Chapter 5: Motivation

The motivations of organizations choosing to partner across market sectors in order to achieve a social end are fundamental to cross-sector social partnership (CSSP) success. Underlying partner motivation can be a potential threat to creatively devising new solutions to complex problems. Key questions should be answered at the outset of a CSSP, such as: Do the partner organizations seek legitimacy? Does association with partners help an organization gain credibility? Is survival a motivating factor for one of the organizations, where the partnership may be used as a support group? To maintain a successful cross-sector collaboration, partners must be entirely honest about their motivations, which should be aligned with the greater social good. Ehrlichman, Sawyer, and Spence (2018) define this as a “clarifying purpose.” The collaboration needs a high-level statement of purpose designed to attract the appropriate stakeholders. If a partner is not motivated by the mission, but rather toward self-interest or survival, the partnership is doomed to fail in its goal of tackling grand social challenges and wicked societal problems. Additionally, if a partnership is weighed down by many partners with diverse motivations, the partnership may become bogged down in over-formalized processes since trust will be difficult to form. Kania and Kramer (2011) point out that in order to truly appreciate and believe in the collaborating partners motivation, long-term interaction is required. The problem with this is, of course, that we live in a society of instant gratification and demand for results. Collaborations do not often have the luxury of spending the full 3–5 years that Liz Weaver (Tamarack Institute, as cited in Thompson, 2014) teaches is average for collaborative life cycles to believe in their counterparts’ motivation for partnering. However, perhaps commitment can act as a proxy for full belief in partner motivation, since it is really about showing up and participating.