Governing sustainable co-creation in business–NGO collaborations: Institutional logics and innovation outcomes

This study examines how governance in business-NGO collaborations conditions co-creation for sustainable innovation under institutional plurality. Drawing on institutional logics theory, we conduct a qualitative cross-case study of five Scandinavian retail firms and their NGO partners. We identify three recurrent governance configurations: separated coexistence, assimilated coexistence, and logic blending. The configurations differ in how partners manage organizational boundaries, allocate decision authority, integrate knowledge, and establish accountability. In the cases studied, separated coexistence was recurrently associated with regulative innovation, where protected organizational distance supported credible monitoring and verification. Assimilated coexistence was recurrently associated with inclusive sustainable business innovation, where NGO knowledge entered bounded parts of firm-led innovation. Logic blending was most evident in social impact innovation, where joint problem framing, shared interpretation of evidence, and relational accountability supported long-term societal outcomes. These relationships represent empirical tendencies rather than necessary, sufficient, or exclusive associations. Different configurations may coexist across activities and may evolve as collaborations mature. The study extends institutional logics research by showing how responses to plurality are operationalized as interorganizational governance arrangements that structure decision rights, knowledge interfaces, boundaries, and accountability. It contributes to sustainable co-creation research by explaining why different innovation tasks call for different combinations of governance practices.