Multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) are widely seen as promising ways to tackle Grand Challenges (GCs) such as climate change. Yet, many MSPs fall short of their ambitions, struggling to sustain meaningful partner engagement and resulting in collaborative inertia. While prior research provides comprehensive insights into the partner-level factors that motivate organizations to join MSPs and the MSP-level dynamics that influence partner engagement after joining at broader levels, less is known about how individual MSP members derive and adapt their engagement strategies – particularly when resource constraints require careful prioritization. By offering a partner-level perspective on enacted engagement behaviors and underlying engagement strategies, this study aims to complement and expand our current understanding of how MSPs may foster collective action for addressing GCs. It draws on a qualitative embedded single-case study of the recently founded MSP “NETtogether”, an MSP that is dedicated to advancing carbon dioxide removal (CDR) as part of the transition to a net-zero society in the fight against climate change.
