Sustainability Partnerships in Agro-Commodity Chains: A Model of Partnership Development in the Tea, Palm Oil and Soy Sectors

This paper seeks to answer the following research question by developing a model of multistakeholder partnership development: What determines the ability of private initiatives to change commodity chains and markets to operate in a more sustainable way?

A useful model must allow practitioners to determine the relative importance of internal managerial and external contextual factors in determining the success or failure of a partnership. This will allow partnership managers to better understand what external influences must be accounted for when engaging in a multistakeholder process. An actor-level perspective of analysis is provided by the ladder of partnership development model, which proposes that partnerships must progress sequentially through five steps: building trust, creating collaborative advantages, constituting rule systems, changing a market, and finally changing governance structures. During this progression, the focus of a partnership changes from internal to external interactions.

Three hypotheses have been posed to evaluate the accuracy of the ladder model:

Hypothesis 1: Minimum levels of trust allow organizations to work to identify collaborative advantages, which determine the opportunities to create new rule systems;

Hypothesis 2: The characteristics of the rule system and the partnership’s activities for securing external legitimacy will determine its market impact; and,

Hypothesis 3: Partnerships which transform markets will also change the political landscape of an issue area.