Align, exchange, cooperate: how business-NGO partnerships can create shared value The case of the “Arvore da Vida” project in Brazil

In the past few years interest in cross-sectorial partnerships (Selsky & Parker 2005) has grown both in the academic and practitioner field and it has focused on both NGO-business (Vurro et al. 2010; Jamali & Keshishian 2009; Seitanidi & Crane 2009; King 2007; Ahlstrom & Sjostrom 2005; Rondinelli & London 2003) and public-private sectors (Parker & Hartley 2003; Googins & Rochlin 2000); relationships. These studies have mainly focused around the prerequisites and conditions necessary to guarantee the effective implementation and success of the alliance, its sustainability in the long-term period and the main obstacles that might affect. However, further research has been invoked in order to foster the understanding on the institutionalizations process (Vurro et al.2011), the quantification of benefits (Ahlstrom & Sjostrom 2005; Parker & Hartley 2003) and the inter/intra organizational management of the partnership to overcome sectorial differences (Selsky & Parker 2005). The present paper starts from this last suggestion and aims at contributing to the literate development exploring how organizations from different sectors can successfully work together for the realization of a social project. In particular, it explores how they can integrate culture and resources in order to exploit the respective strengths and overcome each other limitations. In other words, attention is devoted to understand how partners can realize powerful synergies (Makower 1994), thus exploiting resources, competencies and skills typical of the different members, in order to reach a better result that could not been successfully achieved otherwise. Bearing in mind this considerations, this article analyzes the case study of the project “Arvore da Vida”, developed by Fiat Brasil. AVSI (an Italian NGO) and CDM (a local NGO), with the aim to promote the social development and the reinforcement of the local community in the urban area of Jardim Terezopolis (Belo Horizonte, Brasil).