From Animosity to Affinity: The Interplay of Competing Logics and Interdependence in Cross-Sector Partnerships

Drawing on and extending institutional logics and resource dependence theories, this paper posits that for cross-sector partnerships to survive, organizations need to share compatible institutional logics, but depend less on each other's resources. Asymmetrical cross-sector partnerships may lead to a breakup if organizations are forced to operate under incompatible institutional logics. The findings of this study show that the challenges posed by incompatible logics of partners could be mitigated by the degree of resource interdependence between organizations. Capturing the effects of context and transactions on the actors' strategic behaviour, the findings, based on a dataset of project-level partnership ties between 1312 organizations in the carbon-offset market, support these hypotheses. The paper concludes by discussing implications of organizations' responses to keep acting under or reinterpreting existing institutional logics in asymmetrical cross-sector relationships.