Organizational roles in a sustainability alliance network

Sustainability alliance networks offer a collaborative governance strategy to address both environmental and societal challenges too large for any single organization. While alliance networks, and particularly sustainability alliances, have been studied in a number of contexts, few alliances have been explored under the context of commercial building energy use—a sector with a multitude of policy, organizational, and technical barriers to the deployment of innovative energy‐ and cost‐saving strategies. In this research, we articulate a framework wherein organizations can assume varying roles across an alliance network based on the organizations' objectives, organizational resources, and the relationships or ties formed with other alliance members. Further, we show that particular roles within one alliance network have implications for the types of knowledge gained and the knowledge shared across the network. Our mixed‐method study draws from several data sources, employs analytic induction, and is supplemented by social network analysis in order to examine an energy efficiency‐focused sustainability alliance comprised of a broad coalition of stakeholders, including US government agencies, federally funded research laboratories, private firms, and trade associations. We develop a typology for six types of organizational roles identified in an energy efficiency alliance network—each role possessing varying implications for the organization's access to and sharing of knowledge.