Collaborative coherence as an institutional common: how inter-institutional collaboration builds sustainable FDI attractiveness in an emerging region

Abstract

Purpose — Location competitiveness research has long privileged tangible endowments, yet territories with comparable assets attract and retain foreign direct investment (FDI) very unevenly. This paper asks whether the coherence of collective action among institutional actors — rather than the assets themselves — explains sustainable FDI attractiveness. It develops and empirically examines the concept of collaborative coherence as an institutional common.

Design/methodology/approach — Anchored in an interpretivist stance and an abductive logic of systematic combining, the study triangulates three qualitative datasets from Morocco’s Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceima region: a structured documentary analysis of 47 institutional sources, a two-round Delphi with 10 experts, and 18 semi-structured interviews with senior institutional actors, including two ministers and several directors-general. Coding in NVivo 14 produced 63 nodes, 71 in vivo codes and 1,247 coded references (Cohen’s κ = 0.873; theoretical saturation at the fourteenth interview).

Findings — The five research propositions receive strong triangulated support (overall corroboration 86.3 per cent; 6/6 convergence across sources). Inter-institutional collaboration (94 per cent) and relationship quality (87 per cent) emerge as the principal producers of collaborative coherence (89 per cent), which in turn underpins sustainable attractiveness (91 per cent), moderated by exogenous contextual factors (85 per cent). Territorial brand image is the weakest antecedent (72 per cent). A recurrent distinction separates procedural coordination — meeting, sequencing, reporting — from substantive collaboration, in which actors co-produce decisions and internalise shared rules.

Originality/value — The paper offers a novel articulation of sociological neo-institutionalism with Ostrom’s theory of commons governance, conceptualising collaborative coherence as a common-pool institutional resource built on collective participation, shared appropriation and institutional learning. It thereby repositions competitiveness debates around an intangible, collectively produced and depletable asset, and provides one of the few elite-based qualitative validations of such a model in an African emerging economy.

Keywords: territorial competitiveness; FDI attractiveness; collaborative governance; institutional commons; neo-institutional theory; Morocco.

Received Date: December 20, 2025

Accepted Date: January 12, 2026

Published Date: February 01, 2026

Available Online at: https://www.ijsrisjournal.com/index.php/ojsfiles/article/view/788