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Collaborating for Community Regeneration: Facilitating Partnerships in, Through, and for Place

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Abstract

Cross-sector partnerships (CSP) are increasingly recognized as essential for addressing our world’s mounting sustainability challenges. However, place is often considered merely as a contextual backdrop for these partnerships in CSP research. In this study, we focus on the ways in which place, including the natural, built, and cultural dimensions of geographic locations, is actively leveraged to facilitate cross-sector collaboration. Employing a qualitative and engaged research approach, we helped organize and studied two workshops held in small communities on the east coast of Canada whose goal was to build a cross-sector network of community leaders focused on revitalizing communities suffering from the collapse of their primary industry, the cod fishery. We show how the staging of place fostered deeper connections among participants by reducing barriers to participation, intensifying contact with others, and enabling participants to share local knowledge. In turn, connecting through place prompted participants to recognize a shared purpose and sense of belonging, two key elements for building cross-sector collaboration.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our research partners, Shorefast and Fishing for Success, for supporting this work and the participants of the PLACE Dialogues for their engagement with the workshops and this research. We are also incredibly grateful to our reviewers and the Special Issue Editors Annmarie Ryan, Susi Geiger, Helen Haugh, and especially Oana Branzei, for their guidance and support.

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 890-2015-0099).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States

    Jennifer Brenton

  2. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada

    Natalie Slawinski

  3. Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s, Canada

    Natalie Slawinski

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  1. Jennifer Brenton
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Correspondence to Jennifer Brenton.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Ethical Approval

This study was performed in accordance with the principles of the Interdisciplinary Committee on Ethics in Human Research (ICEHR) at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Memorial University (August 19th, 2016/No. 20170534-BA). This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Additional informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for whom identifying information is included in this article.

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Brenton, J., Slawinski, N. Collaborating for Community Regeneration: Facilitating Partnerships in, Through, and for Place. J Bus Ethics 184, 815–834 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05365-5

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