Dialogic Collaboration across Sectors: Partnering for Sustainability: Business and Society Review

A substantial body of literature in the management discipline has evolved to make the case for and analyze the impacts of cross-sector partnerships (CSPs). Yet, not all of these CSPs manifest the requisite collaborative propensities to achieve much more than superficial sustainability. Moreover, other disciplines like economics need to be brought to bear on analyses of such partnerships. In this article, we frame sustainable development challenges as collective action problems. We argue that over-emphasizing the role of a single actor or institution will not yield genuine sustainability. Instead, we propose that a collaborative orientation is necessary for business managers as they deal with challenges as expansive and complex as those presented by goals of the sustainability of the natural environment. Cross-sector collaborative partnerships (CSCPs) are needed to achieve collective responsibility, wherein dialogic CSCPs issue in a new paradigm of collaborative markets. Market-based solutions that ignore or minimize the important contributions that may be made by government, academia, and civil society organizations must give way to new models of collaboration across sectors. We identity specific challenges and opportunities for cross-sector collaboration and provide case examples. There are important limits to addressing environmental and ethics problems from a single sector focus, and we show how meaningful sustainability can be facilitated within a dialogic cross-sector collaborative perspective.