---

This book explains why multistakeholder partnerships are needed to solve societal problems in the 21st century. It identifies global problems and contexts where multistakeholder partnerships are currently in use and offers numerous case examples of such partnerships to help readers grasp their nature and operation.

---

Organizations turn to multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) to meet challenges that they cannot handle alone. By tapping the resources of diverse stakeholders, MSPs develop the capability to address complex issues and problems, such as health care delivery, poverty, human rights, watershed management, education, sustainability, and innovation.

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of MSPs, why they are needed, the challenges partners face in working together and how to design them effectively. Through the process of collaboration partners combine their differing strengths, vantage points and expertise to craft innovative responses to pressing societal concerns. The book offers valuable advice for leaders about how to design and scale up effective partnerships and how to address potential obstacles that partners may face.

Drawing on three comprehensive cases and countless shorter examples from around the world, the book offers both practical advice for organization embarking on an MSP as well as a theoretical understanding of how partnerships function. Using an institutional theory lens, it explains how partnerships can effect change in institutional fields by reducing turbulence and negotiating a common set of norms and routines to govern partners´ future interactions within the field of concern.

---

The world is beset with wicked and complex, multidimensional, multi stakeholder, planetary scale problems that need collaboration and partnering across disciplines, communities, organizations, regions, and across the globe. In Collaborating for our Future, Gray and Purdy offer strong conceptual framing of collaboration, and practical strategies for decision makers. It is essential reading for organizational researchers, policy makers and corporate managers. Paul Shrivastava, Ph.D. Chief Sustainability Officer, The Pennsylvania State University, & Director, Sustainability Institute Professor, Management and Organization, Smeal College of Business

---