Uncovering Micro‐Practices and Pathways of Engagement That Scale Up Social‐Driven Collaborations: A Practice View of Power

• Date: 01 December 2015
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Author: Marlei Pozzebon,Chantale Mailhot,Sonia Tello‐Rozas
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12148

Uncovering Micro-Practices and Pathways

of Engagement That Scale Up Social-Driven

Collaborations: A Practice View of Power

Sonia Tello-Rozas, Marlei Pozzebon and Chantale Mailhot

ESG UQAM; HEC Montreal & FGV/EAESP; HEC Montreal

ABSTRACT This paper explores how large-scale social-driven collaborations might grow in

scale and help promote political change. We present the results of a qualitative investigation

of a complex platform where multiple and hybrid collaborations co-exist and where civil

society plays a central role. Based on a longitudinal comparative case study, we draw a

processual model describing micro-practices and pathways of engagement. We show that the

emergence of these collaborations requires a new type of convener, one that is able to

manage the interplay between the sharing/co-creation of abundant resources and the

coordinated decentralization of informal authority. Our study extends existing debates on the

role of resources and authority, showing the complementarity between possession and practice

perspectives of power. Finally, we identified synergies between collaboration and social

movement literatures, particularly showing that large-scale collaborations could be mobilized

to refine social movement agendas and achieve more purposive collective action.

Keywords: large-scale social-driven collaborations, micro-practices and pathways of

engagement, possession and practice perspectives of power, social movement

INTRODUCTION

Large-scale initiatives and mobilizations addressing complex social issues have become

more frequent since the beginning of the last decade. In 2003, a large-scale political coa-

lition mobilized 41 organizations from 30 countries against the Iraq war (Corrigall-

Brown and Meyer, 2010). At about the same time, the AmericaSpeaks organization was

founded to engage American citizens in discussions of important national and regional

issues (Lukensmeyer and Brigham, 2005). In this paper, we target phenomena involving

the emergence of multipart and multilevel collaboration platforms where citizens,

groups, and organizations from all sectors interact and form intricate networks that

Address for reprints: Sonia Tello-Rozas, ESG UQAM - 315, Saint Catherine Street East, Montreal

(Quebec), Canada, H2X 3X2 (tello-rozas.sonia@uqam.ca).

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C2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 52:8 December 2015

doi: 10.1111/joms.12148

simultaneously collaborate around complex social problems. This understanding is cru-

cial today as more and more people around the world attempt to organize themselves to

address important issues that formal political authorities seem unable or disinclined to

address (Batellier and Sauve, 2011).

Given the importance of this phenomenon, more empirical research is needed to

increase our understanding of the micro-practices of stakeholder engagement in such

large collaborative processes. By engagement we mean the act of entering into contact with

and beginning active participation in a given activity, process, or concerted action. It

extends from the first movement toward a group of people that is organized – or in the

process of being organized – to their commitment to achieving their goals. We define

micro-practices of engagement as sets of activities, manoeuvres, and subtle tactics deployed by

the promoters of the collaboration to engage different actors in debates, events, mobili-

zations and action-taking. We refer to micro-practices to emphasize that we are entering

into the detailed actions of people’s activities, scrutinizing and analyzing them to open

the black box.

A number of scholars have investigated collaboration processes without taking a close

look at underlying micro-practices (e.g., Gray and Stisis, 2013; Hardy and Phillips,

1998). As we explain in the literature review section, most of those authors identify

generic categories but do not delve deeper to achieve a more fine-grained focus. The

micro-practices of stakeholder engagement in collaborations are thus not disclosed or

sufficiently explored. On the other hand, studies in other bodies of literature, such as

social movement literature, detail mobilization mechanisms and protest tactics (Taylor

and Van Dyke, 2004), but fail to show how those mechanisms and tactics might lead to

the refinement of political agendas to improve access to government decision-making

arenas. We argue for the blending of those studies to achieve a better understanding of

engagement micro-practices that can help social-driven collaborations gain in scale to

promote social and political change such as advances in human rights, fulfilment of basic

needs, and more sustainable cities.

In addition to micro-practices, we grasped that most studies on collaboration are

founded on the assumption that the main motivation for collaborating is to control formal

authority and critical resources. This conceptualization of power might be characterized as

being shaped by an epistemology of possession (Cook and Brown, 1999). We argue that

the entire area could benefit from showing the complementary nature of the logic of pos-

session and the logic of practice. Our rich empirical data allowed us to illustrate how such

a complementarity might work. We outline two aspects of power that emerged from our

practice-basedanalysis: the way resources and authorityare managed by stakeholders.

The present study focusses on these two issues – micro-practices of engagement and

role of power – and it addresses two research questions: ‘What micro-practices might increase

and improve engagement in large-scale social-driven collaboration processes?’ and ‘What is the role of

power in the implementation of those micro-practices?’ The relevance of these research questions

relates to the growing interest in managing collaborations that address complex

social issues (Batellier and Sauve, 2011; Everett and Jamal, 2004; Gray and Stisis, 2013;

Johnston and Clegg, 2012; Selsky and Parker, 2005).

The results of our study offer three main contributions. First, we explore a complex

form of social-driven collaboration, a platform where multiple and hybrid collaborations

1065Micro-Practices and Pathways of Engagement

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C2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

co-exist and civil society plays a central role as a new type of convener. Second, we pro-

pose an original processual model of engagement that fosters an understanding of how

large-scale social-driven collaborations might grow in scale to promote social and politi-

cal change, thereby creating unexpected synergies between two bodies of literature: col-

laboration and social movement. Collaboration literature could learn from the rich

repertoire of mobilization tactics discussed in social movement literature, which in turn

could learn how large-scale and multiparty collaboration platforms can be used to refine

political agendas to gain access to government decision-making arenas. Third, we

extend existing debates on the role of two aspects of power in collaborations – resources

and authority – showing that the dominant logic of possession prevents collaboration lit-

erature from exploring more detailed and dynamic micro-practices. We argue that an

epistemology of practice helps trace micro-practices employed by highlighting an aspect

of power that may be hidden when a possession view dominates: the interplay between

sharing/co-creation of abundant resources and the coordinated decentralization of

informal authority.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Serious issues affecting quality of life in modern society such as sustainable development,

environmental health risks (unsafe food and drinking water, air pollution, chemical

exposure), genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and nuclear waste disposal are trig-

gering controversies that established political and scientific bodies seem unable to

resolve (Batellier and Sauve, 2011). Many authors suggest that ordinary citizens can and

should participate in public debates and policymaking that directly affect their lives,

pointing out that more studies are needed in areas such as integrating the general public

in decision-making processes (Adams, 2007); participation spaces such as consensus con-

ferences, citizen committees, and dialogue roundtables (Callon, 2004); and collaborative

devices through which multiple stakeholders can come together with a common political

agenda focused on societal problem-solving (Selsky and Parker, 2005).

This last point – collaboration – is particularly relevant when a management perspec-

tive is the lens of study. One widely cited definition of collaboration around multi-party

problems is that of Gray (1989, p. 5): the ‘process through which parties who see

different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for

solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible.’ From the various

angles from which civil society’s engagement in societal problem-solving may be investi-

gated, we therefore decided to adopt social-driven collaboration as our central lens

(Hibbert and Huxham, 2010; Kieser and Leiner, 2012). In addition, as we discuss in the

following sections, we found interesting synergies between collaboration and social

movement literatures.

Social-Driven Collaboration Literature

While much of collaboration literature looks at organizational issues and cases focused

on benefits to stakeholders and the effects on competitive advantage (e.g., Ring and Van

De Ven, 1994), other studies address societal issues at the core of the collaborative

1066 S. Tello-Rozas et al.

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C2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies