همکاری شرکت ها و سازمان های غیر دولتی : ایجاد همکاری مدل های کسب و کار جدید برای بازارهای در حال توسعه

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) face a range of challenges when entering developing countries, including the need to adapt their business models to local markets' cultural, economic, institutional and geographic features. Where they lack the tangible resources or intangible knowledge needed to address these challenges, MNEs may consider collaborating with non-profit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to help facilitate new modes of value creation. In such cross-sector partnerships, parties contribute complementary capabilities along each stage of the value chain to develop products or services that neither could produce alone, creating and delivering value in novel ways while minimizing costs and risks. Our conceptualization broadens the business model concept to incorporate cross-sector collaborations, arguing such partnerships can create and deliver both social and economic value, which can be mutually reinforcing. We highlight, in particular, the competencies and resources NGOs can bring to such partnerships, including market expertise, legitimacy with clients/customers, civil society players and governments, and access to local expertise and sourcing and distribution systems. Beyond contributing to particular value chain activities, NGOs and companies can offer missing capabilities to complete each other's business models, or even co-create new and innovative multi-organizational business models. We stress four strategic imperatives for the success of corporate-NGO developing market partnerships – innovative combinations of firm and NGO resources and skills; the importance of trust-building, and of fit between the two organizations' goals; and supporting and understanding the local business infrastructure and environment.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) face a range of challenges when entering and operating in developing countries. Dominant business model logics from developed countries may need to be adapted and adjusted to the cultural, economic, institutional, geographic and other features of these markets – but multinationals may lack the tangible resources or intangible assets to address these challenges successfully. Collaboration with a non-profit nongovernmental organization (NGO) may provide a partial solution to developing appropriate, bespoke business models for developing countries. In these joint efforts, NGOs and firms contribute complementary capabilities – both intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation, and brand, and tangible resources, such as human capital, production capabilities and market access – along each stage of the value chain and affecting many aspects of the business model. These initiatives enable participating firms to create and deliver value in novel ways, while minimizing costs and risks. We seek to highlight, in particular, the competencies and resources that NGOs can bring to such partnerships, including market expertise (needs identification, knowledge of certain market segments); the value of NGO brands to customers, customer relationships, legitimacy with civil society players and governments; and ownership of – or access to – local distribution systems and local sourcing abilities, which can also enable them to contribute to formulating novel and viable business models. NGOs – such as Amnesty International, CARE, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Save the Children, World Wide Fund for Nature and hundreds of other smaller examples – that engineer campaigns with the goal of advancing specific causes have become important actors in the global political, social, economic and business environment. Recent statistics indicate a 450 percent increase in the number of international NGOs between 1990 and 2000.1 The advocacy, operations and service delivery of many NGOs is designed to ameliorate intractable social and environmental problems, working on multiple issues including combating hunger, curtailing human rights abuses, countering environmental degradation and improving health care. NGOs and for-profit corporations are also developing more collaborative relationships of potential mutual benefit. Their relationships with NGOs can provide corporations with access to different resources, competencies and capabilities than are otherwise available internally, or which they might acquire from alliances with other for-profit organizations.2 These can enable corporations to overcome business model liabilities in developing countries by helping them to identify market shifts and trends, accelerating market entry, and in some cases, co-developing innovative new business models. Exhibit 1 outlines a handful of the hundreds of innovative partnerships emerging between MNEs and NGOs around the world. This article extends the business model concept in documenting the case of firm-NGO partnerships as a particular response to a fundamental problem MNEs face in developing countries markets: how to adapt existing, or develop new, products and services that are appropriate for the local context when critical information about those markets is difficult to acquire, marketing outreach and distribution is inaccessible, and broader brand awareness and social reputation are hard to come by. Our conceptualization represents an extension of the business model concept in two ways. First, we broaden the concept to incorporate cross-sector collaborations; previous business model research has focused almost exclusively on business models as executed by single firms or, in a few cases, by business partnerships. Second, business model research has traditionally identified the purpose of the business model as generation and delivery of economic value: here we extend the notion to argue that business models can be viewed as generators of social value, and that economic and social value creation can be mutually reinforcing. The primary contribution of our article is to extend the business model literature beyond the traditional focus on private sector value creation towards models where businesses, NGOs - and other types of non-traditional partners - can work together in cross-sector alliances or other collaborations to create new products and services, pioneer new delivery methods, improve the quality of existing products and services, and generate new value for the customers and clients of all parties. Business models resulting from these partnerships may create economic value, social value, or both. Our level of analysis is the partnership, alliance or other cross-sector initiative or project. These collaborative formats are the vehicles through which new business models are developed, and facilitate the creation of new products and services: we focus here on how this process works and offer examples of the resulting project-level outcomes.3 Just as new technologies can enable businesses to reach new customers, provide better products and services to existing customers - and at lower cost - so too can cross-sector partnerships facilitate the creation of new business models. Unlike the adoption of technologies like the Internet, which are readily available in the marketplace, the new business models generated through these cross-sector partnerships are likely to be harder for other firms to replicate. Strategy is how to move to a desired future state: a business model describes that state. A good model will be relatively comprehensive, and coherent - its attributes will fit together in a way that makes sense

Despite the potential opportunities and benefits we have documented, identifying and accessing NGO capabilities may itself pose managerial and organizational challenges for MNEs. Rondinelli and London note that corporations and NGOs have fundamentally different structures and values, and that relations between the two have often been characterized by hostility and mistrust. They point out that cross-sector collaborations face the additional challenge that the levels of common experience generally required for successful organizational learning are often lacking (or are only weak) in alliances between profit-making and nonprofit organizations.24 This lack of common experience, trust and communication can sometimes result in conflict, even when partnerships appear to have shared values and commitments. Indeed, partnerships with NGOs may sometimes open a path to escalating (and potentially unrealistic) demands for firms to upgrade their commitment to social development. There are also more specific threats and challenges around such partnerships. One is that a company interacting with an NGO is likely to be providing it (and potentially other interested parties, such as regulators and even competitors) with sensitive, proprietary information. Knowledge of a company's R&D projects, strategic plans and internal audits may help NGOs be better partners, but could also turn them – or their other partners – into challenging competitors. Companies should have strict disclosure policies and guidelines for their partnerships with NGOs, just as they would for commercial joint ventures. We believe there are four strategic imperatives for the success of sustainable long-term corporate-NGO alliances. The first two deal with internal issues to the alliance, while the other two address external issues in its local environment: they are summarized subsequently in Figure 2. • ‘Combinative Capabilities’ across Business Activities. Many NGOs can provide more than one of the capabilities described above. For example, nonprofit partners in microfinance contribute new product and service ideas, open up new distribution channels and offer insights for novel marketing practices. Firms should seek to exploit the entire range of potential contributions a partner NGO may be in a position to make. • Organizational Fit, Cultural Compatibility and Trust: Key Elements for Comprehensive, Ongoing Alliances. In some instances, corporations and NGOs may simply enter into a one-time (or repeated) contractual arrangement. However, for more comprehensive and ongoing alliances, organizational fit, cultural compatibility and trust are all critical to success, as they are in alliances between private business organizations. There are many examples of failed corporate-NGO partnerships where strategic integration and resource complementarity brought the two parties together, but which were doomed by fundamental differences in organizational culture and a lack of basic trust. These issues are especially challenging as private corporations and NGOs have fundamentally different values and missions.25 • Supporting Local Business Environments. Developing markets commonly lack critical supporting activities to enable firms to provide product or service offering successfully. Infrastructures, marketing media, distribution channels, financing services may be unavailable or insufficiently developed. Firms must move beyond their core offering and commit to organizing a wider array of activities if they are to provide an integrated bundle of products and services successfully, either by internalizing these additional activities or by coordinating with external partners such as NGOs. Local businesses must be strengthened and supported if the potential benefits of cross-country corporate-NGO partnerships are to be realized: strong local businesses are vital to the continued growth of the private sector in developing countries, and for supporting corporate-NGO alliances. They can provide products or services to both NGOs and foreign firms, and can help train and develop a country's human resources. Local businesses attempting to innovate and develop new products and services can be strong partners for foreign firms and NGOs because of their unique local market perspective. It is in the self-interest of businesses and NGOs to support such private sector capacity development, and help local firms improve the quality of their products and services so they can be globally competitive. It is in the self-interest of businesses and NGOs to support private sector capacity development, helping local firms improve the quality of their products and services so they can be globally competitive. • Understanding the Unique Conditions of Developing Countries. There is no substitute for first-hand experience in the developing world. Managers interested in developing cross-sector alliances, and hoping to develop innovative business models for such countries, must understand the dynamics of the local country. Consumer, producer and even NGO behaviors may differ substantially between developed and developing countries, and may sometimes seem counterintuitive to Triad country managers. Only through experience can managers begin to understand the complexity of doing business in these environments. Notwithstanding these challenges, we believe corporate-NGO partnerships hold great promise for companies seeking to break free from conventional constraints in adapting existing business models and developing new ones. By reaching out across sectors, well beyond their typical range of partners and collaborators, companies can find avenues to overcome institutional constraints, pursue opportunities of which they would otherwise be unaware, and approach problems in ways beyond their current capabilities and vision. Not only may the strategies firms develop in such activities contribute to their strategic renewal,26 but the ability of a firm to overcome the challenges we describe and successfully partner with an NGO may itself constitute a capability that can lead to competitive advantage for the firm. In closing, our conceptualization represents an extension of the business model concept in two ways. First, the means by which new business models are created is through cross-sector collaborations, as opposed to the previous research focus on single firm business models or business-business partnerships. We present two distinct mechanisms whereby firms and NGOs can collaborate in improving their business models: where partners contribute to the completion of each other's business model (case 2 in Figure 1), or where they jointly create a novel business model (case 3). Second, business model research has traditionally proposed that the purpose of business models is to generate and deliver economic value. Here we extend this notion to include social value, stressing that both types of value can be achieved concurrently, and can be mutually reinforcing. [novel, collaborative business models can allow] economic and social value to be achieved concurrently, and to be mutually reinforcing.