Private sector engagement (PSE) is increasingly acknowledged in both literature and practice as a necessary mechanism to sustainably address development challenges. Despite increased practitioner and academic interest in these partnerships, there have been negligible attempts to systematically investigate cross-sector partnerships to distill best practices from the multiple environments in which they are employed. This manuscript presents a robust review of the social science and business literatures on cross-sector partnerships, yielding an interdisciplinary, evidence-based framework detailing archetypes of three prominent partnership characteristics (...) of purpose, context, and relationship enablers. This work integrates a wide range of best practices and values pertinent to businesses and society, enabling researchers, practitioners, and partnership managers to characterize and evaluate partnerships systematically. The introduced framework also enables partners to situate and evaluate their partnership activities to optimize outcomes for each partner and impact on the challenge at hand. (shrink)

This article engages the question—what is the right business‐society relationship? We consider three perspectives that seek to address the relationship: corporate social responsibility (CSR), social entrepreneurship (SE), and conscious capitalism (CC). We take a macroapproach considering how commentary about these approaches establishes a direction for corporate practice and its relationship to key stakeholder groups. We argue that these perspectives are ‘D'iscourses that provide arguments for and articulations about the direction of corporate practice and the business‐society relationship. To organize our review (...) of each perspective, and focus our critique, for each we highlight (a) drivers and influencers, (b) core assumptions and defining features, and (c) approaches and exemplars. Although distinct, all emphasize effective business practices as key to meeting social needs. CSR suggests legitimizing business practice; SE relocates business practices; and CC seeks to reimagine/rehabilitate business for social good. Ultimately, we conclude that these Discourses lack a clear communicative focus in terms of decision making within these organizations. We attend to this and other implications, and offer avenues for further research. (shrink)