Identity Implications of Cross-Sector Partnerships: A Case Study in the Nonprofit Sector

Nonprofit organizations increasingly engage in various forms of collaboration with corporate actors. Business collaborations can aid nonprofit organizations in fulfilling their mission; however, they are also likely to bring about internal tensions, particularly, when nonprofit members feel that partnerships are not aligned with the nonprofit’s mission or core values. Indeed, previous research has indicated that “who we are” as an organization has important implications for “what we should do” and thus, who “we” should associate with, highlighting the role of organizational identity in assessments of inter-organizational relationships. To date, we still have a limited understanding of how nonprofit members perceive corporate collaborations and their implications for member perceptions of organizational identity. To address this important gap, we examine how nonprofit members make sense of nonprofit-business partnerships and how they manage identity tensions arising from them. Our study employs a qualitative research design including 40 semi-structured interviews across 15 nonprofit organizations over two phases of data collection. We show the identity tensions arising from corporate partnerships and identify four identity work tactics that nonprofit members engage in to alleviate these tensions. By offering a grounded model of identity work in cross-sector partnerships, we bring attention to relational elements of organizational identity.