POSITIONING STATEMENT AND DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

2.1 CHAPTER OVERVIEW

This chapter acts as a bridge between the broad research interest in cross-sector collaboration and the specific issue of sustainability that is considered in this research study. It provides context for the literature review and provides a more detailed explanation of the research background.

First, it offers context to the research subject by way of a brief positioning statement and then establishes the characteristics of the global business environment that are described as complex and interconnected.

It then includes an explanation of the issues around sustainable seafood and the sustainable seafood supply chain, both globally and in South Africa. South Africa as an emerging market is positioned within the broader global context.

Other material also included in this chapter are the definitions of key concepts, the role of the researcher, and how an audit trail of evidence is maintained.

All of this background provides a frame for the research study and is aimed at giving the reader an overview of the context within which the research is situated.

2.2 POSITIONING STATEMENT AND DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

The research adopted an appreciative stance so that the sustainability challenges are seen, not as a problem to be solved, but as an opportunity to learn. It therefore aimed to gain an understanding of multi-stakeholder collaboration from exemplar organisations that have already achieved some success in working collaboratively to address sustainability issues.

In order to explore the collaborative interactions in a multi-stakeholder context, an appropriate setting was required. The setting was selected based on a set of predefined criteria, which guided this important research choice.

First, criteria were used to identify potential candidate organisations that could act as an entry point to a suitable research setting. Two South African corporate businesses were identified as exemplars of pursuing sustainability issues using multiple partnerships and one of these organisations agreed to provide access for the research study. The access point is a large retailer called Woolworths.

Using a further set of criteria, a partnership project that was considered to be successful by the various partners in progressing a key sustainability issue, was selected as the setting for the study.

The selected sustainability issue is sustainable seafood and the partnership activities are the various initiatives directed towards this issue that are pursued in partnership with multiple

stakeholders. These partnerships activities are collectively referred to by the partners as the South African sustainable seafood initiatives.

2.2.1 A multi-stakeholder context: South African sustainable seafood initiatives

The aim of these initiatives is to support activities directed towards improving the status of a wide range of seafood species in the ocean ecosystems around South Africa and across the world.

There are no geographic boundaries to these activities as South Africa is a producer, consumer, exporter and importer of various seafood species. Business and nonprofits, geographically located in South Africa, are actively engaged in supporting responsible fishing practices, responsible production and procurement decisions in the supply chain and responsible consumer choices. A distinction is made between the sustainability of the natural resources that are the fish, and the responsible choices made by people across the supply chain regarding how the ocean ecology is managed and conserved, how the fish are caught, processed, sold and consumed. Further detail is provided in various publications by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF-SA, 2014a) and by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 2014).

2.2.2 The stakeholders in seafood sustainability

The overall context of sustainable seafood includes business, nonprofits and government as well as consumers and local communities such as small-scale fishing communities who are all stakeholders in the issue of seafood sustainability.

There are local South African organisations and international organisations working together.

Some of the collaborative activities are formally structured by way of contracts of varying duration, such as those between retailers and their suppliers or in some cases between businesses and nonprofits. Some collaborative activities are not formally structured and yet the stakeholders work together from time to time to pursue projects of varying complexity, scope and duration. Given the complexity of the sustainability issue and its lack of geographic boundaries, there is no single partnership organisation that encompasses all or even a significant proportion of the sustainable seafood partnering ‘space’¹.

The fish as the natural resource, as well as other ocean birds and mammals and the ecosystem of the oceans, are also stakeholders. Without a voice of their own, it is other stakeholders that may be said to ‘speak on their behalf’. On this basis, it is assumed in this research that seafood as the sustainability issue, is a key stakeholder.

2.2.3 The boundaries of the research study

Given the complexity and scope of the collaborative initiatives that comprise the sustainable seafood space, predefined criteria were used to demarcate the boundaries of the research. The

1 The idea of a “partnering space” is from Van Tulder and Pfisterer (2014).

boundaries for this research were set as those organisations that have people and resources allocated to working directly on the South African sustainable seafood initiatives, that are involved in partnership activities and that are connected with the supply chain of the retailer Woolworths.

Based on these criteria, the research included seven organisations, of which two are businesses, three are nonprofits and two are research institutions (one academic and one government). The names of these organisations and the acronyms used in the dissertation are:

i) Woolworths – the retailer

ii) Three Streams Holdings(TSH) – a supplier of sustainable seafood to Woolworths iii) Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) – an international non-profit

iv) World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – the international nonprofit and its South African member organisation, WWF-SA

v) International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) – an international nonprofit supporting the sustainability of the fish species, tuna

vi) Research scientist - University of Stellenbosch

vii) Research scientist – South African Government Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

2.2.4 Defining the multi-stakeholder context as an issue field

As explored and explained in the literature review in Chapter 3, the multi-stakeholder sustainable seafood partnering space is conceptualised as an issue field (Hoffman, 1999) rather than a problem domain (Gray, 1989) (Trist, 1983) or network (Powell, 1990). An issue field is a complex, multi-dimensional, multi-stakeholder partnering space, where each of the stakeholders, individually and collectively, in different ways, at different times, is working towards creating a better future for the sustainability issue.

The research context is therefore an issue field and the research phenomenon is collaborative processes and collaborative interactions that function within this issue field.

2.2.5 Focus on value creation

The research questions also focused on how cross-sector collaboration can be effective in delivering or creating value for the partners and also have influence or impact on a wider constituency and ultimately for the greater good of the sustainability issue, in this case the sustainability of fish stocks.

2.2.6 Clarifying terminology

As is explained in more detail in the definitions section of Chapter 2, the literature uses many different names to describe cross-sector collaborations for sustainability. Partnership is a term that

is commonly used as an alternative to collaboration and this dissertation applies the words collaboration and partnership interchangeably. The term inter-organisational relationships or relations is also frequently found in the literature.

Different names are given to these cross-sector collaborations including cross-sector social partnerships (Austin & Seitanidi, 2014); social partnerships (Waddock, 1988); and more broadly cross-sector partnerships (Branzei & Janzen Le Ber, 2014; Seitanidi, 2009: 13).

2.2.7 Overview of research assumptions and key research design choices

The research is phenomenological and explored the lived experience of key individuals (Stake, 2010: 57) or “knowledge agents” (Dentoni & Bitzer, 2015) in relation to the research phenomenon.

The study was therefore idiographic and assumed a social constructionist perspective.

Based on these assumptions the research design applied narrative inquiry for the fieldwork and the data analysis adopted an adapted interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The IPA method was adapted by replacing the theoretical lens, which in the standard IPA method is a psychological lens. In the adapted IPA method used in this study an alternative communicative lens is used.

2.2.8 Choice of theoretical lens for the research analysis

The communicative lens selected for the research analysis is based on a theoretical approach known as the communicative constitution of organisation or CCO. The communicative lens was used to facilitate the research analysis so that each of the three research questions was explored in a systematic manner. This research choice not only recognised that collaboration is a specific form of organising, but it also aligned with the research choice to explore and learn from key individuals who have knowledge and experience of the research phenomenon. The communicative approach focuses attention on the collaborative interactions and the relationships of stakeholders and expresses these processes in communicative practices that can be recognised by verbs such as engaging, participating and articulating and practices such as conversation, narrative and written texts.