BACKSTAGE INTERORGANIZATIONAL COLLABORATION: CORPORATE ENDORSEMENT OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

In September 2015, the United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals as the global development agenda. Since then, many companies have endorsed the goals. However, research has yet to address the emergent interorganizational processes that led to corporate endorsement of the goals. In this article, we address the question: What were the emergent interorganizational processes over time and space that led to corporate endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals? To answer this question, we draw on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development from 2008 to 2018 and other sources of qualitative data. Our main discovery is that member companies' endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals was the result of emergent and unforeseen interorganizational dynamics between two initially separate collaborations. We find three common antecedents (organizational convening capabilities, existing visions for global sustainability, and overlapping professional networks) and three triggering mechanisms (cross-fertilization by a science-based boundary object, embrace of disequilibrium, and boundary spanning work) to explain member companies' endorsement of the goals. We show how the amalgamation of these three triggering mechanisms over time and space drove rare interorganizational dynamics that led to business endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals.