Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) between nonprofits and businesses are increasingly implemented in response to humanitarian crises. These partnerships are motivated by ideals of alignment as stakeholders strive to find the “sweet spot” between humanitarian and business interests. However, this article shows that the ideals of alignment differ from the actual practices of alignment in the CSPs, and sweet spots are not merely found but constructed in and through changing relations of power. Based on an ethnographic case study of partnerships between a (...) global humanitarian organization and five technology companies, the article deploys a theoretical lens from critical humanitarian studies to analyze how alignment in CSPs comes about in practice. This analysis demonstrates that in the construction of alignment, the companies’ interests become the priorities with which humanitarian organizations must align their and their beneficiaries’ needs. Consequently, while the discourse of sweet spots perpetuates an ideal of alignment where all partners benefit equally from the partnership, it legitimates power imbalances and asymmetrical alignment in practice. (shrink)

Refugee crises are one of the grand challenges of the 21st century. Despite the theoretical importance attached to value created for beneficiaries in the partnership literature, research tends to focus on internal processes and value created for partners and partnerships, leading to widespread calls to further specify the value created by partnerships for beneficiaries. Applying an analytical framework from the value creation and social impact literatures, we report on a study of multiple social partnerships of a nongovernmental organization in the (...) refugee issue field. Our results demonstrate that frames of refugees held by partners and in partnerships’ implementation contexts shape the value creation activities undertaken for beneficiaries, and determine whether value is created and what types of value. The dual contribution of this article comprises a rare empirical study of value creation activities for beneficiaries (here, refugees) and theorization of how and when implementation context affects value creation by partnerships. (shrink)

Companies increasingly seek to strategically integrate social objectives in commercial activities to address societal challenges, yet little is known about how companies can sustain such a commitment over time. To address this question, we conduct a case-based, abductive study of two pharmaceutical companies widely considered industry leaders in facilitating access to medicine over a 20-year period (2000–2019). We identify product and operation-level integration as distinct types of integration efforts enacted by these companies. Tracing the intraorganizational dynamics associated with these efforts, (...) we theorize that sustained integration is contingent on companies’ ability to respond to and address the challenges specific to product and operation-level integration. The theoretical framework we develop contributes to an emerging debate on the potential of companies to make progress on societal challenges by strategically integrating social objectives, including but not limited to those related to global health. (shrink)

This article explores how cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) operating in a development context built resilience during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a qualitative analysis of eight partnerships operating in East-Africa, Central America, and Indonesia, I show how CSPs engaged in three practices of resilience building (i.e., forming unconventional alliances, mobilizing digital technologies, and building subnetworks), which allowed them to remain functional despite facing adversity. In addition to fostering their resilience, my findings show how engaging in these practices enabled (...) the CSPs to develop new capabilities (i.e., improved abilities to engage with beneficiaries) that benefit them in the long run. Based on these insights, I advance our understanding of resilience building by unpacking this concept on a CSP level. Furthermore, by unfolding the relevance of incidental learning in a cross-sectoral setting, I widen our knowledge of learning processes in CSPs. (shrink)

Motivated by controversies surrounding the continued employment of poverty porn in humanitarian business, we initiated two 2 × 2 × 2 experiments to examine the extent to which humanitarian ads that utilize poverty porn images weaponize fundraising. Informed by negative state relief and Affect Intensity Theory, the two investigations explored the effects on study participants of the inclusion within ad appeals of images of starving children, ad spokespeople of disparate gender and ethnicity, and different types of message frame. A 2 (...) (protest emotive vs. informative message) × 2 (male vs. female announcer) × 2 (White British or Black African ethnicity) between-subjects eye track experiment ( n = 236) revealed that an informative message with a White female announcer attracted the most attention. Next, a survey ( n = 667) was completed, which recorded participants’ levels of affect intensity, advertising skepticism, and donation intention. The results suggested that a White British female announcer was more likely to engage potential donors than a male and/or non-White spokesperson. The implications of the findings are discussed in light of how poverty porn might work in practice. (shrink)