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The purpose of this paper is to investigate public partners’ motives for seeking and/or accepting partnerships with third sector organisations.

The approach is to seek to identify and explain motives from different perspectives; as responses to government failure or voluntary failure, as related to governance structures, and/or as driven by resource dependencies. The empirical material was gathered through semi-structured interviews with public employees in Swedish municipalities. The aim of the interviews was to grasp the public partners’ motives for partnerships with third sector organisations. Each interview started with questions on the presence and forms of partnerships, thus creating a backdrop for the motives, both during the interview and as a map of the partnership landscape.

The most prominent motives for public engagement in partnerships with third sector organisations are related to democratic values, the need to solve concrete problems, and economic rationality. The motives vary with the type of partnership of which there is considerable variation in scale, content and contribution; the types of partnership vary with different policy fields and services. Different perspectives highlight different motives but none of them excludes other perspectives.

The main contribution of the paper is the empirically based findings of a multi-layered public–third sector partnership landscape where policy fields, forms and complex motives are intertwined.

The challenge of innovation and digitalization leads financial institutions and FinTechs to cooperate with each other. Therefore, it becomes more and more important to understand the why of the partnering, as success depends on it. The purpose of this paper is to derive most important common and specific strategic cooperation rationales between financial institutions and FinTechs, which serves as a value adding guideline for both parties.

This study first derives from a literature review the collaborative motives between FinTechs and financial institutions. Based on these findings, eight in-depth and semi-structured interviews with experts were conducted, providing insights as well as grading the motives

Starting from the FinTech perspective, the most relevant partnership motives were found to be financial return, reputation and credibility. The access primarily drives these motives to additional customer acquisition channels and a reputational quality signaling of the FinTech products or services within the market. On the other hand, the most critical incumbent motives were shown to be customer satisfaction and business model innovation. From a corporate perspective, these motives mainly incorporate the opportunity to challenge, pivot and expand the existing business model while increasing customer satisfaction via additional innovative products or services. Starting from the FinTech perspective, the most relevant partnership motives were found to be financial return, reputation and credibility. The access primarily drives these motives to additional customer acquisition channels and a reputational quality signaling of the FinTech products or services within the market. On the other hand, the most critical incumbent motives were shown to be customer satisfaction and business model innovation. From a corporate perspective, these motives mainly incorporate the opportunity to challenge, pivot and expand the existing business model while increasing customer satisfaction via additional innovative products or services.

From a thematical limitation perspective, the interviewee sample size is comparatively moderate-low and the candidates are primarily active on European markets. Therefore, the analyzed motives are limited to European strategic preferences and do not reflect all intercontinental collaboration positions. Further, the strategic collaboration rationale evaluation framework is limited to the financial industry. Thus, this framework cannot be directly applied to other sectors or even further startup segments within the economy.

From a practical perspective, this study provides a top-level overview and guideline of the least and most relevant collaboration motives from a FinTech and financial incumbent point of view. It supports both cooperative parties to improve potential strategic partnership negotiation outcomes.

In contrast to the previous, mainly bank-focused partnership research approaches, this study provides broader collaborative insight within the financial industry by gathering interview data from FinTech, insurance, bank and asset management experts. Furthermore, the derived framework has a practical usage in the collaboration process.

The purpose of this paper is to assess corporate social responsibility (CSR) implemented via social partnerships between professional sports teams and not-for-profit organizations according to current theoretical perspectives. Limited resources and outcomes often mean there is a gap between theory and practice, the implications of which are not well understood.

Five partnerships in Australian football were analyzed via case study methodology which incorporated interviews, analysis of websites, social media and annual reports.

Despite being used as a CSR tool, findings showed most organizations enter these arrangements to achieve instrumental outcomes. Further, such partnerships mostly operate at a basic stage often described as philanthropic. One partnership was seen as more advanced consisting of a workplace plan to enhance diversity.

It is advocated that managers adopt a more integrated partnership model consisting of formalized objectives, activity implementation, evaluation mechanisms, frequent interaction, top-level leadership involvement and promotion to sufficiently achieve CSR goals.

Addressing calls from past research into an examination of the variation of CSR in sports, this research is one of the first to compare multiple case studies to assess the strategic implementation of social partnerships in a professional sporting context. Accordingly, the study demonstrates how such partnerships can be evaluated against a prominent theoretical model, the Collaboration Continuum, enabling more robust social partnership strategies.

Corporate-NGO partnerships are gaining increasing importance as part of a company's CSR effort. This study aims to understand which communication tactics (CSR motive, CSR message frame, CSR fit) lead to more positive consumer outcomes in the context of corporate-NGO partnerships, and whether consumer skepticism and consumer trust mediate the proposed relationships.

An online experiment was conducted (N = 298) to examine the theoretical predictions, involving a 2 (CSR motive: firm-serving/public-serving) x 2 (CSR message frame: narrative/expositive) x 2 (CSR fit: high/low) between-subjects design.

The results confirmed that consumer attitudes and electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) can be affected by CSR motives and CSR fit. Also, CSR skepticism and consumer trust both mediate the relationship of CSR motives and consumer outcomes.

The results of this study make a strong case for expressing public-serving CSR motives and refraining from firm-serving CSR motives when communicating about a corporate-NGO partnership to consumers.

Focusing on the communication tactics of corporate-NGO partnerships extends existing literature by uncovering whether and how the factors driving effective communication in other CSR activities can be applied to the context of corporate-NGO partnerships.

To study the motives for partnership in marketing channels and provide an empirical study on mutual selection between manufacturers and distributors.

The data were collected mainly from the interviews which present the perspectives of both the Finnish manufacturers and Chinese distributors and agents.

Based on the empirical study, the new finding is that task‐related and partner‐related dimensions in partner selection of international joint ventures also apply to distributor relationship. We argue that a distributor relationship is a product‐tied relationship, and product innovation can be used as an approach for performance improvement in distributor relationship.

The study consists of four case companies so the result cannot be of general application. Nevertheless, it provides valuable information for further utilization.

The study provides empirical evidence of the motives of partnership and mutual selection between manufacturers and distributors in China. The results of the study suggest that distributor relationship management could be improved through product innovation.

The paper attempts to fill the gap in available research on the initiative stage of distributor relationship while also providing some perceptions from the distributor side of the process.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a model of cause‐related marketing (CRM) for both profit‐driven (PD) and non‐profit (NP) organizations.

The model consists of two parallel internal and external organizational processes – one representing the process of a NP organization and the other a PD organization. They are interlinked as the outcome of a CRM‐partnership is dependent upon their mutual efforts.

The authors argue that it is essential to remember that a CRM‐partnership is a challenge and risk for both the PD and NP organizations that may harm their reputation and position in the marketplace and/or society. CRM has benefits as well as downsides that should not be underestimated nor neglected.

Will the involvement of the PD or NP organizations in the resultant partnership be perceived as commercialism, altruism or a combination of both, in the marketplace and society? A focus on both processes opens up opportunities for further research.

A contribution is that the CRM‐model may be used as a guide for both PD and NP organizations in order to reveal whether a CRM‐partnership is appropriate for them with a potential partner or not. It may also indicate whether the motives are based upon commercial reasons or altruistic reasons or a combination of both.

The model enables these organizations to think through the process prior to engaging in CRM.

This paper aims to offer a New Zealand perspective on how business and community organisations engage to develop mutually beneficial partnerships to tackle pressing social issues. Specifically, the paper seeks to examine the collaboration motivations for business and community partners involved in seven business‐community partnerships in New Zealand.

The paper utilises data from in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with key business and community managers involved in seven partnerships in New Zealand. The transcripts of the interviews were analysed using elements of content and narrative analysis. Findings to be presented in this paper include: explaining what “partnership” is; understanding a business case; and community organisations' motivations for engaging in partnerships with business.

This research finds that, while partnerships involving business and community organisations may ideally be associated with shared societal concerns, in this study there was a very strong focus on individual community organisation goals and a dominance of business priorities. This was not balanced by an interest in the broader meta‐goals of the partnership.

This paper draws attention to diverse and often competing motivations that characterise business‐community partnerships. The research demonstrates that, while partnerships are often discussed in the context of societal benefits, individual organisations frequently form partnerships primarily for their own instrumental self‐interests. It is hoped that this paper will stimulate understanding of the practical challenges to developing business‐community partnerships, given differences among the partners in goal orientations and expectations.

Maximising real efficiency benefit (REB) is currently being replaced with access to private finance as core public–private partnership (PPP) adoption motive. This later choice focusses on short-term performance, compromising REB and the procurement of infrastructure that meets the need of the present and future generations, which the former accomplishes. The paper aims to review these observed changes to understand the rationales and significance behind such switch.

Secondary data powered exploratory study. Deployed X-inefficiency theory to triangulate and reduce bias and select country cases to provide the proper foundation for the descriptive “what happened?” question, such as “what was the failure concerns with a particular adoption choice?”

The shift to accessing private finance adoption motive against REB failed to improve PPP project performance or meet efficiency and sustainability. Instead, it allows the private sector to assume financial risk without synergistic monitoring from the government to determine their contractual and commitment trust level, which would help achieve the five-dimensional sustainable performance measurement system for PPP. This led to the struggles of PPP projects in Portugal and Spain, where cost overruns and high demand forecast led to project failures. A recommendation, blended finance with its technical assistance additionality, is considered pivotal to addressing access to private finance motive shortcomings.

This study improves best practices for new and existing adopters by systematically establishing that adoption ideology is a cardinal variable that influences PPP project success. When not correctly adopted, it can make the most successful structured projects face complexities and uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the company‐related benefits expected by executives of public accounting companies consolidating accounting practices and the implications of these expectations for company performance.

This paper uses a case study approach involving the review of publicly available information and interviews with executives and senior professionals of two Australian, publicly‐owned accounting companies. Analysis of the financial performance of the two companies was performed using data from annual reports.

Executives predominantly expected to achieve revenue growth and efficiency benefits through consolidation and change in ownership form. In one of the cases these benefit expectations emerged over the course of the acquisition program. The paper highlights the difficulty in estimating and realising the magnitude, timing and associated costs of consolidation benefits and the consequences of failure to achieve expected benefits; also it suggests advantages in a more conservative consolidation approach.

Care is required generalising findings to other professions and other geographic jurisdictions.

This paper has implications for entrepreneurs and executives consolidating professional service firms, partners considering selling their firms and investors in publicly‐owned professional service firms.

This is the first study to consider the benefits expected by executives of the recently emerged, publicly‐owned accounting companies and the associated costs of implementation. The paper highlights opportunities for researchers provided by the availability of data for publicly‐owned accounting and other professional service firms.

Examines firm strategic positioning and industry dynamics in the wireless telecommunications industry, and the relationship between the two. The study tracks how a firm adjusts resources and capabilities over time to cope with the shifts affecting its industry. Offers insights on what factors drive collaboration of telecommunications firms across industrial borders. The study is based on data on the collaborative relationships of Vodafone Group Plc over a three‐year period. An examination of the motivation, resource contribution and partner industry of Vodafone’s collaborative relationships is provided, to illustrate the complexity of firm strategic responses to the processes shaping the industry. Investigates the key motives and resource needs that have driven Vodafone in its collaborative agreements, and how the company has repositioned itself for the changing environmental demands. Identifies and analyzes the relative importance of a set of collaborative motives in relation to partner industry and resources contributed to the relationships. Finally, the future direction of development of the wireless telecommunications industry is forecast.