SUSTAINABLE CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATION ......Together, the interview and the survey data provide the evidence base from which we induced our discoveries. CASE STUDY Qualitative Data

r Academy of Management Discoveries2019, Vol. 5, No. 4, 396–414.Online onlyhttps://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2018.0112

SUSTAINABLE CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATION: BUILDINGA GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR SOCIAL IMPACT

CHRISTIANE BODE1

Imperial College Business School

MICHELLE ROGANImperial College Business School

JASJIT SINGHINSEAD

Addressing societal issues increasingly requires multistakeholder collaboration. Yet,cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are often difficult to form and maintain because ofcoordination problems and conflicting interests of the organizations involved. To betterunderstand how organizations overcome these challenges, we take amicro-foundationalapproach. First, we conducted an in-depth case study of a consulting firm to examine theemergence of a platform for CSPs. Second, using survey data from 665 employees, weidentified critical elements that contributed to the stability of the platform. Our findingsreveal how a for-profit organization can play a key role in coordinating other organi-zations to achieve social impact. We found that the emergence and stability of the plat-form were based on a novel operating model that aligned senior leaders’ interests inimproving employee retention, employees’ desire for meaning in their work, and em-ployees’ willingness to make short-term financial sacrifices to participate. Our studysuggests that for-profit firms can play a central role in social impact collaborations butthat doing so requires alignment of internal interests through intrapreneurship. It alsounderlines the potential value of using a micro-foundation approach in future researchinto CSPs.

We thank Bocconi University and INSEAD for fundingthis research.We thankFilipeSantos andArziAdbi for theirfeedback on an earlier draft of the article. We acknowledgethe generosity of the management and employees of our

research site for the time invested in the interviews and forimplementing the employee survey. Any errors remain ourown.

1 Corresponding author.

396

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INTRODUCTION

The Strategic Development Goals (SDGs) canonly be realized with a strong commitmentto global partnership and cooperation. –UnitedNations Development Programme

The UN SDGs are calls to action for governments,NGOs, firms, and civil society to address issues ofsocietal and environmental concern. Because thechallenges underlying these issues are highly com-plex and interrelated, they cannot be resolved by anyone of these actors alone (Eisenhardt, Graebner, &Sonenshein, 2016; Ferraro, Etzion,&Gehman, 2015).Accordingly, the final goal, SDG 17, encourages theformationof global partnerships asameans toachievethese goals. Yet, despite recognition that coordinatedresponses by multiple stakeholders will be instru-mental to achieving the SDGs by the target year 2030,how such partnerships come about is currently un-derstudied, and the role of corporate players in thisprocess remains ambiguous. This is a gap we seek toaddress in this study.

Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) between firmsand social purpose organizations (SPOs) such as not-for-profits, charities, and development organizationsare increasingly the subject of strategy research(Odziemkowska&McDonnell, 2019; Selsky & Parker,2005). Echoing the UN Declaration regarding theSDGs, extant academic work suggests that neitherfirms nor SPOs can resolve the most pervasive socialand environmental “wicked problems” or “grandchallenges” without the help of other organizations(George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016;Waddock, Meszoely, Waddell, & Dentoni, 2015).Accordingly, CSPs between firms and SPOs withdifferent capabilities and resources will be instru-mental in solving these (Bhanji &Oxley, 2013; Cabral,Mahoney, McGahan, & Patoski, 2019).

Yet, such partnerships are not without challenges.In particular, it is unclear how partnerships betweenSPOs and firms come about and how they can bemaintained (Rivera-Santos & Rufın, 2010; Seitanidi& Crane, 2009). Corporate involvement in CSPs canbe difficult for several reasons. First, coordinatingthe participation of firms and SPOs in CSPs ischallenging. Firms may lack the drive to initiateprojectswith a significant social impact,whichmaybe due to a lack of both capabilities and legitimacyin the field (Lyneis & Sterman, 2016; Selsky &Parker, 2005). Second, firms’ lack of experience in

social impact work and their instrumental ap-proach to solving social problems contribute to theinstability often associated with CSPs (Clarke &Fuller, 2010; Le Ber & Branzei, 2010).

To date, the literature on CSPs has largely focusedon macro-level issues that detract from the stabilityand effectiveness of CSPs (Rivera-Santos & Rufin,2011; Rondinelli & London, 2003; Van Tulder &Keen, 2018). At the same time, research in strategyand organizations has established that macro-levelchallenges experienced by firms are often a functionof the misaligned interests of individuals (Cyert &March, 1963; Selznick, 2011). Indeed, recent studieshave begun to emphasize the importance of individualaction in enabling firm-level engagement in issues ofsocial concern (Alt & Craig, 2016; Howard-Grenville,Nelson, Earle, Haack, & Young, 2017; Soderstrom &Weber, 2019; Wickert & De Bakker, 2018). Becausesocial engagement is often seen as incompatiblewith the corporate “immune system”—the incentives,structures, and processes of profit-oriented organiza-tions (Bansal, 2003; Battilana & Dorado, 2010)—theCSP’s stability may depend on the continued in-volvement of individual actors within member or-ganizations rather than merely the alignment ofobjectives at the macro level.

As a complement to the macro-level approach ofpriorwork, in this study,we take amicro-foundationalapproach to CSPs to advance an understanding ofthe challenges—and potential solutions—of involvingcorporates in CSPs (Coleman, 1990; Felin, Foss, &Ployhart, 2015). Coleman’s (1986, 1990) model ofcollective social action specifies three different typesof social mechanisms—situational mechanisms,action-formation mechanisms and transformationalmechanisms—through which change at the macrolevel influences the behaviour of individual actorsand generates new macro states at a later time(Hedstrom&Swedberg, 1998: 21).Using thismodel asa framework, we explore how the institutional envi-ronment enabled individual actors to develop in-ternal structures and underlying processes at theindividual level, which then enabled the firm toovercome the challenges of corporate involvement ina CSP. Specifically, we ask two related researchquestions: (1) How did individual action shape theemergence of structures to support the firm’s CSPinvolvement? (2) How did these individual actionsaggregate to the macro level to contribute to the sta-bility of the structure over time?

Our mixed-methods approach relies on an in-depth case study of a large management consultancythat provides advisory services to corporate clientsaround the globe. Our focus is thus on the internalprocesses of the firm in facilitating the emergence ofa CSP.We collectedmore than 40 hours of interview

Author’s voice:What motivated you to undertakethis research project?

2019 397Bode, Rogan, and Singh






data from 26 informants in the firm. The qualitativedata provided insights regarding the first researchquestion with respect to the role of individual actionin shaping the enabling structures for the firm toovercome the challenges of corporate involvementin CSPs. To address the second question regardingthe stability of the platform, in addition to using thequalitative data, we also surveyed 665 employees inthe same firm (some of whom participated in theplatform and some who did not).

Through our investigation, we made three dis-coveries. First, in contrast to the view that SPOsshould take the lead role in initiating and maintain-ing CSPs (Kaplan, Serafeim, & Tugendhat, 2018),we found that the for-profit firm we studied, suc-cessfully initiated and maintained an interface tofacilitate CSPs between SPOs and other corporates,defined as a platform for social impact (Cennamo &Santalo, 2013; Rochet & Tirole, 2003). Second, wediscovered that the platform emerged via the estab-lishment of a novel operating model, which alignedsenior leaders’ interests in improving employee re-tention, employees’desire formeaning in theirwork,and the interest of SPOs in gaining access to a highlytrained workforce. Third, we found that micro-levelactions can affect macro-level outcomes even with-out the alignment of a majority. Specifically, thestability of the platform was maintained throughsupport of a sizeable minority illustrating thethreshold model of collective behaviour developedby Granovetter (1978).

Our study builds on prior work that takes a micro-foundational approach to studying partnerships(Aguinis & Glavas, 2012; Seitanidi & Crane, 2009;Vock, van Dolen, & Kolk, 2014). It extends this workby observing not only the communication flows andinvolvement of employees but also the structuresand value propositions that form the micro founda-tions of the firm’s role in its CSPs. Our case studyillustrates the conditions underwhich the efforts of a“social intrapreneur” (Davis & White, 2015), actingwithout formal authority, were ultimately trans-formed into durable routines and structures of inter-action to support the firm’s continued involvement inCSPs. Last, our study illustrates the role of platformsin the context of social value-creation—where thefirmactsnot as the soleprovider of all servicesbut as aconvener (Gatignon & Capron, 2019; Jacobides,Cennamo, & Gawer, 2018).

AMICRO-FOUNDATIONAL APPROACH TO CSPS

CSPs are increasingly seen as a way for firms andSPOs to achieve greater societal impact (Ballesteros& Gatignon, 2019; Kourula & Laasonen, 2010).Accordingly, the literature on CSPs focuses on

what makes for successful partnerships (Chatain &Plaksenkova, 2019; Rivera-Santos & Rufin, 2011).One of the enduring insights to emerge from thisliterature is the difficulty inmaintaining stable CSPs,given the partners’ potentially conflicting motives,goals, and modes of governance (Clarke & Fuller,2010; Le Ber & Branzei, 2010). Firms struggle to becatalysts to address societal issues because theseultimately do not fit with the incentives, structures,and processes of profit-oriented organizations(Bansal, 2003; Battilana&Dorado, 2010). For firms toimplement social initiatives, individuals need toovercome inbuilt organizational resistance (Howard-Grenville & Hoffman, 2003).

In the past decade, a focus on micro foundationshas gained momentum, not only in the managementfield but also in related fields such as economics andsociology (Abell, Felin, & Foss, 2008; Gavetti, 2005).The micro-foundational approach can be definedas the quest to “unpack collective concepts to un-derstand how individual-level factors impact orga-nizations, how the interaction of individuals leads toemergent, collective, and organizational-level out-comes and performance, and how relations betweenmacro variables are mediated by micro actions andinteractions” (Felin et al., 2015: 576). In recent years,the micro-foundational approach has been usedto advance research on corporate sustainability ingeneral and CSPs in particular (Aguinis & Glavas,2012; Bridoux & Stoelhorst, 2014; Seitanidi &Crane, 2009; Vock et al., 2014). A micro-foundationalapproach to CSPs helps us understand how intra-organizational structures based on individual-level preferences affect firm-level involvement ina macro-level outcome: CSPs for social impact.In this article, we focus specifically on the coor-dination of preferences and incentives of multiplestakeholders in a corporate context to build a plat-form for CSPs.

METHODS

Empirical Setting

Our study setting is amanagement consulting firmthat launched an initiative to work on social impactprojects (SPOs) in the development sector. Similar tocommercial projects, these projects usually lastedabout three to six months, depending on the need ofthe client. Thus, employee participation was a key

Author’s voice:How did your paper evolve andchange over time?

398 DecemberAcademy of Management Discoveries






feature of the initiative. To preserve anonymity, werefer to the initiative as “corporate social initiative”(CSI). CSI was started in 2002 by a senior managerreturning from a sabbatical. Throughout this manu-script, we refer to him as a social intrapreneur (Davis& White, 2015). His intention was to build a corpo-rate venture that integrated social impact goals withthe firm’s commercial objectives. This led to theemergence of a cross-sectoral platform for socialimpact, where the firm played the role of the con-vener, facilitating sustained interaction betweenother firms, SPOs, and governments. Thus, we con-sider CSI to be a CSP. We provide evidence of thisassumption in the case study findings in the fol-lowing paragraph.

This article uses a mixed-methods design. We re-lied on an inductive case-based approach to identifythe structures that emerged to support the firm’sinvolvement (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Eisenhardt,1989;Gioia, Corley, &Hamilton, 2013). In addition toqualitative data collection, we also conducted asurvey of a broad sample of employees to measuretheir perceptions of the CSImodel and (if applicable)their actual experience taking part in CSI work.Together, the interview and the survey data providethe evidence base from which we induced ourdiscoveries.

CASE STUDY

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis

Between 2011 and 2013, we completed 40 in-terviews with key sponsors and individual partici-pants involving a total of 26 individuals: 20 formerand current participants (as of 2013) and six key in-dividuals involved in the implementation process.Each interview lasted about an hour and was tran-scribed. Our interviews were structured in twowaves. In the first wave, 2011–12, we interviewedthe intrapreneur, key sponsors and former partici-pants. For the former two categories, we focused ontheir descriptions of the main structures and pro-cesses related to building up the CSI. For partici-pants, we focused on their perception of thosestructures and processes that were particularly sa-lient to them, their motivation for participating, andtheir perceptions of the experience of taking partin CSI.

Recognizing that the first wave could over-emphasize the experiences of individuals who werepositively affected by CSI (and thus agreeing to beinterviewed), we initiated a second wave of in-terviews to capture more diverse views. In early2013, we were given the names of the future CSIparticipants who had been selected to work on

projects starting in May/June 2013 but had not yetparticipated. We interviewed each of them beforeand after their participation. In addition, we hademail and telephone communications with the so-cial intrapreneur and some of the key CSI membersto verify details of the implementation process andstructures, and we were given access to internal aswell as public documents relating to CSI.

We begin our analysis by developing a chrono-logical case history of the entrepreneurial processto reconstruct the decision-making processes of thekey actors, which began in 2002 and continuedthroughout the time period in which our interviewstook place. To establish an accurate case history, wetriangulated information between participants andasked informants to focus on and describe specificevents they took part in (Eisenhardt, 1989). The firsttwo authors conducted all interviews, some jointly.Where interviews were conducted by one re-searcher, we debriefed after each interview. The firstauthor then hand-coded all interviews, following anopen-coding approach to identify structures thatemerged, and order these into basic categories withonly a slight level of abstraction (Locke, 2001;Wickert & De Bakker, 2018). These ultimately be-came our first-order constructs (Gioia et al., 2013)—labeled “supporting features” in Table 1.

Next, the first author began to establish the re-lationships between these categories to developsecond-order categories,which are the key structuralelements of the initiative, labeled “main construct”in Table 1. To ensure reliability, the second authorindependently developed second-order categoriesfrom the first-order constructs.2 Finally, as a team,wediscussed our emergent findings and, in doing so,weiterated between our data and the theory on CSPs torefine our constructs. Our two main constructs fromthis analysis operated at the micro level—focusingon aligning values for co-investment into the platformand legitimizing this investment on an individuallevel. However, we found that this individual-level action was made possible by macro-level de-velopments, legitimizing corporate involvement inissues of social concern. These individual actions ag-gregated to the macro level, leading to the emergenceof a platform for CSPs. The macro–micro linkagesarising from our data are depicted using a Coleman(1990) bathtub model, as shown in Figure 1. Themodel serves to integrate our discoveries and, there-fore, we discuss the model as we present our findingsin the following paragraph.

2 As the third coauthor was not involved in the datacollection process, their role included challenging the in-terpretations of the interviews by the other authors, thusincreasing reliability of the coding.


TABLE1

Summaryof

QualitativeFindings

Sam

peInterview

Exc

erpt

SupportingFea

tures

MainCon

stru

ct

Theex

ternal

propositionis

that

peo

ple

feel

they

’rege

ttingthebran

dqu

alityan

dskillsbe

hindaco

mpan

ylike

[thefirm

].Soat

[SPO

nam

e]they

mightsay

“ye

s,I’m

actually

gettingpeo

ple

whohav

ebe

enskilledan

dtrained

in[thefirm

].”

(Interview)

Buy-in

from

SPOs

Coinve

stingforsocial

impact

Ifindthat

mosto

fmyclients

wills

ay“I’m

soglad

you’renot

pro

bono.

Wehad

apro

bonogrou

ptw

oye

arsag

o.W

einve

sted

somuch

timein

that

effort.W

ego

tpeo

ple

whodidn’tseem

very

good

.They

leftafterthreewee

ksbe

cause

there

was

another

enga

gemen

t,an

ditwastedou

rtime.”(Interview

#1)

Buy-in

from

SPOs

Coinve

stingforsocial

impact

Ifyo

uca

ndoan

ythingto

retain

peo

ple

sothat

you’rereducingattritionratesan

dyo

u’remak

ingthem

moreloya

l,in

a“peo

ple’sbu

siness”

like

weare,

that

beco

mes

ave

rypow

erfulp

roposition.(Interview

#6)

Buy-in

from

Sen

iorLea

ders

Coinve

stingforsocial

impact

Iputm

yselfinthesh

oeso

fmyman

agem

entlea

d.C

SIisn

otforp

rofit.It’snot

oneof

his

core

clients

that

he’sgo

ingto

getrev

enues

from

.Sohe’dlook

atitan

dsay,

okay

,wellfirstly,is[nam

e]go

ingto

comeba

ckabe

tter

consu

ltan

t?Am

Igoingto

benefitfrom

theskills

that

[nam

e]is

goingto

getfrom

doingthat

particu

lar

project

orex

perience

?Is

hedoingateam

lead

?W

hat’stheco

mplexity?So

what

Iobv

iouslyjust

triedto

dowas

putforwardthat

Iwou

ldco

meba

ckin

threemon

thstimeabe

tter

person,a

better

consu

ltan

t.(Interview

#12)

Buy-in

from

seniorlead

ers

Coinve

stingforsocial

impact

Ithinkforme,

itwillh

ugely

increase

myskills

et,a

ndthelearningcu

rvewillb

ebig;

aswell,we’re

goingto

beinteractingwithseniorstak

eholdersac

ross

the

threeorganizations,in

particu

lar[largeinternationalSPO].Sowe’re

goingto

beman

agingstak

eholdersfrom

threedifferento

rgan

izations,as

wella

sge

tting

Buy-in

from

employe

esCoinve

stingforsocial

impact

Wewereworkingwithsu

chpassion

atepeo

ple,w

hen

they

talked

abou

tthese

issu

es,y

oureally

feltlike

youwereac

tually

doingsomethingmea

ningful.

Buy-in

from

employe

esCoinve

stingforsocial

impact

Iknew

that

thegu

yswhohad

don

eitin

thepast,they

had

been

seen

ashigh

perform

ance

.Som

eof

them

Iknew

had

been

promoted

since

.(Interview

#15)

Perform

ance

requ

irem

ent

Structuresforlegitimacy

Andin

addition,y

ounee

dto

hav

eace

rtainleve

lofp

erform

ance

rating,

when

we’re

acce

pted,bec

ause

itisve

rymuch

alead

ersh

ipdev

elop

men

tprogram

.SoI

knew

Ihad

tobe

atopperform

ingco

nsu

ltan

tbeforeIc

ould

doCSI.(Interview)

Perform

ance

requ

irem

ent


Ifthoseev

aluationsarenot

deemed

cred

ible,then

that

undermines

peo

ple’sfaith

inthesystem

,anditalso

undermines

whypeo

ple

goto

CSI.(Interview

#7)

Integrationinto

perform

ance


Sothey

sendve

rystrongmessage

sto

everyo

nethat

CSIisparto

fanintegrated

career

propositionforsom

eoneworkingat[thefirm

].It’snot

atimeou

t.It’snot

aleav

eof

absence

.It’sso

not

ava

cation

.It’sa[firm]p

roject.It’strea

tedthesame

way

.(Interview

#13)

Integrationinto

perform

ance

man

agem

ent


Ihea

rdfrom

myother

pee

rswho’ddon

eCSIw

asthey

did

gave

youaloto

fvisibility.(Interview

#24)

Disseminationroutines


Ihea

rdab

outtheCSIp

rogram

from

oneof

thetalks,an

dthat

was

oneof

the

things

that

Iknew

that

Iwan

tedto

beinvo

lved

in.(Interview

#31)

Disseminationroutines



CASE STUDY FINDINGS: EMERGENCE OF APLATFORM FOR IMPACT

Fromourqualitativeanalysis,weobserved the firm’sformation of partnerships with SPOs for addressingsocietal issues through multistakeholder collabora-tions. Over time, the firm’s relationships with indi-vidual SPOs evolved into a platform, where the firmplayed a central role in facilitating connections be-tween multiple partners such as SPOs and other cor-porate actors. In a public speech in 2011, the thenCEOaddressed the role ofCSI as part of the firm’s strategy todevelop new operating models for social impact:

Businessesare increasinglyawareof the role theycan play in helping to solve basic problems indeveloping countries like health and nutrition,through partnerships with governments, devel-opment agencies, and NGOs. We are looking atnewmodels to help business partnerswithNGOsand governments, to leverage their expertise intechnology, delivery systems, supply chain, andother core business competencies.

The initiative moved from addressing project-by-project goals to the development of capabilities aspart of a platform to enable multiple partners to ad-dress complex, interrelated societal issues. CSI thusextended beyond a client relationship to involvemultiple partners with a focus on jointly addressingissues of social concern. Rather than focusing onspecific activities that might be useful to help de-velopment sector clients, the emphasis of CSI was todetermine which partners were needed to solve aspecific social problem. For example, one publiccompany document stated:

We help companies see the “strategic” in “so-cial” to create business value and social impact

with theUnitedNations Sustainable DevelopmentGoals as the North Star. Consider the cutting edgepartnershipbetween financial services leader [firmname] and pharmaceutical giant [firm name].These unexpected partners are providing accessto affordable health care. [CSI] connects the in-ternational development sector to technologyleaders.

As an example, CSI facilitated and managed theCSP between mobile phone operators, the ministryof health, technology vendors, and local healthcareproviders in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya, to rollout a disease surveillance platform. CSI also helpedcoordinate and integrate the activities of multiplegovernment agencies, 19 international private sectorpartners, and numerous civil society stakeholdersfor a new public–private partnership focused onyouth HIV prevention in Kenya. Again, the primaryrole CSI took was that of a platform, connectingthe various partners, developing the partnershipstrategy, and defining the operating model and pro-cesses. A senior manager explained:

We don’t just work with non-profit clients butsee the increasing importance of cross-sectionallinkages, the need for amore systems approach.(Interview #8)

Two perceived macro-level changes took place inthe years preceding and concurrent with the initia-tion of CSI. First, corporate social responsibility(CSR) and sustainability had gained greater legiti-macy, and corporate actors were involved on amuchlarger scale than before (Eccles, Ioannou, & Serafeim,2014; Flammer, 2015). Second, there was a growingperception (shared by clients of the firm) that socialissues were interlinked and that they could not

FIGURE 1Micro Foundations of CSP Emergence and Aggregation

MACRO LEVEL Outcome: Maintenance of Cross-Sector Platform for Social ImpactInstitutional EnvironmentValue proposition (intangible benefits) met for employeesField level legitimacy of CSRValue propostion (retention) met for senior leadersLegitimacy of corporate involvement in issues

of social concern

Meeting Thresholds for Collective SupportEnabling Intrapreneurial Action(Transformation Mechanism)(Situational Mechanism)

MICRO LEVEL Structures of Co-Investing

Integration into Performance Management SystemEmployee Performance RequirementStructures for Legitimacy

Buy-in from NGOsBuy-in from Senior LeadersBuy-in from Employees

(Action Formation Mechanism)Enabling Employee ParticipationEnabling Senior Sponsor Support

Dissemination Routines


be tackled in isolation. In our micro-foundationsframework for CSP emergence (Coleman, 1990;Hedstrom & Swedberg, 1998), these macro-levelchanges can be understood to act as the situationalmechanisms affecting individual beliefs (macro–micro link shown in Figure 1). Specifically, thesocial intrapreneur recognized the importance ofthe increasing demand from corporations to be-come engaged in issues of social concern. Theability of the firm to work with its clients throughCSI also helped the firm win new business and re-tain existing commercial clients:

Work in global development is increasingly rel-evant to our commercial clients . . .I think it sig-nificantly strengthens our business case.We cansay ‘we’re not only looking at [SPO name] and[SPO name], but we are working with [firmname] on integrating small local firms into anew base of the pyramid distribution model.’And these sorts of things are paving a way withour key clients. (Interview #1)

The demand by other firms to engage in issues ofsocial and environmental concern created the op-portunity for one organization to act as a convenerof resource-rich firms and SPOs and governments.

Interviewees pointed to two key internal featuresof the operatingmodel that supported the emergenceof the firm’s CSP platform. The first feature was as amodel of co-investment for social impact in whichthree stakeholder groups—employees, the firm, andSPOs—agreed tomake financial sacrifices necessaryfor the platform. The second feature was a set ofroutines that legitimized the participation of em-ployees in the platform through a highly stringentselection process and a tight integration of the ini-tiative into the core business as well as routinesfor the dissemination of the benefits of the platform.We now discuss these in turn.

Co-Investing in Social Impact

As illustrated in the micro-foundational model inFigure 1, at the micro–micro level, the social in-trapreneur developed an operating model based onco-investment.Akey insight from the interviewswasthat the successful launch and scaling of CSI reliedon the intrapreneur’s customized approach to man-agingmultiple stakeholders. His primarymotivationwas to use the firm’s resources to create social im-pact; however, he did not want the initiative to beviewed as “philanthropy” or “CSR” as this implieddependence on the generosity of senior leaders andthat funding could not be relied on permanently.Instead, his goal was to establish a model thatallowed the initiative to become self-sustaining. His

approach involved a process of “balancing ‘whatmatters tome’with ‘whatmatters to them’O’Neil andUcbasaran (2016: 133).” Specifically, the structureshe put into place changed the conditions for indi-vidual action and laid the micro foundations for thefirm’s involvement in CSPs.

The first structure that emerged was one basedon the co-investment of stakeholders. Each party—employees and crucially the SPO clients—was re-quired to make financial contributions in order forthe platform to survive. This co-investment model isa departure from the norm of how firms usually en-gage with SPO partners. The idea was to build CSIlike a social enterprise within the overall corporatestructure. The social intrapreneur explained:

Thebusinessmodel hasa three-way contributionbetween [the firm] giving, our people giving, andour clients giving. It’s not discounted consulting.It’s co-investing in something. (Interview #2)

It should be noted that most CSI projects involvedmultiple partners, as the previous examples havehighlighted. However, the financial contributionto the firm was often carried by one SPO partner—usually a large foundation.

Although SPO clients would contribute to the plat-form, a highly unusual feature of corporate–SPO part-nerships, the same was required of the two otherstakeholder groups. Employees also had to accept asalarycut for thedurationof theirparticipation inCSI. Inaddition to reducing implementation costs, the salarycut acted as a filter, selecting those employees whovalued the opportunity to engage in suchwork. Finally,the firm agreed to reduce its per-consultant profit mar-gin, thus allowing CSI to be cost neutral rather thanhaving tocompetewith traditionalcommercialprojects.In the following paragraph, we describe supportingfeatures that created the conditions for co-investment.

Buy-in from SPOs. Many firms in professionalservice industries have historically provided pro bonoservices to SPOs and development organizations(e.g., Burbano, Mamer, & Snyder, 2018; Carnahan,Kryscynski, & Olson, 2017). Thus, the question of in-terest to the intrapreneurwaswhetherSPOswouldpayfor services theywereused to getting free of charge. ForSPOs, the value proposition centered around gettingaccess to the best talent for a fully fledged project tai-lored to their needs (as opposed to short-lived ad hocwork by individuals who were not necessarily suitedto the job). The social intrapreneur explained:

If it’s pro-bono and you don’t get a very goodlevel of service, can you really criticize some-thing you get for free? Is it an even relationship?You have to be thankful for what you get free -no? I find that most of my clients will say ‘I’m so


glad you’re not pro bono. We had a pro bonogroup two years ago. We invested so much timein that effort. We got people who didn’t seemvery good. They left after three weeks becausethere was another engagement, and it wastedour time. (Interview #1)

For SPOs to buy-in the model, the preference forhighly trained employees to bring their capabilitiesto the partnership was key.

Buy-in from senior leaders. The most difficultaspect to overcome—getting senior leaders’ buy-in—was that even if the CSI could break even, it stillwould be less profitable than other opportunities inthe market because SPO clients could not afford topay the rates that the firm charged its commercialclients. Hence, the concern was that CSI would be alower priority for the firm’s resources (such as allo-cating consultants to projects).

The intrapreneur recognized that although in-tangible benefits like a positive external reputationalor brand image could provide some justification forprioritization of CSI by senior leaders, these alonewould not be sufficient. To overcome this barrier, hedeveloped a value proposition linked to talentmanagement. He observed that employees were in-terested in pursuing a hybrid career where theycould make a social impact as part of their commer-cial career with the firm and, given that opportunity,theywould bemore likely to remain employed at thefirm. He presented CSI as a means of increasingemployee engagement and improving retention andperformance outcomes, which were seen as criticalfor professional service firms like those in manage-ment consulting. The social intrapreneur recalled:

The original business case was around people:recruitment, retention, skills development ofpeople. Some of these things are difficult tomeasure. But most weeks, I’ll get an email frompeople saying ‘I didn’t leave [the firm] two yearsago when I would’ve because I was waiting to doCSI, and I’ve done it now, and you know what?Now I’m really engaged and I feel better aboutthe company. There [are] lots of anecdotes andhard evidence around how these benefits, thesepeople benefits are helping. (Interview #2)

To strengthen the value proposition, the intra-preneur gathered and presented data from his ownemployee surveys, showing a significant positivecorrelation between an employee’s intent to partici-pate in CSI and the employee’s performance. As aresult, hewon buy-in from senior leaders to pilot CSI.In return for the retention benefits, senior leadersexemptedCSI from the usual financial overheads andmargins imposed on the firm’s commercial projects.

Buy-in fromemployees.The fees fromSPOclientsand the reduced overhead for CSI projects contributedto the viability of the operating model but were notsufficient to cover the full operating costs for CSI. Alarge part of the cost came from the salaries of themanagement consultants. Therefore, the operatingmodel also required co-investment from participatingemployees. The primary lever for convincing em-ployees to participate in CSI was the possibility ofhaving a unique, direct, and visible impact on society.The possibility of creating value for society was an im-portant aspect of the business case for employees, andwas communicated from one employee to another:

Some of the feedback that I got to was that theexperience of working with a nonprofit organi-zation, my friends felt that they made a largerdifference and the work itself was much morefulfilling. (Interview #25).

Importantly, the intrapreneur made sure that CSIprojects were more than just “feel good” assign-ments—they were genuine opportunities for consul-tants to apply and develop their consulting skills toeconomic development. One consultant explained:

There is nothing that people [from the firm] canreally tell anyone in development organizationsandNGOs about development.We’re no expertsin diseases. We’re no experts in HIV. We’re noexperts in water and sanitation. [But] if it comesdown to howwe get the drugs and themedicinesthe last mile in the distribution chain, we knowabout that because we do it for consumer goodscompanies. (Interview # 7)

The perception that their skill sets created valuefor others helped participants feel that they couldmake a meaningful contribution through CSI par-ticipation. Because CSI teams were often smallerthan commercial teams, employees on CSI projectswere assigned more challenging roles relative totheir roles on commercial projects. Therefore, CSIparticipation also provided opportunities to developvaluable leadership skills, ahead of their peers. Oneformer participant recalled:

There are no slides, so you get to rethink howand why you work in certain ways and howyou communicate and what you communicate. Ithink it enables people to go back into the com-mercial world, and it challenges a lot of the jar-gon and complexity that [the firm] just seems tobreathe. I think I came back a much more confi-dent person in terms ofmyskills or in terms ofmyability to deal with senior people. (Interview #8)

Given the intangible benefits employees gainedfrom CSI participation, the intrapreneur believed


that many employees would agree to a short-termsalary cut during their CSI participation. The ideawas that the intangible benefits and social impactcreated a compensating wage differential (Rosen,1986), where employees valued the nonpecuniarybenefits of participation more than (or at least asmuch as) they valued their pay. Furthermore, thesalary cut also brought employees’ pay more in linewith the wages of SPO employees who were theirpartners during those projects. One employee whohad accepted a position on a project explained:

Forme, itwasa sacrifice that Iwaswilling tomake.It ensures that the people who are doing it are justreally passionate about the work, and are not justdoing it to say that they got international workexperience inAfricaor India. I think itmakessenseandit getsyouafeeling likeyou’redoingnon-profitwork in terms of a salary cut. (Interview #31)

Thus, the first key feature of the operating modelunderlying the platform for CSPs was a three-waycontribution model. Each key stakeholder group—SPOs, senior leaders in the firm, and employees—wasrequired to co-invest in the platform. In turn, thesocial intrapreneur put in place the structures toprovide each group with a set of intangible benefits:receiving a highly trained professional consultants(for SPOs), and motivating employees who wouldstay longer with the firm (for senior leaders) andmeaningful work as well as the possibility to gainnew skills that were valuable in their commercialcareers (for participating employees).

Returning to Figure 1 and the micro-foundationmodel, the co-investment model we argue givesrise to the action-formation mechanism, enablingthe involvement of various firm-internal and firm-external stakeholders to support CSI.

Structures for Legitimacy

A micro-foundational model must also specifythe mechanism through which individual action istransformed into macro-level outcomes (Coleman,1990;Hedstrom&Swedberg, 1998). In the interviewswe conducted, informants underlined the impor-tance of legitimizing structures to enable collectiveorganizational support. These structures protectedindividuals who had participated and provided vis-ible proof to others of participation and the associ-ated intangible benefits participant believed to havereceived (e.g., meaningful work and skill develop-ment). They decreased the perceived costs and in-creased the perceived benefits of participation forothers, lowering their thresholds for participation.Collective support emerged not because all of thefirm’s members ended up sharing the same norm or

belief about CSI, but rather because these legitimiz-ing structures changed some individuals’ thresholds(Granovetter, 1978). These small changes in thresh-olds triggered a dynamic in which collective sup-port for the firm’s involvement in CSPs emerged,despite only a minority of members activelyparticipating. In this way, the legitimizing structuresunleasheda transformationalmechanism, transformingindividual-level support into collective support, as de-scribed in the following paragraph (see Figure 1).

A crucial feature of theCSI operatingmodelwas thatit did not only rely on the informal support of changeagents and individuals with prosocial preferences butalso was integrated with the firm’s existing organiza-tional routines. This integration helped legitimize CSIprojects as firm-sponsored assignments rather thanside work. In the following paragraph, we describesupporting features that created the conditions forcollective support: an employee performance eligibil-ity requirement, an integrated performance manage-ment process, and dissemination routines.

Employee performance requirement. In order forCSI to receive collective support and for employeesto seek participation, the initiative wold need to beperceived as one reserved for high-performing em-ployees. Accordingly, the intrapreneur imposed aminimum performance requirement. Even so, firmrecords indicate that there was a vast oversupply ofemployees interested in CSI participation. Given thescarcity of CSI projects relative to demand, even eli-gible consultants had no guarantee of being selected.Individuals applied to projects advertised on thefirm’s intranet, and assignment to a project was basedon how well the employee’s experience and skillsmatched the requirements of the CSI project. Thus,selection followed a competitive, transparent appli-cation process, which emphasized the fact that CSIprojects faced the usual pressures and discipline of abusiness and were focused on creating value. Thelength of the project (typically a few months) andhow it was managed were very similar to that of com-mercial projects (except for smaller teams and morefrugal expense budgets). The intrapreneur explained:

I don’t want the people who can’t get roleselsewhere. I want la creme de la creme. I wantthe best people. And in return, [the firm] gets aretention tool for these high performers. It mighteven get a recruitment differentiator. I can’t takeeveryone. Of course not. Business is in businesstomakemoney. But I can get a quarter of peoplewho put their hands up and say, ‘I want to dothis’ andwho are in our top-performing bracket.I don’t want the also-rans. (Interview #2)

To respond to the concern that employees mighttreat CSI as a holiday, the selection process was used


to exclude individuals whose motivation did notmatch the expectations of the CSI team.

They screen you so you’re not the person whojust wants an exotic holiday because sometimesit’s anything but exotic. You know, someonewho’s adaptable enough to just go and liveand work in a pretty challenging environment.(Interview #10)

Integration into an existing performance man-agement system. To provide assurance to participat-ingemployees that theywouldnotexperiencenegativecareer consequences, which would deter support forCSI in the long run, the performance evaluation of CSIwas integrated into the overall performance evaluationsystemof the firm.3 Ifduringayearaconsultantworkedon a CSI project for six months and on a commercialproject for six months, the employee’s evaluationwould be based on their performance on both projects,as one individual explained:

It’s not a time out. It’s not a leave of absence. It’ssonot a vacation. It’s anormalproject. It’s treatedthe same way. You have performance evalua-tions, you have objectives. It goes into your per-formance appraisal at the end of the year. [It is,]I think, a really strong operational model thatdrives people to dare to take up the challenge,and also at the end of the day, it supports youonce you come back. (Interview #12)

Rather than being a stand-alone unit or part of thefirm’s CSR division, the CSI organization was part ofthe firm’s strategy-consulting business, as the in-trapreneur explained.

We needed to send a signal to the business thatthis wasn’t the side charity while the main-streambusiness is somewhere else. If we put it inCSR, no matter how much we try to say it’s allpart and parcel of the same company, there wasstill a paradigm, still a mindset that it’s nice todo but the real action, the real people, the realtalent is in the main business where we serveclients, we make a profit. (Interview #2).

Dissemination routines. To provide visibility andlegitimacy to CSI and attract collective support, thesocial intrapreneur found ways through which the ex-perience of employees, as well as the content of thework that was accomplished for SPO clients, could bedisseminated. Employees who participated in CSIprojects were asked to give presentations to their focaloffice.Often short summaries of their experienceswere

featured on the internal as well as external web pagesof the company. These routines not only increasedawareness among employees of the benefits of CSIparticipation but also showcased the importance ofCSIwork to senior leaders.One formerparticipant recalled:

It was a great success with the client. She [mymanager] said to present it internally and also toour clients. I was presenting to [the firm] world-wide, andwe had 250 people connected live andmore than 1,000 people who viewed it later. Oneof the most senior managers who leads some ofthe biggest clients, he is one of our top six clientsin [the firm] worldwide. . .. He was attending thatwebcast and listening to us and thanking us forthe work that we have done. I would have had tospend twenty years working at [the firm] to getthat kind of exposure. (Interview #16)

In addition to former CSI employees disseminat-ing the content of their experience, early supportersoccupying senior positions in the firm began to en-gage in public discourse at highly visible sustain-ability related events (e.g., the World EconomicForum in Davos), making public statements of com-mitment regarding the firm’s position on social is-sues and specifically linking their engagement withthese issues to the existence of CSI. For example, inone public speech, the former CEO stated:

At [the firm], we have looked for new modelsto help businesses partner with NGOs and gov-ernments to leverage their expertise in technol-ogy, delivery systems, supply chain and othercore business competencies. To help acceleratethis convergence, eight years ago we introduceda new group – [CSI].

Together, these three structures—employee perfor-mance requirement, integration into an existing per-formance management system, and disseminationroutines—allowedCSI toachievecollectivesupport.Forsenior leaders, the performance requirement ensuredthatonly themostvaluableemployeeswouldreceivetheopportunity to engage in the practice. For employees,integration into the existing performance system prom-ised that their commercial careers would not be dis-rupted—allowing them to act as visiblemodels for otherorganizational members. Finally, dissemination rou-tines helped CSI gain a more widespread audience andvisibility, further anchoring it in the organization.

To interpret how participation by a minority ofmembers of the firm could still achieve collectivesupport for the firm’s involvement in CSPs, we useGranovetter’s (1978) threshold model of collective be-havior. Rather than assuming that if members of agroup made the same behavioral decision, it can beinferred that they shared the samenormor belief about

3 It is beyond the scope of this article to formally examinewhether there were any (positive or negative) career con-sequences related to CSI participation.


the situation; Granovetter (1978) maintains that varia-tion in norms or preferences across individuals withina group is the most important causal influence oncollective outcomes. Because individuals vary in theirthresholds for action such that some may adopt whenno one or only a few others have, whereas other in-dividuals will adopt only when a certain percent ofother have, as long as the threshold is passed for someadopters, and if other members can observe theiradoption, then a sufficient number of members willadopt for the collective outcome to occur.

In short, individuals do not need to have thesame preferences for collective action to emerge.Furthermore, in some cases, a very small change inthe distribution of preferences can generate a largedifference in the outcome. It is this feature of hismodel that is most relevant for our arguments here.Even though some senior leaders might not have be-lieved in the norm of corporate engagement in issuesof social concern and amajority of employees did nothave an explicit interest in getting involved in socialissues as part of their careers, the involvement of asizeable minority of each was sufficient to spur col-lective support of the firm’s role in CSPs.

Summary of Findings from the Case Study

In summary, the qualitative data provide the fol-lowing insights into our first research question, howindividual action shaped the emergence of firm-levelstructures inside a firm to support CSP involvement.We found that the firm overcame the challenges typi-cally associated with corporate involvement in CSPsby developing a novel operating model. The modelinvolved the following: (1) co-investment for socialimpactbySPOs, senior leaders, andemployees, and (2)integrationwith the firm’s existing routines to increasethe legitimacy of the CSI platform. Consequently, thecontinuity of the platformdidnot rely on the sustainedeffortsof the social intrapreneurbutbecameembeddedwith the firm’s existing routines: the structures he putin place lowered the thresholds for participation ofinterested corporate employees and enabled the sup-port by sympathetic senior leaders. The participationand support of this minority in turn brought about ag-gregate changes in organizational support.

SURVEY

Next, we turn to survey evidence to further examinethemacro-level outcomes, in particular the stability ofthe structure over time, in line with our second re-search question. Recall that from the perspective of anemployee, an important element of the operatingmodel was the set of intangible benefits they expectedto gain from CSI participation (e.g., personal meaning

and skills acquisition). In addition, senior leaderssupported themodel because they expected a positiveretention effect from employee participation in CSIwork. For the model to retain collective support, em-ployees’ expectations for benefits and senior leaders’expectations for retention gains would need to bemet.We now analyze more systematically (a) the overallsupport of the business model involving the co-investment feature, (b) whether the expected in-tangible benefitswere indeed received byparticipants,and (c)whether there is an indication thatparticipationmay be associated with retention benefits.

Survey Design

With the assistance of the CSI team, we launchedthe survey in August 2013, targeted at the 6,182 em-ployees working in the firm’s offices in the UnitedStates, United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland. Thesurvey was specifically designed for the purpose ofour research.4 The invitation to fill out the surveywassent from the CSI team’s official email address men-tioning a collaboration with an academic institution.There were no rewards for participating. One weeklater, a follow-upemailwas sent to remindemployeesto fill out the survey. We received 665 completedsurveys, 113 from former CSI participants and 552from individuals who had not participated in CSIbefore. Summary statistics regarding the characteris-tics of respondents are summarized in Table 2.5

One concern highlighted by the CSI team in theimplementation of our survey was the high volume of

4 Different elements of the same survey form the em-pirical basis for a relatedmanuscript (Bode & Singh, 2018).

5 We were able to verify how representative our sam-ple was by comparing the demographic and professionalcharacteristics of the employee population according tothe firm’s HR records as well as the respondent sample. Itshould be noted that we cannot link survey data to HRrecords as neither source of data includes information thatlets us identify individual employees. We found that for-mer CSI participants were more likely to respond thannonparticipants: the response rate for the population as awhole was 11 percent (665 of 6,128 individuals), but theresponse rate for the subset who had participated in CSIwas 30 percent (113 of 373). Furthermore, women wereoverrepresented in the sample: while 43 percent of theemployee population are women and 53 percent of re-spondents were women. In addition, although 51 percentof CSI participants arewomen, in our sample, 56 percent ofCSI respondents were women. There were no notable dif-ferences in terms of tenure or age between the overallpopulation and the sample nor in the population of CSIparticipants and the CSI respondent sample. The over-representation of women in our survey suggests that anygender-related findings must be interpreted with caution.


emailsdirectedat consultantsonadailybasis, and thusthedifficulty inobtaining responses to survey requests.Thismakes it particularly challenging to collectmulti-item measures. Recent studies have suggested thatsingle-item measures may reduce respondent’s re-fusal to participate (Bergkvist, 2015). Furthermore,Bergkvist and Rossiter (2007) argue that “theoreticaltests and empirical findings would be unchanged ifgood single-itemmeasureswere substituted. . . inplaceof commonly used multiple-item measures (183).”This is particularly the case where items may, in anycase, suffer fromcommonmethodbias, thus artificiallyinflating the constructs’ coefficient alpha. A single-itemmeasure can be justified if it refers to a single andclear object to be assessed (Bergkvist, 2014; Tonoyan,Strohmeyer, & Jenning, 2019). Given our questionswere targeted at assessing employee opinions re-garding the CSI business model and (where relevant)their CSI experience, which are unlikely to be highlycomplex, we used single-item measures throughoutthe survey. All measures pertaining to employee per-ceptions were captured on a 5-point Likert scale (1 5“strongly disagree” to 55 “strongly agree”).

SURVEY FINDINGS: EMPLOYEE SUPPORT ANDPLATFORM STABILITY

Employee Support for the Co-Investment Feature ofthe Business Model

A central feature of the operating model was re-lated to the requirement of employees to accept a

salary cut. In the following paragraph, we contrastemployees’ perceptions of the operating modelinvolving a salary cutwith other possible formsof co-investment. As shown in Table 3, on average, em-ployees agreed that companies like the firm shouldsacrifice profits to make a positive impact on society(Q1 average: 3.35/5.00). Regarding question 2, onaverage, employees surveyed disagreed with thestatement that all employees of the firm should fi-nancially contribute in order for the firm to providesubsidized consulting services (Q2 average: 2.25/5.00). Regarding question 3, they also disagreedwiththe statement that CSI participants should finan-cially contribute (Q3 average: 2.49/5.00). However, itis worth noting that a sizeableminority of employeessurveyed (48 percent and 35 percent, respectively)was neutral or in agreement with the statement that(a) employees and (b) CSI participants specificallyshould financially contribute. Thus, despite the rel-ative stability of the CSP over time, we do not seeevidence that this macro-level outcome can be at-tributed to a persistent and widely shared norm re-garding the role of firms in issues of social concernnor the co-investment model. Last, on average, em-ployees surveyed strongly disagreed with the state-ment that SPO partners should pay the fullcommercial fee for the firm’s consulting services (Q4average: 1.85/5.00).

The survey provides more information regardingheterogeneity among employees’ perceptions. Asshown in Table 3, a comparison of means shows thatcompared with employees who had not completed

TABLE 2Employee and Project Characteristics—Summary Statistics

Variable Definition Mean (Std Dev)

Participation statusCSI completed Indicator variable for whether a person had previously participated

in a CSI project0.17 (0.38)

Individual characteristicsFemale Indicator variable for gender (1 5 female, 0 5male) 0.53 (0.50)Age Age measured on 5-point scale (1 5 under 25 years, 2 5 between

25 and 29 years, 35 between 30 and 34 years, 45 between 35 and39 years and 55 40 years and over)

2.83 (1.27)

Volunteer experience Indicator variable for previous volunteer experience (15 hasvolunteered at least once a month in the past year, 05 has notvolunteered at least once a month in the past year)

0.45 (0.50)

Tenure Tenure measured on a 5-point scale (1 5 less than 3 years, 2 5between 3 and 5 years, 35 between 5 and 7 years, 45 between7 and 10 years and 55 more than 10

2.05 (1.38)

MBA Indicator variable for business education (15has anMBA, 05doesnot have an MBA)

0.28 (0.45)

Performance rating Performance rating received by an individual in the year leading upto survey administrationwhich is based on a 1–5 scale (15 belowpeer, 2 5 in line with peer

2.16 (1.66)

Home country Countrywhere the home office of the individual is located (Canada,Ireland, UK or USA)

N/A


CSI, employees who completed CSI agreedmore withthe statements that the firm and employees shouldmake financial contributions. We investigate thesedifferences inmoredetail usinganordered logitmodel(results are also robust for anOLSmodel).As showninTable 4, column (1), employees who had previouslytaken part in CSI were more likely to believe that thefirmshouldsacrificeprofits tocontribute to society.Asshown in Table 4, column (2), former CSI participantswere more likely to believe that the overall employeepopulation rather than just CSI participants shouldmake a financial contribution. The latter findingsmaybe in linewith themotivation of formerparticipants tospread the cost related to their choice to take part inCSI across the rest of the employee population. Wealso find, as shown in Table 4, column (3), that in-dividuals with previous volunteer experience wereless likely to believe that only employees who tookpart in CSI should make a financial contribution.Thus, the most prosocial employees seemed to becautious of a model that was overly reliant on finan-cial sacrifices by only CSI participants.

Next,weexamineheterogeneitybygender.Womenare often considered to be more prosocial than men(Gilligan, 1977; Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Travino,2010). As shown in Table 4, columns (1) and (2), rel-ative to men, women agreed more strongly that thefirm should sacrifice profit and agreed more that allemployees should make a sacrifice to achieve social

impact. This suggests that female employees may bemore willing to shoulder the financial burden of thefirm’s involvement with society, even if they are notpersonally taking part in the initiative (nor gainingintangible benefits of participation). In terms of gar-nering generalized support for CSI, women appear tobe particularly likely allies.6

Employee-Related Outcomes followingCSI Participation

We now present analyses of survey responses re-garding employee outcomes related to CSI partici-pation for CSI participants. We complement thisanalysiswith a comparison betweenCSI participantsand nonparticipants when considering their loyaltyto the firm, to have a meaningful comparison ofwhether the value proposition for seniormanagers—that CSI might improve retention—might be justi-fied. Taken together, this analysis is intended to

TABLE 3Employee Perceptions—Summary Statistics

CSI Completed(N 5 113)

CSI Not Completed(N 5 552)

Survey Question Mean (Std Dev) Mean (Std Dev) Mean (Std Dev)

Perceptions of the business model (N 5 665)

Q1: Companies like [the Firm] should sacrifice profits to make apositive imapct on society

3.35 (1.05) 3.54 (1.11)* 3.32 (1.03)*

Q2: All employees of [the Firm] should financially contribute for[the Firm] to provide subsidized consulting services to NGOs

2.25 (1.02) 2.40 (1.20)1 2.23 (0.98)1

Q3:Only [CSI] participants should financially contribute to allow[the Firm] to provide subsidized consulting services to NGOs

2.49 (1.00) 2.67 (1.16)* 2.46 (0.96)*

Q4: NGOs and development organizations should pay the fullcommercial fee for [the Firm’s] consulting services

1.85 (0.77) 1.81 (0.81) 1.86 (0.77)

Likelihood of leaving the firm (N 5 665)

Q5: It would take a lot to get me to leave my job 3.13 (1.23) 3.44 (1.27)** 3.06 (1.10)**Perceptions of the CSI experience (N 5 113)

Q6: Overall I was satisfied with my [CSI] experience N/A 4.30 (0.85) N/AQ7: What I did during my [CSI] assignment made a difference N/A 4.04 (0.85) N/AQ8: My work activities during my [CSI] assignment were

personally meaningful to meN/A 4.27 (0.85) N/A

Q9: My [CSI] assignment helped me develop new skills N/A 4.39 (0.76) N/A

All survey questions use a 1–5 scale (1 5 strongly disagree and 5 5 strongly agree).** p , .01* p , .051 p , .1 (two-tailed t-test)

6 It should be noted that, to the best of our knowledge,most of the early supporters of the initiative including thethenactingCEOaswell as a former chairmanand the socialintrapreneur were men. Given that we do not have com-plete records of all formal and informal supporters of CSI,we are unable to provide support for whether the gender ofthe early supporters played any role in the emergence ofspecific features or the sustainability of the initiative.


provide evidence of the stability of the operatingmodel by assessing whether the value proposition toemployees regarding intangible benefits of CSI par-ticipation was fulfilled and whether CSI may be as-sociated with employee loyalty to the firm.

Table 3, rows (6)–(9), shows that, on average, CSIparticipants were satisfiedwith their CSI experience(Q6 average: 4.30/5.00), that what they did duringtheir CSI assignment made a difference (Q7 average:4.04/5.00), and that their work activities during theirCSI assignment were personally meaningful (Q8average: 4.27/5.00). They also found that CSI as-signments helped them develop new skills (Q9 av-erage: 4.39/5.00). Thus, overall, the perception offormer CSI participants surveyed 10 years after theinitiation of CSI suggests that these aspects of thevalue proposition were consistently met.7 Given ourprevious finding regarding the overall higher agree-ment of women with the financial contributions ofall employees, a key element of the CSI operatingmodel, we also examine whether women differ frommen in the perceived outcomes of their CSI experi-ence. We find that women were overall less satisfiedwith their CSI experience than men but did not

report lower levels of perceived meaning or skillsdevelopment. We found no evidence of project-related characteristics, such as team size or projectlength, to be significantly associatedwith the overallsatisfaction.8

Finally, we consider the stated loyalty of eachemployee group to the firm to examine whether thevalue proposition to senior managers that CSI mayaid in the retention of employees, might hold. Asshown in Table 3, row (5), the average score for thestatement “it would take a lot to get me to leave myjob” is 3.13/5.00 (including both former CSI partici-pants and nonparticipants). However, employeeswho completed CSI more strongly agreed with thestatement than employees who had not completedCSI (Q5 average: 3.44/5.00 for CSI completed v. 3.06/5.00 for CSI not completed). This pattern alsoemerges from our regression analysis, as shown inTable 4, column (5). Thus, former CSI participants atthe time of our survey were more likely than non-participants to agree that it would take a lot for themto leave their job. Based on these data, we are unableto determine whether this difference existed beforeCSI participation or whether it was caused by CSIparticipation. However, this finding is consistentwith the related literature that shows evidence ofemployee engagement in CSR being associated withretention benefits (Bode, Singh, & Rogan, 2015;Carnahan et al., 2017).

TABLE 4Employee Perceptions—Regression Analysis

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Survey Question Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5

Model Ordered LogitCompanies

Should Sacrifice

Ordered LogitShould

Contribute

Ordered LogitShould

Contribute

Ordered LogitNGOs ShouldPay Full Fees

Ordered LogitWould NotLeave Firm

Variable

CSI completed 0.592** (0.215) 0.470* (0.217) 0.327 (0.220) 20.186 (0.223) 0.949** (0.216)Female 0.325* (0.145) 0.2461 (0.147) 20.178 (0.145) 20.341* (0.152) 20.2421 (0.144)Age 20.060 (0.062) 20.012 (0.064) 20.191** (0.063) 0.090 (0.067) 0.198** (0.063)Tenure 20.075 (0.065) 20.212** (0.067) 0.094 (0.066) 0.016 (0.069) 20.1081 (0.065)MBA 20.182 (0.172) 20.263 (0.173) 0.023 (0.171) 0.147 (0.177) 20.078 (0.164)Previous performance 20.081 (0.092) 0.123 (0.093) 20.099 (0.092) 20.018 (0.095) 0.062 (0.090)Previous volunteer

experience0.322* (0.148) 0.144 (0.149) 20.358* (0.149) 20.054 (0.156) 20.103 (0.147)

Country-fixed effect Yes Yes Yes Yes YesObservations 646 646 645 644 644

Standard errors in parentheses.** p,.01* p , .051 p , .1Difference in the number of observations is due to missing survey responses to specific questions.

7 Relying on a simple t-test, the mean of Q7 (“made adifference”) is statistically different from that of Q6(“overall satisfied”), Q8 (“meaningful work”), and Q9(“skills development”). Furthermore,Q8 andQ9alsodifferfrom one another. Overall, the mean of Q9 (“skills devel-opment”) is highest, whereas the mean of Q7 (“made adifference”) is the lowest.

8 These results are based on an ordered logit model andare available from the authors on request.


Summary of Findings from the Survey Study

Employee willingness to sacrifice for CSI partici-pation formed the basis of the viability of the valuepropositions and the sustainability of the overallmodel. Surprisingly, we found that, on average, bothformer participants and nonparticipants wereslightly below neutral in their support of the modelthat required a salary cut fromemployees, suggestingthat although collective support for CSI emerged,this support was not likely due to a strong normhaving evolved around firm involvement in socialissues nor around the appropriateness of the oper-atingmodel. However, we find evidence thatwomenaremore supportive of themodel thanmen.Yet, theyare also less likely to find their CSI experience sat-isfactory. Thus, for the model to remain stable,careful management of the experience of women onCSI projects is likely important. We find some in-dication that post-participation, former CSI partici-pants are more loyal to the firm than theircounterparts, providing at least some tentative sup-port for the value proposition to senior managersbeing met.

OVERVIEW OF DISCOVERIES

In summary, our study revealed three discover-ies. First, our qualitative work highlighted the im-portant role that intermediary organizations, likethe consulting firm, can play in initiating and cata-lyzing CSPs for social impact. Thus, our first dis-covery is that a corporate can take the lead role ininitiating and maintaining CSPs. This is importantgiven the conventional wisdom that for-profit firmsare rarely catalysts of CSPs (Kaplan et al., 2018).Specifically, we found evidence of the firm initiat-ing and maintaining an interface to facilitate value-creation exchanges between SPOs and othercorporates that can be thought of as a platform toaddress societal issues.

Second, we discovered that the platform emergedvia the establishment of a novel operating modelwith two key features: the first was a co-investmentapproach to social impact in which three parti-es—employees, the firm, and SPOs—accept to makefinancial sacrifices. The second feature was a set ofpractices that legitimized the involvement of em-ployees in the platform through highly stringent se-lection criteria, tight integration of the initiative intothe core business, anddissemination routines. Thesepractices reinforced the stability of the co-investingstructure by transforming individual-level supportinto collective support.

Third,we found thatmicro-level actions can affectmacro-level outcomes even without full alignment

of a majority, illustrating the threshold modelof collective behavior developed by Granovetter(1978). Our findings suggest that engaging aminoritymay be sufficient for lasting corporate involvementin CSPs. Although we did not observe active re-sistance to the implementation of the CSP, we alsodid not observe evidence of a broadly shared normemerging in support of the firm takingpart in sociallyresponsible engagements. By putting in place struc-tures that increased the perceived benefits and re-duced the perceived costs for some individuals inthe firm, the intrapreneur was able to reduce theirthresholds for participation. These small changes inthresholds triggered a dynamic in which collec-tive support for the firm’s involvement in CSPsemerged, despite only a minority of members ac-tively participating.

The macro–micro–macro linkages of our discov-eries can be demonstrated through a Coleman (1990)macro–micro–macro model, shown in Figure 1. Inthe years before and concurrent with the develop-ment of the CSI operating model, CSR had increasedin legitimacy, increasing perceptions by top man-agement that the firm could benefit from such anengagement. The macro-level changes in the in-stitutional environment created an opportunity forthe intrapreneur to develop a co-investment modelthat alignedvalues of the firm’s internal stakeholders(e.g., employees and senior leaders) with those ofindividuals working in and leading SPOs. Thismodel included key features that helped legitimizethe individual-level actions, such as the perfor-mance requirement. The aggregation of individualaction, facilitated by the conditions created by theintrapreneur, aggregated to the macro level, and in-creased the stability of the firm’s platform for socialimpact.

THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Our study on the emergence of a platform for CSPsfor social impact bridges and extends research inmultiple areas. We contribute to a better under-standing of the interaction between individual-levelstructures, firm-level behavior, and related out-comes for external stakeholders in several ways asexplained in the following paragraph.

Toward a Micro-foundational Approach toCross-Sector Partnerships

In recent years, there has been an increase in focuson the interorganizational processes underlying so-cietal engagement of firms: in particular, the roleof collaborations between firms and not-for-profitpartners in bringing about societal change (Bhanji &


Oxley, 2013; Cabral et al., 2019). At the same time,researchers have also started to examine the intra-organizational processes unique to engagement withsocial issues compared with other change processes(Sonenshein, 2006; Wickert & De Bakker, 2018). Weextend this work by examining not only the in-volvement of employees in CSPs but also the rou-tines, structures, and value propositions that createthe micro foundations of the firm’s involvement inCSPs. Our findings suggest that when consideringthe roles firms can play in CSPs, in addition to thepreviously examined external processes (Rivera-Santos & Rufin, 2011; Rondinelli & London, 2003;Van Tulder & Keen, 2018), research also needs tofocus on the internal processes.

We would expect that in settings like law or ac-counting as well as other service firms, similar ini-tiatives could emerge. First, firms providing servicesare likely more easily able to share their main asset(knowledge) than firms in industries relying pri-marily on hard assets, which are less portable. Inaddition, because of the relatively high salaries em-ployees in such industries enjoy, they may be ablerthan employees in lower paying jobs to contributetoward a co-investment operating model. However,our findings may have limited generalizability inother contexts. Examining firm structures enablingthe emergence of CSPs not only in different firms andindustries but also in institutional and socioeco-nomic contexts may be one important avenue forfuture research. Finally, although it was our objec-tive to study the emergence of enabling structuresfor CSPs in a corporate context, a similar micro-foundational approach could also be taken whilefocusing on SPOs where individual values, prefer-ences, and motivations as well as organizational-level structures and objectives may well differ fromthose observed in corporations. Indeed, future workmight develop theory also at the unit of the firm–SPOpartnership, examining whether and how enablingstructures may coevolve.

Employee Preferences and Corporate Engagementin Issues of Social Concern

In our case study, a key part of the solutiondepended on employees’ valuing the opportunity toparticipate in a firm-sponsored social initiative andthe firm seeing an intangible benefit from this.Recent research has highlighted the role of corporate

talent management as a justification for social en-gagement. In particular, CSIs can facilitate recruit-ment, improve employees’ identification with thefirm, and retention (Bode et al., 2015; Carnahan et al.,2017; Glavas & Godwin, 2013). Implicit in this re-search is the notion that firms benefit from socialengagement because (some) employees value thechance to take part in or be associated with that en-gagement, yet existing literature focuses primarilyhow suchpreferences can beharnessed to benefit thefirm. By contrast, our study provides an illustrationof how the preferences of employees are aggregatedto help the firm develop the capabilities and struc-ture to initiate and sustain collaborationwithnot-for-profit organizations.

Platforms for Social Impact as Drivers of the UNSustainable Development Goals

Last, our study provides relevant insights into themeans by which organizations can achieve SDG 17.SDG 17 was formulated to encourage the formationof global partnerships and to coordinate responsesby multiple stakeholders in service of the remainingSDGs. Our article shows how individual-level actorscan use the legitimation of firm involvement in is-sues of social concern to catalyze internal and ex-ternal stakeholders. The role of platforms in thecontext of social value creation—where the firmchooses to be a convener rather than the soleprovider—is just the beginning to be analyzed by themanagement literature (Gatignon & Capron, 2019;Jacobides et al., 2018). We hope that this work willinspire further theoretical development in this im-portant direction and that our discoveries help ad-vance an understanding of how the important workset out by the UN sustainable development goalscan feasibly be achieved.

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Christiane Bode ([email protected]) is an assistantprofessor at Imperial College Business School. She receivedher PhD in management from INSEAD. Her current researchcenters around corporate social engagement, with a particularfocus on the role of such engagement in (a) firms’ humancapital strategy and (b) firms’ nonmarket strategy.

Michelle Rogan ([email protected]) is an associateprofessor of management at Imperial College BusinessSchool. She studies the effect of social structure on eco-nomic exchange, in particular how factors such as status,

reputation, and embeddedness affect interorganizationalnetworks, employee mobility, and firm performance.

Jasjit Singh ([email protected]) is a professor ofstrategy and the Paul Dubrule Chaired Professor ofSustainable Development at INSEAD. His research andteaching interests include innovation, inclusive business,sustainable development, impact investing, and impactevaluation. He earned his PhD in business economics atHarvard Business School.


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SUSTAINABLE CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATION ......Together, the interview and the survey data provide the evidence base from which we induced our discoveries. CASE STUDY Qualitative Data