Styles of Collaboration between Entities within Different Sectors of Communities When Working on Sustainability-Related Projects

Collaboration is a necessary strategy to cope with problems of environmental sustainability among the sectors of society. Individual actors such as government, business and non-governmental organisation are not possible to solve the problems associated with sustainable development on their own. This research provides new insights of academic and practice relevance by using a variety of methods to explore into nature of the relationship between the view of sustainability and the type of organisation in which the organisation collaborates with others to support sustainable development. The literature review reveals that there is a different interpretation of sustainability viewed by the different sectors of society where the focus is based on organisational context. However, this study, which involved exploration of the activities of a broad range of entities in a variety of sectors, adopts a more critical perspective and highlights significant correlations between the different views and the way organisation collaborate with others. This study employs a phenomenological approach and comprises of two stages of semi-structured interviews with the top-level of management in an organisation to examine different experiences of forming a collaboration in sustainability-related projects. I use the case study in the United Kingdom to identify the different role of the actors of society in pursuing sustainability. From the research findings, I find that there is a disconnection between the underlying motivation driving the organisation and its vision in pursuing sustainability. The motivation itself rather than the declared vision tends to shape the style of relationship.