Values-driven alliances: opportunities and challenges
A big challenge for values-driven alliances is to keep their ambition alive and to continue to contribute to social change. For this, they need the right members on board with the right motivation.
Over the past 20 to 30 years, we have seen an astonishing acceleration of change in society and people's lives. These are not always changes for the better and in many situations social changes even threaten people and life on our planet. In this context, values-driven alliances will increase in number and value in the future.
Values-driven alliances
Societal and economic developments, which present opportunities as well as threats to humanity, are an exceptionally fertile ground for economic and political players, executives and professionals, civil society actors and others to initiate values-driven alliances and benefit societal developments.
Values-driven alliances are specific alliances in the sense that they focus on contributing to a better society. These alliances are based on a common ambition with clear values and principles that steer the alliance in a certain direction and guide the members in their collaborative activities.
Modern institutions
Most governments are incapable of tackling major societal challenges on their own. Politicians have their interests and often a normative and fragmented view of society. National and global institutions work slowly when they want to tackle real problems because it takes a long time to bridge partial interests and find a common ground on which to make agreements. Yet we need governments and institutions to implement social changes and to enshrine them in law. We just can't leave it to them.
Teamwork
Change is not the job of the individual or an isolated institution but rather an adaptive quality of many to jointly shape the future. Therefore, there is an incredible opportunity to create new values-driven alliances and to develop existing alliances that want to contribute to a better world. Together we have opportunities to start and develop values-driven alliances. In doing so, we can jointly work on current societal and human challenges and contribute to strengthening the capacity of local, international and global communities to independently realize change and shape its own future.
Challenges for companies and institutions
It would be great for companies or institutional alliances to take steps in a value-based paradigm, even if not all of them want to or some cannot. With a considered and appropriate approach, business and institutional alliances can deepen their values-based side and pursue their original goals with a more transformational and values-driven approach. That is quite a challenge, but not impossible.
Challenges for values-driven alliances
The main challenge for values-driven alliances is to keep its ambition alive and to continue to contribute to social change. Societal dynamics and dynamics in human relations are always there, and it is not uncommon for ambition to fade over time and the once values-driven alliance to gradually mutate into a corporate or institutional network, even though people in the alliance will continue to use the same transformational language. The alliance may even fall apart when some of the members insist on continuing to pursue the original values, while another wants to move to a more classic, corporate or power-oriented role.
The reflections and paradoxes in the book Alliances for a sustainable future are useful in identifying threats and failure factors in the different life stages of the values-driven alliance and keeping the alliance alive.
Success for alliances
It is important for all alliances that they get the right members on board with the right motivation, that they clarify the meaning, values and goals of the alliance, that they work on mutual trust, build an appropriate management model, open communication between members and maintain the right balance between social significance and business goals. A careful creation and development process in the four life stages of the alliance makes an alliance stronger and helps to preserve its essence.
This article is based on Jaap Boonstra's recent book, written together with Marcos Eguiguren: Alliances for Sustainable Futures (Edward Elgar, 2023)