Companies have been under increasing pressure to engage with stakeholders to advance their sustainability engagement. Collaboration has been recognised as a key element in such efforts. While the need for collaboration among organisations is increasingly recognised, there is still a need to better understand with whom companies collaborate, and how stakeholders might influence the process. This study analyses how companies collaborate in regards to sustainability and highlights the need to differentiate between influence on stakeholders and importance when establishing collaboration partnerships. This research proposes a collaboration for sustainability model including internal and external stakeholders on the vertical and horizontal level.