While the first wave of environmentalism was reckoned to be all about conservation and preservation, the second was being based on regulation and litigation; the third wave of environmentalism that is rooted in economics and market‐driven strategies for solution‐oriented approaches is what shapes environmental sustainability now (van Huijstee et al, ).…”

“…As opposed to being segregated notions of public and private domains, stewardship efforts emerged as “institutionalization of governance practices in the form of cooperative arrangements,” one notable form of which is the ENGO‐corporate collaboration (van Huijstee et al, ). While the first wave of environmentalism was reckoned to be all about conservation and preservation, the second was being based on regulation and litigation; the third wave of environmentalism that is rooted in economics and market‐driven strategies for solution‐oriented approaches is what shapes environmental sustainability now (van Huijstee et al, ). In addition to the role shift ENGOs have undergone, a new power whitespace has been identified as multinational corporations and innovations in electronic media and communications reduced the authority governments have on narratives regarding the environment (Scherrer, ).…”