Collaboration is a necessary strategy to cope with problems of environmental sustainability among the sectors of society. Individual actors such as government, business and non-governmental organisation are not possible to solve the problems associated with sustainable development on their own. This research provides new insights of academic and practice relevance by using a variety of methods to explore into nature of the relationship between the view of sustainability and the type of

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... ion in which the organisation collaborates with others to support sustainable development. The literature review reveals that there is a different interpretation of sustainability viewed by the different sectors of society where the focus is based on organisational context. However, this study, which involved exploration of the activities of a broad range of entities in a variety of sectors, adopts a more critical perspective and highlights significant correlations between the different views and the way organisation collaborate with others. This study employs a phenomenological approach and comprises of two stages of semi-structured interviews with the top-level of management in an organisation to examine different experiences of forming a collaboration in sustainability-related projects. I use the case study in the United Kingdom to identify the different role of the actors of society in pursuing sustainability. From the research findings, I find that there is a disconnection between the underlying motivation driving the organisation and its vision in pursuing sustainability. The motivation itself rather than the declared vision tends to shape the style of relationship.