Identifying factors needed for business actor engagement in sustainable development goal (SDG) initiatives

2.1 Business actor engagement

Studies on the concept of engagement have gained momentum in the analysis of transcending issues of traditional business relationships (Kumar et al., 2019; Harmeling et al., 2017; Brodie et al., 2011). A leading stream on engagement research is based on service-dominant (S-D) logic (Rodríguez et al., 2022), highlighting value cocreation’s role, where actors integrate resources outside their core organization (e.g. customers and suppliers) to facilitate value creation (Ekman et al., 2021; Beckers et al., 2018; Jaakkola and Alexander, 2014). This engagement conceptualization stream assumes an actor-to-actor (A2A) perspective, extending beyond the traditional focus on merely studying consumer contexts to offer insights into other contexts, such as B2B settings (Jaakkola et al., 2019). Engagement can generally be defined as efforts and resource contributions stretching beyond regular business transactions (Alexander et al., 2018; Storbacka et al., 2016).

This study adopts an S-D logic perspective (Vargo and Lusch, 2016), an inclusive approach where customers and providing firms directly (indirectly) engage in value cocreation and resource integration voluntarily (Ekman et al., 2016). Engagement is a “multidimensional concept subject to a context [or] stakeholder-specific expression of relevant cognitive, emotional, [or] behavioral dimensions” (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 260). Actor engagement is defined as “a dynamic and iterative process, reflecting actors’ dispositions to invest resources in their interactions with other connected actors in a service system” (Brodie et al., 2019, p. 183). Thus, engagement is behavioral investments “beyond purchase,” and situating such activity in a B2B setting means that this study defines BAE as a dynamic and iterative process where actors invest resources in their interactions with other connected actors in a service system toward value propositions beyond the focal (business) exchange. BAE is a process that involves multiple actors and unfolds around initiatives incorporated into the everyday business in a service ecosystem (e.g. toward an SDG-driven business initiative).

Brodie et al. (2019) suggest that researchers must extend the concept of engagement to various actors (e.g. business actors), where BAE adheres to a generic actor conceptualization that contributes dynamics and complexity to actor roles (Ekman et al., 2016). Furthermore, it acknowledges the particularities and commercial business interests of B2B actors in supplier–customer relations in a value cocreation context (Conduit et al., 2019; Jaakkola et al., 2019; Nyadzayo et al., 2020). One antecedent to BAE is the actors’ engagement disposition, which can be understood as the tendency or readiness to engage (i.e. an actor’s inclination and ability to act on a value proposition) (Fehrer et al., 2018). Engagement disposition can be considered a managerial extension within the engagement theory nomenclature, clarifying that firms must estimate whether customers are ready and can act on a value proposition (Ekman et al., 2021). Another antecedent to BAE is engagement connectedness, i.e. the relational influence between actors in the service network (Ekman et al., 2021; Brodie et al., 2019; Fehrer et al., 2018). For firms that embrace a sustainability business logic, it is vital to understand how they do so, and the two antecedents will impact their partners’ engagement as this will govern the outcomes.

However, the engagement disposition and connectedness concepts typically focus on one actor (e.g. the customer) and how the actor reacts to an engagement initiative based on actor- or relationship-specific antecedents. They do not probe the prerequisites – i.e. factors that must be in place for engagement to emerge – that capacitate involved actors for BAE. Moreover, the engagement antecedents do not offer any guidance on how an actor’s capacities can be understood or managed (to lay a foundation for engagement). For example, consumer engagement research (i.e. B2C studies) has typically been conducted in various brand communities where the factors needed for engagement are fulfilled (typically a digital platform), given that consumers do not enroll in communities they are not inclined to be positively or negatively engaged in (see, e.g. Brodie et al., 2013; Dessart et al., 2016; Dessart and Pitardi, 2019). Thus, the factors needed for engagement in consumer settings are often set through a physical or digital artifact. However, the factors needed for BAE deviate from those studied in consumer settings (e.g. being engaged on social media or in a brand), as the object and boundaries of engagement are less associated with personal interests and instead linked to organizational considerations and structures (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2019). While consumer engagement is free of charge (though demanding of consumers’ time), BAE may entail additional investments if the engagement renders actions beyond contracted obligations.

Recent studies on engagement in B2B settings describe BAE as multidimensional; even though primarily guided by the company’s strategic and commercial interests, it also inhabits (nonbusiness relational) behavioral and emotional dimensions (Conduit et al., 2019). Furthermore, BAE includes aspects that transcend established B2B relationship dimensions – e.g. trust, commitment, economic rationality and interdependencies – regarding strategic and operative considerations (Ekman et al., 2021). As engagement can be explored through actors’ contribution of resources beyond traditional resource inputs of business actors (Storbacka et al., 2016), identifying aspects related to involved actors’ engagement (or lack thereof) may contribute insight into why some (seemingly similarly executed) business endeavors either flourish or fail to reach its intended potential. Furthermore, BAE studies may shed light on why companies choose to pursue long-term visionary initiatives, such as adopting a sustainable business logic despite the lack of short-term financial benefits (Dahlin et al., 2021). Thus, identifying the factors needed for facilitating engagement behavior in B2B settings is crucial to deepen theoretical insight into the long-term business outcomes of BAE and how to manage it, by capacitating actors’ engagement (Nyadzayo et al., 2020; Conduit et al., 2019; Jaakkola and Aarikka-Stenroos, 2019).

2.2 Engagement for sustainability

Engagement is especially vital for firms pursuing management practices that address “the grand challenges” of sustainability and climate change (George et al., 2016). Solving these challenges requires the business community to “buy in” and drive much of the needed changes (Sachs et al., 2019). It is a market-encompassing effort beyond the individual firm or organization, as “multi-stakeholder partnerships” are included in the 17th SDG (Agrawal et al., 2022). Thus, responding to the SDGs highlights the need for mutual engagement from various actors to tackle sustainability challenges. It accords with the UN’s global agenda that promotes a more sustainable path by fostering cooperation between actors, such as governments and firms (George et al., 2016). The SDGs address challenges that must be pursued with a holistic multiactor approach. Thus, it is crucial to adopt a theoretical lens (and conceptual contribution) that acknowledges the importance of a perspective of multiple actors, beyond the focal (supplier) firm. It also indicates a need for a perspective where an organization is considered a function within a service ecosystem, as individual firms can only achieve so much. Hence, engagement studies which, for instance, focuses on studying actor collaborations addressing the SDGs in business initiatives, including resource contributions from a range of actors, serves as a suitable setting for understanding outcomes of BAE.

Business initiatives (e.g. value propositions) that focus on sustainability-driven activities commonly describe a need for the initiating firm to educate their partners, which includes finding ways to invite and enable actors to engage in a sustainable business logic (Hermelingmeier and von Wirth, 2021). For example, the adoption of one or several SDGs regarding different business areas cannot be solely planned and implemented by the focal firm’s managers. Instead, it is a dynamic process of learning based on multiactor interactions (Vildåsen, 2018). Therefore, previous research suggests a need to identify how to capacitate customers (and other actors) to facilitate the cogovernance of practices (Röndell et al., 2016). For firms that adopt a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, more “profound” actor engagement with value cocreation has been recognized as a key aspect for achieving substantial sustainable outcomes (Dahlin et al., 2021), while symbolic activities (and limited engagement) only yield superficial outcomes (Schons and Steinmeier, 2016). Hence, an SDG-driven business initiative serves as an excellent example and a suitable context to study BAE for tackling grand challenges.

2.3 Green leases as a vehicle for sustainable development goal engagement

An example of a recent business initiative that focuses on some of the SDGs and is dependent on BAE is the green lease, often constituting an addendum to regular leasing contracts used in the commercial real estate industry between landlords and their commercial tenants in which sustainability is formally recognized (Collins, 2019). A green lease is essentially a type of voluntary environmental agreement that includes sustainability practices to reduce a building’s negative impact on the environment (Janda et al., 2016). Thus, it is an initiative used solely in B2B markets. The green lease regards mainly four SDGs (Janda et al., 2016): 6. Clean water and sanitation, 7. Affordable and clean energy, 11. Sustainable cities and communities and 12. Responsible consumption and production (see clarifications in Table 1, which presents the SDGs and the parts the green lease focuses on). Thus, the green lease regards sustainable urban development (cf. Cheah et al., 2021), which is a suitable setting for exploring the factors needed for BAE.

Given that a green lease corresponds to several SDGs (Collins, 2019), it requires a multidimensional view of value beyond return on investments; it focuses on efficiency as a means to reduce environmental impacts (Young and Tilley, 2006). Green leases are set up between two parties to define shared efforts on the use and maintenance of facilities. Landlords can use the green lease as an extended business offer, a value proposition inviting tenants interested in sustainability. For firms, green leases are, thus, an SDG-driven business initiative and provide an example of if and how various actors choose to act on such value propositions through engagement.

Firms that add a green lease must estimate the involved actor’s readiness and encourage them to embrace a more dynamic view of resources in terms of usage (Sheth et al., 2011). Given that researchers stress the need to further understand how actors can collectively produce sustainable solutions (Abreu et al., 2021) and engage their customers in sustainability activities to cocreate value (Lacoste, 2016; Aquilani et al., 2018), the green lease can be considered a vehicle for a better understanding of what constitutes the baseline for BAE in a sustainability context. Thus, the green lease regards several SDGs, it is designed to include multiple stakeholders and actors (i.e. the landlord, the commercial tenant and other users of the building), and it is a voluntary addendum to the regular leasing contract that requires involved partners to engage in the selected sustainability goals. Achieving engagement for such a cause has challenges (Narayan and Tidström, 2021) regarding the interdependencies that develop in a B2B setting. Thus, prior studies propose the need for (dyadic) goal alignment (Cuevas et al., 2015), value alignment (Wang and Zhang, 2017) and like-mindedness (Abreu et al., 2021). However, while such alignment and engagement disposition studies regard the antecedents of actor engagement (Ekman et al., 2021), this study focuses on the factors needed for BAE in a sustainability context.

3.1 Data collection

We collected data from multiple sources over three years, including participatory observations of five to six forum meetings per year, formal (semistructured) and informal (ad hoc) interviews with landlords and tenants, two respective focus groups with public and commercial landlords and two respective focus groups with the public and tenants (i.e. firms that lease offices, schools, retail stores, museums and other commercial spaces). The study conducted complementary workshops and interviews with six selected firms for clarifications and member-checking at the end of the project. All focus groups and interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim (see Table 2 for respondent data).

The organizations and respondents were anonymized, and formal titles were rarely used for confidentiality to encourage frank and open descriptions. The researchers also ensured that the shared results among participants did not reveal individual tenant or landlord opinions to ensure clear and honest answers from all participants. Landlords and tenants had separate focus groups, and the researchers did not reveal who was in the other group. The analysis did not find any significant gender, years of experience or type of firm (public or commercial) differences. The typical participant had a university degree in business administration, political science or engineering, with a focus on CSR. Landlord representatives comprised facility managers, chief technology officers and sustainability managers. Tenant representatives tend to hold positions in administration and were responsible for their respective firm’s leasing contracts.

The workshop lasted for 50 + 50 min (i.e. 2 h with a break in the middle) with one researcher as the moderator and one to three other researchers as participating discussion partners. The workshops allowed each respondent to express their organization’s view on the ongoing sustainability activities and on what comprises sustainability. Some respondents displayed a narrower view that only included energy use and waste managers; others had a broader understanding of sustainability that also included social aspects (e.g. equality and democracy). The workshops with landlords were dominated by topics on how to get the tenants on board and challenges with managing their engagement once a green lease was signed. Furthermore, the tenants elaborated on positive engagement experiences and failed initiatives. Both sides also addressed issues on the landlord–tenant relationship. Interviews that lasted 1–2 h complemented the workshops. They allowed respondents to speak more freely and clarify things they said in the workshops. The data collection was augmented with informant interviews that lasted between 15 min and 2 h (see Table 3), furnishing information that offered contextual clarity to the findings and how to verify some respondent renderings.

The study adopted an iterative structure, inspired by systematic combining (Dubois and Gadde, 2002), using theoretical preconceptions to guide the data collection as empirical discovery guides theoretical elaborations. The results and the first round of interpretations were used to clarify interviews with the next group of participating organizations iteratively (i.e. interviewing landlords, then tenants, then landlords again).

3.2 Analytical process

Figure 1 illustrates the process of the study’s data collection, literature review and analysis. We began with a literature review along with observations from landlord activities and initial focus groups to understand the green lease context. The study engaged two researchers for participatory observations (Figure 1, arrow 1), member meetings and informal interviews, which yielded extensive field notes. In-depth interviews (arrows 2a, b), facilitated by the initial data (McCracken, 1988), provided an initial landlord perspective on the sufficiency-driven green lease initiative. This approach extended to the first workshops (arrows 3a, b; 4a, b) formed as structured focus groups (Morgan, 1997). The workshops clarified how landlords and tenants viewed their facilities, the relationship between the facilities and sustainability and the landlord–tenant relationship. Relating the results from the first round of focus groups to extant literature helped guide the inquiry further.

The second round of workshops (arrows 5a, b; 6a, b; 7a, b) allowed for followups, comparisons and clarifications. We used a third iteration where we visited municipal officials and NGOs (arrows 8a, b) to add an explanatory layer and confirm the findings. We conducted semistructured interviews with two landlords anxious to engage their tenants (arrow 9a) and follow up on their green lease experiences and an interview with a public tenant on the factors needed for BAE (arrow 9b) to strengthen the tenant perspective.

As the data collection progressed (arrow 10), two additional independent researchers used thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) to search the texts for recurring patterns and differences in landlord and tenant BAE renderings regarding the SDGs and green lease. Therefore, the analytical procedure followed the prescribed six phases. The two researchers that initiated the field study (collection 1–7) observed that the degree of agreement between landlords and their customers varied during the data collection. Similar insights were confirmed by the two researchers during phase 1 of the thematic analysis, where all researchers became familiar with the data and jotted “ideas and potential coding” (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 86). Thus, all four researchers engaged in a thematic analysis of the transcriptions and field notes to appreciate which factors affected successful (failed) value cocreation for sustainability. The findings followed phase 2’s suggestion to create an “initial list of ideas about what is in the data and what is interesting about them” (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 88).

When searching the data (using an iterative process) for clarifications on whether green leases were experienced as successful and beneficial from the involved actors’ perspective, respondents from the landlord–tenant relationship frequently referenced “rådighet” – a Swedish concept with no direct English translation – as a crucial aspect. Therefore, phase 3, which:

Re-focuses the analysis at the broader level of themes, rather than codes, involves sorting the different codes into potential themes and collating all the relevant coded data extracts within the identified themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 89).

The concept “rådighet” indicated a central notion (when engagement was described) or an excuse (when there was a lack of engagement).

We selected a “set of candidate themes, and it involves the refinement of those themes” (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 91), as per phase 4. We identified three prevailing aggregated themes – willingness, resourcefulness and influence – on positive engagement outcomes and, hence, the factors needed for BAE. We also identified two aggregated themes – obligations and responsibilities – that signaled failure (i.e. absent engagement where the tenants did not engage at all or even negative engagement when they expressed being reluctant toward the initiative). In this process, it was evident that the empirical clarifications of when the firms ended up with BAE were found at a paragraph level rather than in single sentences. Thus, we started to draft a narrative to explain the factors needed for BAE and how it was related to firms aiming to contribute to the SDGs.

Building on systematic combining (Dubois and Gadde, 2002), the process above also involved connecting the codes and aggregated themes to actor engagement theory. The emerging concepts were grounded in the empirical data and affected by the engagement nomenclature. Thus, phase 5, involving “defining and naming themes,” was influenced by the actor engagement nomenclature. The results were edited and classified as those that support BAE and those that signaled a negative or absent engagement outcome (arrow 10). Finally, in phase 6, we crafted this report to “tell the complicated story of your data in a way [that] convinces the reader of the merit and validity of your analysis” (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 93). All in all, we condensed the data as an illustrative case that allows for identifying the nuances that make up the factors needed for understanding BAE. As stipulated by phase 6 (Braun and Clarke, 2006), all researchers participated in the member-checking (arrows 1, 8–9) to obtain clarifications and comments on the findings.

4.1 Basis for successful green leases

The study indicates that green leases are, as argued by other researchers (Janda et al., 2016), mostly landlord-led and in the form of an offer and value proposition to engage in some of the SDGs. Some participating landlords decided not to actively market and offer green leases. Few customers showed an active interest and instead perceived the green lease as a negative enforced commitment. Several landlords stated that many customers initially were interested in green leases given their increasing focus on sustainability. However, they became hesitant once they recognized the needed commitment. Landlord Alfa described green leases as still in their infancy, despite being around for several years:

The green lease is on the table. [However], it is hard for some customers—it seems like public tenants are better, given that they [the tenants] must report statistics. [Even so, the green lease] is on the rise. So, I believe there is a firm base for sustainability initiatives today, but it is still in its infancy.

Although customers recognized that they could benefit from the SDG-driven business initiative, several landlords described the green lease adoption as unsuccessful and stopped using them. Conversely, other landlords considered the SDG-driven business initiative to be positive, if not optimal, inducing them to incorporate the green lease’s most important clauses, such as renewable electricity, waste management and other resource uses, into their standard leasing agreements rather than using the green lease as a separate add-on.

Many landlords felt the decreasing frequency of landlord–tenant meetings could explain the relatively weak outcome of the green lease as interest declined over time. It was perceived as indicating the lack of lasting relevance of green leases. The green lease was reduced to being a ceremonial document primarily relevant to the initial contractual agreement, enabling the tenant to make strategic claims of “greenness.” Guided by the initial findings, the data analysis focused on factors that could shed light on the consequent aspects regarding the success or failure of using green leases. We identified three core factors or codified themes – willingness, resourcefulness and influence – needed for BAE and successful green lease outcomes.

4.2 Signal for green lease failure

Respondents used a different vocabulary when discussing the absence of desired outcomes, or even failure, of SDG-driven business initiatives due to a lack of willingness, resourcefulness or influence. Successful green leases, for example, yielded clear energy reductions and improved waste management practices. Even so, failures meant a lack of BAE, with limited incremental energy reductions (if any) and unchanged waste levels and procedures. A common experience among the landlords was summarized by one workshop respondent:

Many tenants don’t keep up with the green lease agreement. And it is not legally binding.

Two indicators of failed actor engagement emerged from discussions. Landlords and tenants described limited (or lack of) green lease effects as due to viewing the green lease as merely imposed obligations and responsibilities, rather than as an invitation to co-evolve through mutual willingness, resourcefulness or influence.

4.3 Avoiding being dependent on SDG engagement

An in-depth analysis of the three factors needed for facilitating positive outcomes from BAE indicated that they have a hierarchal relation. BAE is dependent on actors that can decide on the rights and scope for action, being able to influence and cogovern the activities at hand. Once established, the actors need resourcefulness (i.e. knowledge and ingeniousness) to initiate and solve challenges. Finally, there must also be a willingness to act (i.e. to take active interest in action and collaboration). It may also be challenging to manage the factors needed for BAE when the involved actors get too involved in discussions on obligations and responsibilities.

One of the landlords opted to stop using the green lease as some of its content was part of established norms and standards and other parts were considered irrelevant to the tenants. The solution was to take some of the paragraphs in the green lease and put them in the regular (ordinary) leasing contract (i.e. it became a demand rather than a [voluntary] value proposition). The firm that took this decision was one of the leaders in the commercial real estate industry’s transformation toward sustainable practices. Moreover, the formalization of some actions toward the SDGs meant that they reduced the need to establish joint engagement. Instead, sustainability became a contractual obligation that was independent of BAE with however limited results in terms of continuous future codevelopments and big-scale transformations.

6.1 Theoretical implications

In response to the first research question, the results suggest three constituting factors that must be in place for (positive outcomes of) BAE to unfold: willingness, resourcefulness and influence. This study indicates that all three factors need to be addressed as foundations for engagement. Hence, the factors are needed (in varying scope and depth) for engagement to exist, setting the basis for actor engagement and its antecedents to emerge. Antecedents such as dispositions (Brodie et al., 2019) affect the relationship (connectedness) and BAE outcomes (Ekman et al., 2021). Even so, without the factors needed for BAE, the disposition and connectedness become irrelevant, given that the presence of the factors determines whether BAE and its related antecedents and outcomes will emerge. The integrated processual and structural complexity in business markets (e.g. interdependency between actors’ activities) may explain why engagement in B2B settings requires factors that seem more related to pursuing long-term benefits than in B2C settings, where interdependencies between vendors and buyers are short termed (Beckers et al., 2018; Kumar and Pansari, 2016).

In response to the second research question, the results noted that signs of when the factors are lacking included being trapped in discussions about obligations and responsibilities, which yields negative or absent BAE. Such problems become extra important when firms adopt SDG-driven business initiatives to act on the current environmental and social challenges, together with their partners. The results also offered one example where a firm abandoned the need for (joint and voluntary) BAE by including some sustainability aspects in the regular contract that made some collaborations mandatory. It was beyond this study to examine to what degree such a “hard” approach induced other outcomes, but it partly signals how challenging it is to manage the factors needed for BAE.

Summarizing the findings, we adopted an engagement perspective rooted in an S-D logic to understand what must be in place to get positive BAE outcomes (in the SDG-driven business initiative context). This approach offered a conceptualization of the factors needed for BAE and an identification of the signs that signal a lack of the factors. The resulting model offers guidance on how to plan and manage engagement initiatives for mutual benefits. Thus, the study offers complementary insights necessary for mid-range theory developments on BAE by combining theoretical refinements with business practice for a B2B and sustainability context. The results show that the engagement concept in B2B settings (unlike submissive loyalty and commitment toward a brand or product in B2C settings) must be understood as commonly guided by “a cause” or common goals, such as value cocreation for long-term sustainability (Dahlin et al., 2021). By elaborating and developing capacities that support the factors needed for BAE and by avoiding being trapped in discussions about responsibilities and obligations (of “who does what”), we get a better understanding of what is needed for engagement in B2B markets.

6.2 Managerial implications

For managers, the study shows that firms must further recognize the relational aspects of how customers perceive their role regarding what they are expected to know and do, what they are allowed to do and what they can do when introducing a business initiative that are dependent on actor engagement. Thus, the initiating firm must establish interorganizational cogovernance procedures (Röndell et al., 2016) to ensure that the factors needed for BAE are mutually considered. The three factors of willingness, resourcefulness and influence are central to establishing engagement in the supplier–customer dyad and the service ecosystem. Maintaining continuous supplier–customer engagement is challenging. Therefore, managers should place themselves in the “shoes of the partner” such that they can relate to the potential challenges an initiative may cause from the customer’s standpoint. Understanding of the relevant actors’ perspective, such as the customer and supplier, means that the providing firm (i.e. initiator) can help them (i.e. the service ecosystem actors) discover and understand how they can choose to actively engage in the activities needed for the value cocreation process to unfold.

For sustainability initiatives regarding the SDGs, the results accord with prior research (Hermelingmeier and von Wirth, 2021), where educating partnering actors about sustainability issues enables them to become part of the solution. Even though it might not lead to all the factors needed for BAE being in place, it will shed light on the other actor’s perspective and goals when they learn about the providing firm’s aspirations, which are equally important for future interactions and approaches of engagement. Given the context of “the grand challenges” – i.e. the SDGs (George et al., 2016) – customers may lack resources, such as time and knowledge to understand, accept and implement SDG-driven business initiatives in their everyday business.

Managers are advised to collaborate with policymakers, NGOs and national industry associations to standardize and incentivize the factors needed for BAE, i.e. facilitate the development of resources that offer more easy-accessed frameworks, tools, templates and guidelines on vital steps to fulfill SDGs through engagement. Thus, there is a need for tools and best practices such that SDGs can be easily adopted and diffused by various (firm) stakeholders per their capacity. Moreover, getting policymakers onboard can support platform building where firms can collaborate on their business initiatives with a broader network of actors and, thus, promote and facilitate the exchange and regeneration of existing intranetwork resources, especially when they are scarce. Extant research, for example, indicates various potential relationships between the 17 SDGs and areas of an extended value chain (Montiel et al., 2021), viewing markets as horizontally integrated service ecosystems instead of vertical linear supply chains. Such insights should be complemented with the findings from this study to see how different SDGs relate to current standards and certificates, facilitating the diffusion of business initiatives.

For managers, clarifying the business implications of a firm initiative and relating them to standards and certificates through policy and managerial praxis, can accelerate the effects of the firm initiative. From a managerial standpoint, making a business initiative a standardized process improves the possibilities for having actors identify and fulfill the factors needed for BAE quicker and potentially benefit them by sharing resources in ways not considered. Some national industry associations are uniquely positioned to assist such developments given their broad reach and the breadth of existing guidelines and templates. By considering this study’s findings, managers can guide their firms and collaborate with engaged peers on how to ground and fulfill the SDGs.

6.3 Limitations and future studies

A field study of the commercial real estate industry in a highly developed country like Sweden has limitations regarding empirical generalizations. This study does not allow for statistical or cross-industry generalizations. Even though cases might allow for theoretical generalizations, additional studies in different contexts and the development of variables for the three factors needed for BAE and the two aspects that signal the lack of BAE would allow for further theorization and subsequent testing. For example, future research can explore to what degree the factors needed for BAE affect the goal fulfillment of an engagement initiative. Future studies addressing the three factors can also shed light on how various parts of the 17 SDGs functions as elements for firms that strive to innovate for sustainability.

The study also indicates that the firm’s aim to contribute to a greater cause, spanning multiple SDGs, (e.g. participating landlords often wished to position themselves as “urban developers,” taking social and environmental stewardship) is a strategy that requires a systems perspective and simultaneously faces a broad span of institutional arrangements and logics (Vargo et al., 2023; Ekman et al., 2021; Michel et al., 2019). Learning more about such stewardship firms requires that the perspective moves from the dyad to an ecosystem perspective. Future actor engagement studies will benefit from the broader perspective, allowing for the inclusion of additional new actors (e.g. a triad) using network or ecosystem perspectives. Such studies can also explore and clarify extended value cocreation and engagement possibilities regarding the SDGs and how the cocreated benefits and costs are managed by the involved actors. Future studies should also, even further, elaborate on viewing B2B contexts as “markets as ecosystems” by acknowledging a less dominant “from–to” perspective, and instead embrace a “with” perspective. As such, the understanding of BAE needs to also entail issues of how the “customer” perceives the “supplier” engagement and motivationally driven interest to generate intended long-term business market outcomes.

Finally, the three factors needed for BAE were explored in a context with limited examples of outcomes (e.g. reduced energy, water and waste or brighter and more ergonomic offices). Therefore, further studies can explore other forms of engagement initiatives and their outcomes, regarding how willingness, resourcefulness and influence may spur actions that contribute to the providing firm’s aspirations for engagement in other industries. This study’s model can be a valuable tool when continuing to explore engagement initiatives, as engagement is a basic aspect of achieving system-wide transformations. Thus, willingness, resourcefulness, influence, obligations and responsibilities (failure) need further exploration via study replication in other industries and through scale development and testing.