The potential for achieving transformation through partnerships is central to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, information on experiences that explore the processes that might generate systemic change is generally lacking. This article uses the Collaborative Value Creation (CVC) framework to analyze the transformational prospects of the Alianza Shire, the first multi-stakeholder partnership for humanitarian action in Spain. The partnership, which aims to develop innovative energy access solutions in refugee camps situated in the Shire region of northern Ethiopia is assessed from its creation in 2014 to the present with regard to four key partnership features: organizational engagement, resources and activities, partnership dynamics and impact. Our findings suggest that while the CVC framework is a useful tool for analyzing the evolution of a partnership to a transformative phase, additional information is required on the important role played by a partnership facilitator in assisting this process. This inquiry aims to build upon the CVC analysis by identifying and addressing some of the barriers faced by the Alianza Shire and other partnerships in attaining transformational outcomes and proposing two key enablers that can assist progression towards this: a facilitating organization that ensures the creation of collaborative shared value and an aspirational strategy for achieving significant systemic change.

The transformation for sustainability requires a paradigm shift towards systems thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration, which entails, above all, a process of cultural change affecting individual mindsets, organizations and society as a whole. Sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs) has been a recurrent research field in the past decades. However, little attention has been paid to the processes of internal and cultural change and, in particular, to the first steps to prepare academic communities for change. Understanding “readiness for change” as a core organizational competency to overcome continuous environmental changes and considering the diluted hierarchy at HEIs, this article proposes the adoption of dialogical and developmental approaches in a single action case, the SDGs Seminars at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. This methodology was used to diagnose organizational and individual readiness for change considering cognitive, affective and behavioural components, and to identify consequences in organizational structures and culture. Our findings reveal that reframing dialogical spaces in HEIs to experience a collaborative and sustainability culture can unlock change, breaking down organizational silos, reducing resistances and engaging academic communities in the cocreation of institutional strategies. Furthermore, the case suggests that acting at the group level has impacts both on the individual and institutional levels.

Partnerships are essential to delivering the transformational change demanded by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and essential to achieving Agenda 2030. It is therefore necessary to strengthen the partnering capacity of different types of organizations so they can collaborate in multi-stakeholder partnerships. However, partnership working can be costly in terms of time and other resources and is complex. Given the urgency and importance of sustainable development, illustrated by the recent pandemic and social unrest around inequity, we focused on the creation of a partnership that became effective quickly and was able to deliver societal impact at scale. Using a case study approach, the transformational potential and the early stages of “El día después” (in English, “The day after”) were analyzed as it represents a multi-stakeholder partnership forged to frame an SDG-oriented collaborative response to the COVID-19 crisis in Spain. El día después is defined as a partnership incubator, a space where public administrations interact under conditions of equivalence with all the other stakeholders, where private companies can link their innovation processes to other SDG-committed actors and social needs and where the academic sector can participate in a sustained dialogue oriented to the action. Our findings reveal that in order to catalyze the co-creation process and achieve systemic change through a set of connected multi-stakeholder initiatives, a very flexible collaborative arrangement is required, with all partners acting as facilitators. In this way, a solid interdisciplinary team is created, united around a shared vision, with trust-based relationships and a common identity fueling impact-oriented projects targeted to advance the SDGs.

Global policies such as the recent ‘Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework’ call for a profound transformation in refugee response. To this end, collaboration with non-traditional humanitarian actors, particularly the private sector has been advocated. The application of new multi-stakeholder partnerships that transcend traditional dyadic relationships have been commended by practitioners for their ability to create stable services and markets in refugee camps. However, the adaptation of multi-stakeholder partnership models to the novelties of refugee response and the dynamics among partners in these complex arrangements requires more attention. This paper explores how the creation and development of multi-stakeholder partnerships can maximize the transformational potential of collaboration for refugee response, ensure the stakeholder diversity needed to provide basic services on a stable basis, and provide a facilitation function that supports the partnership. Using an action-case methodology, the focus of the article is on the Alianza Shire, Spain’s first multi-stakeholder partnership for humanitarian action, which was established to provide energy to refugee camps and host communities in refugee camps in northern Ethiopia. Our findings suggest that (i) the active participation of aid agencies in the co-creation process of a multi-stakeholder partnership may increase the transformational potential of refugee response, (ii) feedback loops and the consolidation of internal learning are essential practices for the effective management of complex multi-stakeholder partnerships, and (iii) the facilitator plays a critical and underexplored role in refugee response collaborative arrangements. In addition, sustainability-oriented university centers may possess a particular capacity for nurturing the transformational potential of multi-stakeholder refugee response partnerships by generating ‘safe spaces’ that foster trust-building, providing a cross-sector ‘translation’ service, and affording the legitimacy and expert knowledge required to conduct learning processes. We believe that the theoretical and practical implications of our research may contribute to the effective fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals, specially, SDG7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG17 (Partnership for the Goals).

In the fields of partnership research and social innovation, there has been an increasing number of calls for evidence regarding the kind of collaborative multi-level governance structures that might support large-scale transformation processes, especially in regard to climate-neutral cities. This paper conceptualizes a new type of intermediary actor, the Systemic Collaborative Platform (SCP). Using the example of a multi-stakeholder arrangement set up to design and implement Madrid’s Climate Neutrality Roadmap, the key features of an SCP include a focus on multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral collaboration for public policy development, in this case operating at both a systemic level and a city scale, and a strong link to a key actor within this regime (a city council). Our study reveals how an SCP can contribute to articulation of a shared mandate among city actors and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of a targeted transition by attracting, aligning and managing a wide and diverse organizational ecosystem through distributed facilitation, collaborative leadership, and continuous learning.