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This paper aims to identify models of best practice and examines the manner in which such social partnerships attract new partners and scale-up their solutions. Social responsibility initiatives that incorporate multiple sectors have the capacity to challenge unsustainable practice and pave the way for model solutions towards the societal problems we face globally.

Comparisons of three Australian case studies were analysed. These cases were purposefully selected as they all represented relationships that demonstrated social partnerships characteristics, and they had all attracted acclaim by their peers. They differed in terms of their societal problems and relationship duration. Semi-structured interviews were held with managers and employees from each social partnership, where they discussed all aspects of the partnership lifecycle from pre-collaborative conditions through to outcomes. In total, 50 semi-structured interviews were held with members of the private, nonprofit and public sectors.

Social partnerships pool skills, knowledge and finance across sectors, concentrating on specific societal issues of mutual concern. Resultant successful initiatives act as catalysts in soliciting further support. Three primary pathways exist for successful social partnerships that wish to evolve: expansion, replication and refinement. Focused attention and resources, through the formation of social responsibility clusters, can lead to sustainable solutions.

There are many organisations wishing to move on from philanthropic exchange towards more meaningful integrated relationships. This paper highlights the value of both within sector and cross-sector collaboration to achieve organisational outcomes. It provides some insight into the entry points for both nonprofit organisations as well as small- to medium-sized private sector organisations that would otherwise consider social investment in large-scale societal problems beyond their reach.

Social partnerships within the Australian context are under-represented; this paper addresses this by examining three best practice exemplars. The rationale for incorporating new partners and sharing success is discussed and supported by a model of social responsibility cluster formation.

This study aims to identify the nature of the characteristics and the social results of partnerships established between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the company.

This research is a qualitative collective case study. Data were collected through 12 interviews and analyzed through the content analysis technique.

The findings indicate that in the first case, the partnership is driven by the company’s interest in qualifying its supplier, facing a relational identity orientation, establishing philanthropic relationships. In the second case, the search for social legitimacy is evident, in the face of a collectivist identity orientation, in which Petro establishes a relationship of a transactional nature. Thus, the differential in intersectoral collaboration lies in the interaction among company, NGO and cooperatives. The results also show that the dialogue proximity between companies and civil society have a strong relationship with social results for the local communities.

This study reveals the need to broaden the understanding of the social results of social partnerships to local communities.

The nature of the relationship among state, companies, NGOs and local communities in developing countries are different from developed countries. In the first case, companies are called to assume state’s role in improving quality of life and income generation.

Successful development of health and social care partnerships is contingent on the contribution of all stakeholder groups to overcome the ‘wicked’ issues that beset the field. This article explores four key issues, identified by a network of diverse stakeholders as vital to the future of health and social care partnerships, and proposes ways in which individuals and organisations from all stakeholder groups can support health and social care organisations to work together to deliver good outcomes to service users and their carers.

This paper aims to understand the characteristics, factors and contingencies of social partnerships between multinational corporations (MNCs) and nonprofits in the context of sustainability that enable or impede the value creation outcome of the collaboration.

A multi-case study with 12 social partnerships operating in China was investigated considering their relative representativeness and different value creation outcomes.

The author presents a snapshot of the current state and unique differences of social partnerships in China, whereas the existing literature has mostly addressed the topic from a Western context. Moreover, the author highlights the key determinants and contextual features that influence the value creation outcome of social partnerships in China.

This study concentrates on the social partnerships in the largest emerging country context of China, and the representativeness of data collected from a small sample may be challenged. Likewise, the 12 social partnerships studied are similar in design but vary in sustainability focus. To test the validity of the theorizing, the study calls for future research to apply the proposed theoretical framework across various contexts across both developing and developed world.

The paper provides guidance to corporate managers and nonprofit decision-makers on how to improve their social partner initiation, operations and governance so as to generate greater collaborative value out of social partnerships in the Chinese market.

This study contributes to the social partnership literature, which has been dominant in the Western context, by offering case evidences from China.

The study shows that social partnerships are increasingly initiated and sustained in the context of sustainability and corporate social responsibility, with the majority oriented toward “satisficing” instead of “optimizing” and represented mostly with a “philanthropic” and “transactional” approach. The author particularly notes the salience of social exchange, with social partnerships serving as an indirect relational instrument for MNCs to navigate stakeholder relationships in the Chinese market, especially with the dominant resource holder such as the government.

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.

This paper aims first to identify key interorganisational partnership types among non-profit organisations (NPOs) and second to determine how knowledge sharing takes place within each type of partnership. Results explore the value of social media specifically in facilitating external relationships between NPOs, firms and the communities they serve.

Empirical qualitative analysis of exploratory interviews with 16 Canadian NPOs generates a non-exhaustive classification of partnership types emerging from these organisations, and their defining characteristics in the context of interorganisational knowledge sharing.

Overall eight categories of partnerships from the sampled NPOs emerged from the analysis of the data. These include business partnerships, sector partnerships, community partnerships, government partnerships, expert partnerships, endorsement partnerships, charter partnerships and hybrid partnerships. Using examples from interviews, the sharing of knowledge within each of these partnerships is defined uniquely in terms of directionality (i.e. uni-directional, bi-directional, multi-directional knowledge sharing) and formality (i.e. informal, semi-formal or formal knowledge sharing).Specific practices within these relationships also arise from examples, in particular, the use of social media to support informal and community-driven collaborations. Twitter, as a popular social networking tool, emerges as a preferred medium that supports interorganisational partnerships relevant to NPOs.

This research is valuable in identifying the knowledge management practices unique to NPOs. By examining and discussing specific examples of partnerships encountered among NPOs, this paper contributes original findings about the implications of interorganisational knowledge sharing, as well as the impact of emerging social technologies on same.

The purpose of this paper is to describe in-depth a community-based social partnership, emerged in response to the financial crisis in Greece, with members from the private, public and civic sectors, using a case example of a grass-root self-organised national network.

Formal and informal interviews as well as written communication with members of the partnership mainly formed the basis for the analysis. Topics covered formation and implementation activities, outcomes, relationship issues, such as trust and links to social capital.

A shared community risk and a national media campaign to increase public awareness of the issue were catalysts for individuals’ sensitisation and participation in the partnership. The shared risk was the loss of community’s social cohesion, through poverty aggravated by the financial crisis. Self-organisation led to innovative relationships, whereas trust, collective action and collaboration show social capital attributes in the partnership enabling resilience development.

The research contributes in the fields of community-based partnerships and engagement in building community and crisis resilience. The findings are based on a case example. More evidence is needed in order to derive generalised statements about the partnership’s contribution to crisis resilience.

The partnership has shown impact on community engagement, health and well-being.

This paper presents a partnership type for building community and crisis resilience with the case example of one such partnership in Greece, formed to alleviate community distress caused by the crisis.

Social enterprises can be found across Vietnam. However, little is known about how these organizations contribute to the country’s broader efforts to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper aims to explore whether and to what extent differences in social impacts by social enterprises may be explained by the psychological characteristics of social entrepreneurs and cross-sector “ecosystem” partnerships in training, networking, consultation and funding.

A survey of N ≈ 352 Vietnamese social entrepreneurs explored relationships between individual entrepreneurial orientation (EO), social identity, self-construal and personality, with elements of ecosystem partnerships (access to training, networking, consultation and funding) and social impacts over the previous three years (growth/jobs created and people helped, termed efficiency and generosity, respectively).

Ecosystem partnerships factored into frequency and quality of partnerships. Frequency predicted social enterprise efficiency (p < 0.05) and quality predicted generosity (p < 0.01). Frequency of partnerships further moderated (boosted) significant links between EO (risk innovation, p < 0.05) and efficiency; and between social identity (communitarianism, p < 0.01) to efficiency; plus, quality of partnerships moderated a link between EO (risk innovation) and efficiency (p < 0.05).

Ecosystem partnerships may foster social enterprise development through at least two pathways (equifinality), i.e. frequency and quality. The former is linked to efficiency and the latter to generosity, signaling interrelates but distinguishable outcomes. Direct links between EO and communitarian social identity leading to social enterprise development were additionally boosted (p < 0.05) by the frequency and quality of partnerships. Thus, ecosystem partnerships brought about both direct and indirect benefits to social enterprises in Vietnam.

Social impacts of efficiency and generosity support both decent work (SDG-8) and poverty eradication (SDG-1), through ecosystem partnerships in development (SDG-17).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to show that social enterprises in Vietnam may enhance social impacts through a combination of effects from social entrepreneurs and ecosystem partnerships. Current models of social enterprises in low-income countries like Vietnam can be expanded to include ecosystem partnerships and social outcomes relating to SDGs 1 and 8, and especially the multiple path benefits that ecosystem partnerships (under SDG-17) bring to social enterprise development.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the inhibiting factors of partnership creation between social entrepreneurs in the business, government, public and non‐profit sector.

This paper examines four cases of social entrepreneurship in the start‐up phase. Each case is studied in real time, for a period of two years.

The empirical research reveals that partnership creation for social enterprises between a social enterprise and organizations in various sectors is inhibited by conflicting interests and diverging speed of on one hand and by the conflicts that originate from the opportunity‐seeking behavior of the social entrepreneur and the risk avoiding behavior of the organizations. While the social start‐ups that managed to neutralize such inhibitors succeeded, the start‐up enterprises that did not manage to do so failed.

While, there is a sound body of knowledge of the factors that inhibit the more traditional single and cross‐sector partnerships, relatively little is known about the factors that inhibit the partnerships between social enterprises and organizations in the business, public, government, and non‐profit sectors in society.

The United Nations (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) places partnerships as a vital mechanism, which strengthens the implementation of change strategies. The SDG targets are ambitious; acknowledging the interconnected multifaceted issues that are currently facing society. Similarly, social marketing thought is transitioning to embrace systemic change strategies, realising no one organisation can have an impact on the emerging grand challenges. Partnerships are the 5th P in the social marketing mix, however, partnerships is also a nebulous term which has been criticised for lacking theoretical development. This study aims to answer the call from both the UN and social marketing community for further research to guide the development and implementation of impactful transformative partnerships.

A robust mixed method approach to develop and test a social marketing partnership model is presented. Trust and relationship commitment are at the forefront of successful partnership exchanges. Morgan and Hunt’s (1994) trust and relationship commitment model is extended into the social marketing domain.

The findings validate Hasting’s (2003) call for social marketers to listen to their commercial marketing counterparts, positioning trust and commitment as essential to change strategies. As the degree of complexities in the multifaceted world continues to accelerate, partnerships for change (UN SDG #17) will pay off, driving more effective and smarter collaborations amongst a diverse range of stakeholders at different levels in different networks. Partnerships will elevate social marketing to deliver systemic transformation for complex problems with far reaching collective and sustainable consequences.

With trust/mistrust critical to successful exchanges and exchange central to social marketing, quantitative measurement of the antecedents to and outcomes of partnerships can inform the evaluation, impact and management of social marketing interventions.

Three contributions are made, which support the selection, implementation and evaluation of social marketing partnerships. Key social marketing partnership characteristics are operationalised supporting the partnership selection process. Measurement scales are developed to assist in evaluating partnership relationships over time. The model is empirically tested to investigate the relationships between key mediating variables of social marketing partnerships.

This paper presents a validated 5th P Partnership model for social marketers, accelerating social marketing’s capacities to deliver systemic transformation for complex problems with far reaching collective and sustainable consequences and UN SDG #17.