Reconciling Purpose and Profit Across Organizations and Over Time: Case Balticseah2 — A Regional Hydrogen Valley

The grand societal challenges, such as climate change, cannot be solved by any single organization but instead requires that both public and private actors work together in a public-private collaboration of multiple stakeholders. However, in such collaboration, the purpose-driven motives stemming from the society typically cause tensions with the profit-driven firms and their activities. To understand how these dynamics play out, we conduct a case study of a BalticSeaH2 project that is building a regional hydrogen market. Based on 17 interviews, 7 workshops, and document analysis, we expose evidence that profit and purpose can be reconciled with the help of a regional inter-organizational multi-stakeholder PPC—a hydrogen valley. Complementing the existing understanding that emphasizes on a one-time reconciliation within organizations, we reveal a dynamic process consisting of both purpose- and profit-driven actions across organizational boundaries and sequentially over time. Our study calls for a longer-term analysis of shared purpose in inter-organizational collaborations to design novel organization forms that would help public and private actors together to better address grand societal challenges.