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In the transition to a more sustainable world, the development of sustainable technologies needs to be accompanied by promoting the legitimacy of the technologies. Consumers that perceive a technology as desirable and appropriate are more likely to adopt it. Organizations can collaborate to enhance the legitimacy of new technologies. While previous research has emphasized the importance of collaboration in the field of sustainability, it has not studied collaborative efforts of organizations aimed at achieving legitimacy of sustainable technologies. The contribution of this paper is therefore to analyze the role of inter-organizational alliances in creating legitimacy for a sustainable technology. The paper contributes to the literature by analyzing how alliances create three types of legitimacy: technology-sourced market legitimacy, technology-sourced social legitimacy and technology legitimacy. It focuses on the case of bio-plastics, which is emerging as a sustainable technology in the chemical industry. The analysis is based on a database containing information on 105 alliances in the field of bio-plastics over the period 1990–2013. The results show that alliances aim to promote technology-sourced market and social legitimacy by providing access to the sustainable technology of a partner, by collaboratively developing a sustainable technology, or by providing the technology of a partner with access to customers and production capacity. Alliances promote technology legitimacy by relying on positive externalities, by exercising their signaling role, and by acting as institutional entrepreneurs. The paper concludes that there are differences between alliances that create technology-sourced market and social legitimacy on the one hand, and technology legitimacy on the other hand. The first type of alliances are often bilateral alliances between for-profit companies that produce and market sustainable technologies. In contrast, alliances that stimulate technology legitimacy are multilateral alliances that operate in the pre-competitive stage of the value chain and involve not-for-profit organizations.

Collaboration between firms is important to stimulate the transition to a more sustainable society. This special volume shows that collaboration is indeed one of the preferred forms of governance to manage relations between firms in a sustainability context. Collaboration enhances sustainable benefits by creating legitimacy of sustainable technologies, reducing waste and improving environmental and social performance of firms. The institutional environment, in particular environmental laws and regulations, has a beneficial impact on collaboration and relationship management in sustainable supply chains. Two studies in this special volume show, however, that stringent environmental regulations may hinder economic performance and result in outsourcing to foreign suppliers with potential detrimental effects for environmental performance. These negative effects can be overcome by firms that invest in sustainable innovation. This special volume also shows that eco-innovation leads to sustainable benefits, such as lower greenhouse gas emissions.