Cross-sector partnerships (Seitanidi & Crane, Reference Seitanidi, Crane, Seitanidi and Crane2014a) between business and nonprofit actors face multiple challenges. It is useful to conceive them as complex adaptive systems, where actors from business and nonprofit sectors interact at different levels and in a multiplicity of ways (Seitanidi, Reference Seitanidi2008). In light of this, a general framework is needed in order to make explicit all the different components of this landscape and provide managerial tools for dealing with such a level of complexity. This is actually the main contribution James Austin and M. May Seitanidi make with their recent book: a clear map able to disclose all the implications, including problems and solutions, stemming from value creation in—and by—nonprofit-business collaborations.
The authors propose and elaborate on the Collaborative Value Creation (CVC) framework as the map to navigate nonprofit-business collaborations and ground it in an extensive and accurate review of the literature, including over 100 case studies illustrating and confirming the framework. Furthermore, the book is the result of a multi-year research stream to which the authors have offered a clear and distinct contribution (Austin & Seitanidi, Reference Austin and Seitanidi2012; Crane & Seitanidi, Reference Crane, Seitanidi, Seitanidi and Crane2014; Seitanidi & Crane Reference Seitanidi and Crane2009, Reference Seitanidi and Crane2014b; Seitanidi, Reference Seitanidi2008).
However, this is not accomplished by distilling the ideas in a way that only academics can understand. On the contrary, the book is clearly the result of an effort to translate the content from the literature in a language easily accessible by a wider audience, spanning academics as well as practitioners, policy makers and other actors in the economic and social arena.
This virtue brings with it a flip side. Inevitably, to improve readability, the discussion tends to be the stylized description of the different components of the CVC framework, rather than a problematization of the different situations a nonprofit-business collaboration may face. This approach could, in part, limit the potential use of the CVC framework in addressing real problems. However, the authors avoid this through a full series of examples that help the reader to re-contextualize the book’s topics and apply them to real decision-making contexts.
Austin and Seitanidi conceive collaborative value in a very interesting way: they move from the costs generated by nonprofit-business collaboration, identify the activities financed by those costs, and arrive at the benefits associated with the partnership. In this way the proposed concept of value is based on the idea of investment, relating the costs of the collaboration activities and the resulting benefits. The costs of the activities needed to make the collaboration thrive are able to provide the concept of value with a solid and measurable definition. At the same time, the costs are conceived as investment generating benefits, which are indeed the real outcome of the collaboration.
However good this definition of value, as with every definition of value, it falls short in some dimensions. In particular, while it is very effective in connecting the idea of value to measurable dimensions, it is less capable of moving forward our understanding of the inner nature of value. In fact, what value really is, what is its essence, and what distinguishes collaboration activities that generate such value from others that do not, are questions not fully answered in the book. A discussion of this kind is not within the scope of the present book, and rightly so, but further research should challenge this concept of value and provide a deeper definition of value exposing its nature beyond its constituents.
The map drawn by the CVC framework develops five different components of value generated by nonprofit-business partnerships. The first component defines the sources of value activated by the partnership. The CVC framework is also open enough to include the subjective perceptions of the partners, distinguishing what objectively substantiates the partnership from the way in which the partners “see” or “make sense of” it. In particular, fundamental for the collective value creation processes are the attitudes and the perceptions held by the partners. The second component is therefore a detailed analysis of the mindset of the involved partners by distinguishing different relevant dimensions.
The CVC framework is not only flexible and open, but also evolving, showing that partnerships can change in their strength and depth. The authors’ third component focuses on how, thanks to specific key value drivers of change, the stage of the collaboration may vary from philanthropic to transformational, where the latter implies that system-level innovations become the primary focus of the partnership.
The authors’ fourth component of “evolution” is useful because it recalls not only a transformation through a series of stages, but also because it reminds us of the idea of a process, evolving over time. Collaborative partnerships are in fact not fixed, but tend to progress along a continuum from their formation, to selection, to implementation. The partnership moves over time through these processes, each of them positively affecting different elements of the value creation.
The final and fifth component relates to the outcomes of the partnership: the CVC framework is a multi-dimensional and multi-actor framework and the outcomes of the value creation process inevitably affect individuals, organizations, and society, each to a different extent. Such a level of complexity has been analyzed with a nuanced approach, able to deal with the different characteristics of each actor and consistent with different kinds of values.
All of these components (i.e., a partnership’s spectrum, mindset, stages of development, evolutionary process and outcomes) are discussed within the book’s chapters and compose the overall CVC framework. The last chapter draws upon all of this to suggest practices and ideas on how to create value in nonprofit-business collaborations in the real world.
The most interesting advancements the book puts forward in the way we think of and understand nonprofit-business collaborations is the idea of “collaborative value mindset” and the discussion of the “collaboration outcomes.” While the latter is interesting as a discussion because it connects to one of the main challenges scholars and practitioners are facing, i.e., the measurement of the social and environmental impact of firm’s actions, the former actually represents a substantial advancement in the current academic discussion about “value creation.” The meaning of value, as presented in this book, depends to a large extent on how the involved partners make sense of their collaboration in terms several dimensions. For example, the breadth of the scope of the expected benefit, or the multidimensional rather than unidimensional set of motivations pushing for the collaboration, are critical dimensions to keep in mind to understand how much value each partner assigns to the collaboration.
Both scholars and practitioners can benefit from reading the book. This observation also extends to policy makers. National and super-national institutions that are currently reflecting on the proper way to account for “social value” (i.e., by using measures such as “social return on investment”), can benefit from Austin and Seitanidi’s conception of value as the result of an “investment” rather than as a mere cost needed to produce social impact activities. Policy makers can also benefit from the deeper understanding that the book offers on the mindset leading partners in a collaborative cross-sector relationship and the construction of a regulatory system that encourages, rather than hinders, the evolution towards partnerships able to create mutually recognizable opportunities to enhance value across organizations.
The authors write that “value, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder, some outcomes may not be perceived in the same way by both partners” (182). This evocative sentence hints at the possibility that the subjective evaluation of the partnership by the partners is not limited to the perceptions of an objective status of the collaboration, but it may also enter the definition of value, making it dependent on the components of the subjective mindsets of the partners and on their interaction. The book opens up this door, and many others, showing that the land the CVC map describes is still to be explored in its full extent. But now that we have a map, the exploration will be easier and more effective.
