Reimagining how organisations can design, build, and maintain effective net zero Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships: embracing the enabling Mechanisms to help the UK accelerate to its net zero by 2050 Grand Challenge

The net zero by 2050 policy Grand Challenge is a complex, multifaceted change project that impacts every aspect of society. As of 2024, the UK is behind its intended net zero policy trajectory; accelerated decarbonisation is now crucial and organisations play a key role. Prior research has highlighted the significance of organisational Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) in addressing society’s Grand Challenges, including net zero. MSPs share resources, risks, and benefits, and their scale facilitates the necessary levels of change to deliver impact. This study builds upon this thinking, advancing it by reimagining how organisations can design, build, and maintain MSPs more easily, ultimately decarbonising faster. The study adopts a realist-based philosophy and employs a Context, Mechanism, and Outcome approach as its central framework. By understanding the UK’s net zero Context and the Mechanisms that shape the net zero logic, the study identifies important organisational barriers and enabling Mechanisms that can encourage organisational collaboration and more effective MSPs. Employing a mixed methods approach, this research delves into the organisational reality of sustainability leaders and their decarbonisation challenges. By employing a range of theories and concepts, including stakeholder and institutional theory, Grand Challenge and Boundary Spanners, the study uncovers four key themes providing a comprehensive understanding of how to design, build, and maintain stronger MSPs, ultimately enabling the outcome of faster decarbonisation. The study reveals that while net zero MSPs are ideally suited to this societal Grand Challenge, only 22% of organisations in the UK are engaged in them. Instead, simpler Dyadic-Stakeholder Partnerships (DSPs) are more common. To address this reality and lead organisations to successful net zero outcomes, the study provides three novel contributions. Firstly, it designs a net zero MSP framework plus a transition pathway organisations can follow to convert DSPs to MSPs. These use a range of enabling Mechanisms including the power derived from aligning the key attributes from stakeholder and institutional theory. Secondly, the study reframes net zero as a Grand Challenge brand. This is also an MSP enabling mechanism. Sorting and resolving net zero is unrealistic, but by being flexible, agile and recognising that obstacles need to be overcome, organisations can navigate net zero’s complexity by embracing the cross-functional enabling power of the Grand Challenge brand. The third contribution reinvents the Boundary Spanner as a net zero MSP designer, builder, and maintainer with enabling agency power. Furthermore, adding practical value to this contribution, the study details the role, responsibilities and behaviours of the net zero MSP Boundary Spanner and proposes the ‘Six Characteristics of a net zero MSP Boundary Spanner’. These contributions, as net zero MSP enabling mechanisms, have causal power to effect organisational change, giving organisations of all sizes the potential to participate in net zero MSPs and help accelerate the UK to net zero by 2050.