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Not Just Small Potatoes: Social Partnerships as Relational Spaces that Bridge Social Movements and Organizational Change
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- Author / Creator
- Hedberg Carlson, Leanne
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Social movements are a key source of novel practices that challenge the status quo and provoke organizational and institutional change. Sweeping narratives of exogenous social movement influenced change (e.g. protests, demonstrations, media attacks) have been complemented, more recently, by accounts of change that highlight insider activism. While undoubtedly contributing to a richer understanding of social movement induced change, such a dichotomous outsider/insider perspective nonetheless evokes the same long-standing critique of extant institutional change literature for taking either an overly socialized or an overly heroic stance on change. Indeed, neither perspective could account for the change that occurred within the large organizations in my research setting – a four-year field ethnography of a cross-sector collaboration to support food buyers for hospital systems, universities and conference centers in incorporating the sustainable foods movement. By documenting how participation in a community-level cross-sector collaboration enabled the food buyers to incorporate sustainable foods ideals and practices, my research extends work on relational spaces to develop a novel process model of how interstitial organizing shapes the ways in which broad movement ideals and practices become tailored, by organizational insiders. Based upon my findings, I suggest that our extant, dichotomous view of change might be expanded upon with a relational approach. I also caution that social collaborations can result in symbolic as well as substantive outcomes. My dissertation research is particularly important in light of the increasing need for organizations to respond to social movements in attending to pressing, complex social and environmental issues.
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- Graduation date
- Spring 2020
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
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- License
- Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.