A Configurational Approach to Portfolios of Partnerships for Sustainability.

Existing literature on sustainability-oriented partnerships has rarely taken a portfolio approach. Furthermore, to date, there have not been any studies that analyse the effect of different portfolio configurations on firms' sustainability performance, especially regarding diversity dimensions. Motivated by this gap, we analyse 1022 partnerships of 42 global textile firms using the QCA methodology in this study. We find three strategic approaches to diversely configuring portfolios of sustainability-oriented partnerships for enhanced sustainability performance. We also find two paths to poorer sustainability performance due to the lack of diversity in these portfolios of sustainability-oriented partnerships. We contribute to the literature on strategic partnerships by showing how different portfolio configurations jointly impact performance, demonstrating that there are alternative paths firms can follow in their portfolio management. Furthermore, we add to the literature on sustainability-oriented partnerships by demonstrating how firms can manage the configurations of their portfolios in different ways for enhanced sustainability performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]