Sustainability Language

Governance, Ethics & Risk

Cross-sector partnership

Long-term collaboration between organisations from at least two sectors — business, government, civil society — to address sustainability problems no single actor can solve alone.

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Definition

A cross-sector partnership is an intensive, long-term interaction between organisations from at least two societal sectors — typically business, government and civil society — aimed at explicitly addressing social, economic or environmental problems that exceed the capacity of any single actor. Academic reviews characterise such partnerships as collaborative arrangements that cross organisational boundaries to combine resources, knowledge and solutions.

References

Overview

What it means

Institutionalising cooperation across the public-private-civil divides, pooling complementary capabilities and legitimacy.

How it is used

Cross-sector partnerships deliver SDG programmes, commodity roundtables, landscape initiatives and city climate action; governance quality — power asymmetries, accountability, learning — determines their effectiveness.

Why it matters

Most sustainability challenges are systemic; cross-sector partnership is the dominant organisational form for acting at that scale, and a recognised research field in its own right.

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