Social-Symbolic Work in the Construction of Social Problems: Constructing Gender Inequality in Turkish Social Partnerships

Abstract

How social problems are constructed within social partnerships has significant effects on the management, impact, and survival of those partnerships. To explore how social problems are constructed, we adopt a social-symbolic work perspective, which highlights the variety of forms of work involved in this process, how they interact, and the impact of context on that process. Empirically, we focus on two social partnerships in Turkey that both addressed gender inequality but constructed that problem in very different terms. Our study suggests that the differences in how they came to construct the problem of gender inequality in Turkey was tied to the qualities of two forms of social-symbolic work—relational work and practice work—in which they engaged: the partnership that constructed gender inequality as an embedded problem engaged in extensive relational work and deep practice work; in contrast, the partnership that constructed the problem as disembedded engaged in efficient relational work and shallow practice work. Further, we observed that the construction of the problem of gender inequality was tied to different outcomes: an embedded social construction of the problem was associated with holistic outcomes on a more limited scale; a disembedded construction of the problem was associated with simpler outcomes on a greater scale. The paper contributes to the literature on social partnerships by showing how social problems are constructed through partners' work and how this affects their impact and sustainability. It also extends the literature on social-symbolic work by highlighting the interplay of different forms of work in constructing social problems. Finally, it contributes to research on gender inequality and organizations by showing how the work of social partnerships can shape conceptions of gender inequality at the meso level.

Introduction

How social problems are constructed in social partnerships is fundamentally important to how partnerships unfold and the impacts they might have. Social partnerships¹ bring actors from across public, private, and voluntary sectors together to address social problems they cannot solve individually, and to share the risks and responsibilities of doing so (Austin & Seitanidi, 2012; Gray & Purdy, 2018). Although social problems are often thought of as simply “out there” in the world, causing suffering and awaiting a response, we conceive of such problems as socially constructed by interested actors (Lawrence et al., 2014; Weinberg, 2009) with significant implications for how partnerships are managed, organized, the activities in which they engage and the solutions they develop (Gray & Purdy, 2018; McCann, 1983). Whether the problem of drug addiction, for instance, is conceived of as a criminal issue or a health issue has dramatic consequences for individuals, organizations, and communities (Lawrence, 2017). Thus, understanding how and why partnerships construct social problems in different ways represents an important issue for research on social partnerships and social change more broadly.

To explore this issue, we adopt a social-symbolic work perspective. Social-symbolic work describes “purposeful, reflexive efforts intended to shape or maintain social-symbolic objects,” which are “combination[s] of discursive, relational and material elements that constitute meaningful pattern[s] in social systems” (Lawrence & Phillips, 2019, p. 5). From this perspective, social problems are a kind of social-symbolic object and thus dynamic and amenable to change through the intentional efforts of interested actors. Unlike a narrower perspective, such as institutional work or identity work, the social-symbolic work perspective facilitates the observation of a broad array of forms of work and the interplay between them as they shape the construction of social problems. Thus, we ask how social-symbolic work shapes the social construction of social problems in partnerships and in turn influences the outcomes of such partnerships.

To investigate how social partnerships construct social problems and how this influences outcomes, we conducted a comparative case study of two social partnerships tackling gender inequality in Turkey. Gender inequality represents an appropriate social problem on which to focus both because it is inherently important and because it is constructed in different ways across geographical and political contexts (Karam & Jamali, 2013; Minton & Knottnerus, 2008) and across theoretical and ideological perspectives (Calás & Smircich, 2006; Grosser & Moon, 2019). The social construction of gender inequality in Turkey is an especially important issue: despite it being a high-ranking, middle-income country with the world’s 19th largest economy by GDP (World Bank, 2021), Turkey ranks 133rd out of 156 countries on the 2021 Global Gender Gap Index (World Economic Forum, 2021). In response to the problem of gender inequality, a range of social partnerships have emerged in Turkey. The two partnerships on which we focus were similar in many ways but developed distinctly different constructions of the problem they were addressing. This allowed us to explore differences in how social problems are constructed and the impacts of such differences on the outcomes of social partnerships.

In brief, we found that how partnerships constructed social problems was shaped by two forms of social-symbolic work: relational work, which involves people’s efforts to create, shape, and disrupt interpersonal relationships (Zelizer, 2012); and practice work, which involves efforts to create, shape, and disrupt social practices (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010). Differences in the relational and practice work across the two partnerships led to distinctive constructions of the problem on which each partnership was working: whereas one partnership constructed gender inequality as an embedded social problem such that gender inequality was conceived of as a problem embedded in broad social structures, systems, and the cultural context, the other partnership constructed it as disembedded such that gender inequality was conceived of as largely independent of broader social structures, systems, and the cultural context. Ultimately, these differences led to distinctive trade-offs with respect to partnership outcomes: the partnership that constructed the problem as embedded delivered holistic outcomes (i.e., impact at multiple levels addressing different aspects of the issue in a comprehensive way) but on a relatively limited scale; the partnership that constructed the problem as disembedded led to simplistic outcomes (i.e., impact at a single level addressing specific aspect of the issue rather in isolation) but on a greater scale.

Our study makes three main theoretical contributions. First, we shed light on the process through which organizations construct social problems, a process that has been largely overlooked (Lawrence et al., 2014; Vestergaard et al., 2020). Our study suggests that social problems emerge and evolve alongside partners’ relationships and their work on the field as a property of the partnerships and, ultimately, influence the partnership dynamics and outcomes. Second, we contribute to the emerging perspective on social-symbolic work by identifying a set of mechanisms through which different forms of work interact. Specifically, we show how relational and practice work lead to learning from partners and from practices to shape both the social construction of problems and the outcomes of partnerships. Finally, we contribute to the study of gender inequality and organizations by documenting the potential for meso-level phenomena such as the work of partners in social partnerships to shape conceptions of gender inequality with important effects on the participants and outcomes of those partnerships.

Our work also has two main ethical implications. First, it highlights the potential ethical impacts of social partnerships and thus suggests that partnership managers and members should be aware that how they construct social issues can influence the broader context and lead to unintended consequences. Second, gender inequality is inherently an ethical issue, and so it is important for business to acknowledge and take responsibility for addressing it: collaborating with NGOs as we describe here presents a potential avenue for business to recognize and fulfill their ethical responsibilities to tackle gender inequality in society.

Theoretical Background

Our study sits at the intersection of research on social partnerships, social-symbolic work, and gender inequality. Thus, to develop the research question that guides our study, we first review existing research relevant to social problems in social partnerships. We then outline the value of a social-symbolic work perspective for examining the processes through which social problems are constructed in social partnerships. Finally, we explore how focusing on gender inequality as a social problem shapes our study.

Social Problems in the Context of Social Partnerships

In social partnerships, public, private, and non-profit sector organizations work together in response to social, economic, or environmental problems (Selsky & Parker, 2005), in such domains as education (Jamali & Keshishian, 2009), disaster relief (Stadtler & Van Wassenhove, 2016), and disease (Arslan & Tarakci, 2022). The problems that social partnerships tend to take on are “ill defined, ambiguous and contested, and feature multilayered interdependencies and complex social dynamics” (Termeer et al., 2015, p. 680). In response to such problems, social partnerships assemble combinations of resources and capacities to facilitate rigorous and effective responses typically beyond the capabilities of a single organization (Caldwell et al., 2017; Ungureanu et al., 2019).

Although social problems have tended to serve as the background to research on social partnerships, the definition of social problems as such have not been an explicit focus. This research does point to three important issues with respect to how social problems are defined. First, traditional research has tended to cast partnerships as motivated by a shared understanding of a social problem agreed to in the pre-partnership stages (Gray & Purdy, 2018; Selsky & Parker, 2005) or imposed externally (Waddock, 1991). Second, more recent work has recognized the negotiability of social problems, attending to the potentially extended processes through which partners develop a shared understanding of a problem (Hardy et al., 2006). Third, recent research also points to the potential consequences of how problems are defined for the value partnerships create (Koschmann et al., 2012; Le Ber & Branzei, 2010a). Looking across these studies, they tend to focus on problem definition as a negotiation process and suggest that the desired outcome of this negotiation is to develop a shared purpose that can serve the goals of the participant organizations (Cloutier & Langley, 2017; Eden & Huxham, 2001).

Previous studies also suggest that how social problems are constructed can vary substantially, even among relatively similar partnerships. Jamali and Keshishian (2009) show that even similarly designed partnerships addressing inequalities in education approached the problem significantly differently—as either an economic issue or a broader issue that included both economic and other forms of inequality. In summary, the social construction of social problems in partnerships represents an important but under researched issue, especially in terms of the processes through which partnership members construct social problems (Vestergaard et al., 2020).

The Role of Social-Symbolic Work

We draw on the social-symbolic work perspective because of its potential to surface diverse pathways through which intentional action can influence how ideas and objects in organizational life, including social problems, are socially constructed. This potential is tied to the perspective’s focus on “how organizations, their contexts, and the selves that inhabit them are purposefully constructed and how this happens” (Lawrence & Phillips, 2019, p. 49). Rather than assuming the importance of a particular kind of work, the social-symbolic work perspective incorporates diverse streams of research that have examined a range of forms of social-symbolic work including identity work (Brown, 2015), and boundary work (Langley et al., 2019).

A key insight of the perspective is the importance of connections among different forms of social-symbolic work and different social-symbolic objects, especially in relation to complex, multi-actor projects (Barberá-Tomás et al., 2019; Pradies et al., 2021) addressing social issues (Kouamé et al. 2022). The connections among forms of social-symbolic work and social-symbolic objects can be seen in people’s efforts to construct professional selves (Mantere & Whittington, 2021) and in complex organizational processes (Pradies et al., 2021). For instance, recent empirical work has built on these insights to document the complex network of activities that connect emotion work and institutional work to effect social change: in this case, activists constructed a social-symbolic objects in the form of an impactful visual image—a disturbing photo of a dead albatross with its stomach full of plastic—and followed up with institutional work involving “multimodal interactions to make the symbol meaningful” (Barberá-Tomás et al., 2019, p. 1808).

The social-symbolic work perspective also points to the recursiveness of the relationships among work and the objects on which people work. In the case of emotion-symbolic work, different actions led to distinct emotional effects on the target audience (e.g., moral shock, energetic arousal), which then shaped future social-symbolic work (Barberá-Tomás et al., 2019). The recursive effects of social-symbolic work may be unexpected and consequential: in a review of research on organizational body work, Lawrence et al. (2022) show how efforts to shape human bodies can affect other social-symbolic objects including organizational culture which then loops back to affect human bodies (e.g., Gottfried, 2003).

The Social Construction of Gender Inequality

Although we argue that social problems are socially constructed within partnerships, we are not suggesting this happens de novo—social problems arrive with their own histories and their own contemporary politics that act as both resources and constraints on how actors in social partnerships might construct them. Thus, we focus in this paper on a specific, though immensely broad and widespread social problem—gender inequality so that we might at least partially understand the broader social dynamics that surround how it is constructed. Gender inequality represents a compelling context in which to explore the social construction of social problems both because of its profound significance in social and organizational life (Acker, 2006; Lorber, 1994; Witz & Savage, 1991) and because different approaches to gender inequality have exposed the consequences of conceiving of the problem in different terms (Calás & Smircich, 2006; Calás et al., 2014; Grosser & Moon, 2019). In particular, we observe a significant heterogeneity in terms of how the problem of gender inequality is constructed both across theoretical approaches and geographical/political contexts.

Exploring the social construction of gender inequality in social partnerships raises the question of how gender inequality is understood in relation to the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR): this relationship is important because businesses enter into social partnerships significantly in pursuit of enacting social responsibility (Seitanidi & Crane, 2009; Seitanidi et al., 2010) making the relationship between the problem they target (gender inequality in our case) and CSR an important issue both for the participating firm and its non-corporate partner(s). This issue is especially important for women’s NGOs for which “engagement with business is emerging as a relatively new strategy” in contrast to their traditional focus on “government as the primary driver of gender change in organizations” (Grosser, 2016, p. 76). Grosser and Moon (2019) explore the relationship between CSR and gender inequality, examining it through various feminist organization studies perspectives and arguing that the social construction of gender inequality in relation to CSR can depend significantly on the stream of feminist organizations studies providing the foundation for such an analysis. Critically important to our exploration of the social construction of gender inequality in social partnerships is the distinction between liberal feminism, which represents the dominant approach to gender inequality in businesses and management scholarship (Grosser & Moon, 2019) and what they refer to as “gendering” approaches to feminist organization studies, which point to a significantly different understanding of gender inequality as a social problem.

Liberal feminism represents a women-centered approach commonly adopted in CSR research that focuses on sex as biologically determined and organizations as gender neutral instruments of rationality (Calás & Smircich, 2006; Grosser & Moon, 2019). From this perspective, gender inequality is a problem of ensuring that organizations and organizing are accomplished in rational ways that ensure equal opportunity, potentially involving such remedies as “human resource development initiatives for women, and structural/legal interventions to advance equal opportunities” (Grosser & Moon, 2019, p. 325). In contrast, “gendering” approaches to feminist organization studies (including post-colonial and post-modern approaches) conceive of “gender and gender identities as constructed social practices” (Grosser & Moon, 2019, p. 326). Rather than accept gender identities as a taken-for-granted starting point, these approaches focus on gendering as “a process, produced and reproduced through relations of power” (Calás & Smircich, 2006, p. 301). The implication of this move for gender inequality is a shift from a search for objective factors that affect the degree of gender inequality, these approaches conceive of gender inequality as embedded in gendered processes of structuring social life including organizations, societies, and transnational relations.

A second key issue to consider in interpreting the social construction of gender inequality concerns the social and political context in which that process occurs. Comparing studies of gender inequality across societal contexts highlights the variety of ways in which the problem is constructed in relation to “the larger context and hence [with] varied connotations across societies” (Siddiqi, 2021, p. 1). Although a comprehensive survey of such constructions is well beyond the scope of this discussion, even a small sample of studies reveals the variety of issues and practices that can be constructed as central to the problem of gender inequality. In an Indian context, for instance, a study of the social construction of gender inequality found it revolved around the social construction of gender norms that accentuated biological differences, a “tunnel vision” of gender inequality that suggests people tend to define the problem “in a very restricted and narrow sense” (Siddiqi, 2021, p. 1). A study of gender inequality in Malawi shows how the social construction of gender inequality as a social problem occurs not only through discourse but through social interactions: in this context, the ritualized “duties” of women, such as childcare and fetching water, contribute to a construction women as “subservient, … illiterate, and ‘fit only for the kitchen’,” despite local economic, political, and legal developments that should have resulted in greater gender equality (Minton & Knottnerus, 2008, p. 193). A study of the housing system in Hong Kong extends this view, showing how the problem of gender inequality is constructed through material processes embedded in broader social structures: Chan (2019, p. 4) argues that gender inequality in this context is “socially constructed by [Hong Kong’s] patriarchal social system coupled with [its] laissez-faire capitalist system,” which together “form a rigid web of gender discrimination.” Looking across these studies, we see that gender inequality is socially constructed through a wide range of processes, using disparate resources, and in ways that depend on specific social and cultural contexts.

Research Question

Together, the literatures on social problems in social partnerships, social-symbolic work, and the social construction of gender inequality provide an array of sensitizing concepts that guide our study. From research on social partnerships, we see that how social problems are defined can have important consequences and that this process varies even among relatively similar partnerships. Research in this area has, however, tended to treat the definition of problems as a process that is largely restricted to a partnership’s initial stages, largely ignoring the social construction of social problems as ongoing process in partnerships. Although research on social-symbolic work has not directly examined the social construction of social problems in partnerships, it underlines two important issues: it highlights the role of purposeful efforts in processes of social construction and thus suggests the possibility that social problems are similarly shaped by purposeful work; and it highlights the complex relationships among different forms of work and objects, and thus leads us to attend to such interrelationships in the processes through which social problems are constructed. Finally, writing on the social construction of gender inequality highlights the potential for the emergence of vastly different understandings of gender inequality as a social problem, the heterogeneous pathways and means (including discursive, material, and relational) through which gender inequality is constructed, and the important impacts of culture and social structure on those pathways. Our study thus seeks to incorporate these ideas as we investigate how social-symbolic work influences the social construction of gender inequality as a social problem in social partnerships and in turn influences the outcomes of those partnerships.

Methods

Research Context and Design

Gender inequality is a persistent social problem in Turkey (Müftüler-Baç, 2012), with significant barriers to Turkish women’s education, employment, and political participation. For instance, the rate of illiteracy among women in 2020 is nearly six times higher than that of men (TUIK, 2021). Similarly, women’s participation in the formal labor market in 2020 was 26.3%, in contrast to men’s participation at 59.8% (TÜİK, 2022). Representation of women in Turkey’s national parliament was 17.4% in 2021; the situation was even worse in local government, where only 42 out of 1389 mayors were women, and 1071 out of 50,137 mukhtars were women in 2019 (KADER, 2020). Most dramatically, 334 women were victims of femicide in 2022, according to independent NGOs (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracagiz Platformu, 2022). These official statistics signal the extensiveness and deep roots of gender inequality in Turkey.

To examine social partnerships in the domain of gender inequality in Turkey, we adopted a comparative case study approach focusing on two social partnerships. In-depth case studies represent a well-accepted methodological strategy when attention to both process and context are important (Lawrence, 2017; Lawrence & Phillips, 2019; Mair et al., 2012). Examining cases within the same broad problem domain provided a comparability between the cases that allowed us to observe both important commonalities and key differences. Focusing on two cases, however, involves significant trade-offs (Lawrence & Dover, 2015). Although organizational research has tended to rely either on single cases (e.g., McCarthy & Glozer, 2022; Plowman et al., 2007) or on larger numbers of cases (e.g., Amis et al., 2004; Lawrence et al., 2002), Lawrence & Dover (2015, p. 376) argue that “exploring a small number of cases in depth opens up the potential for a broader range of insights than would a single case study but allows the researchers and readers to gain a deeper understanding of each case than is possible with a larger set of cases.”

Within the broad context of gender inequality in Turkey, the first author identified two comparable social partnerships focused on addressing gender inequality. In selecting the two cases, the first author followed what Yin (2013) describes as a “replication” logic in which cases are selected that are comparable so that key findings can be observed across multiple instances. In our study, two cases were identified that shared many important qualities. Both partnerships were focused on women’s economic inclusion as their specific domain within the broader context of gender inequality. The companies in both partnerships employed a roughly equal number of employees, emphasized partnerships with NGOs, and described addressing gender inequality as a core responsibility. Similarly, the NGOs in both partnerships were focused exclusively on women’s empowerment on a national basis. Both partnerships existed over a similar time period, had a national scope, and began with the aim of increasing women’s participation in the economy. Finally, the partner relationships in both partnerships went beyond traditional donor–recipient interactions to include great substantive collaboration. These commonalities provided a strong basis for comparability of findings. At the same time, the multiple case study approach goes beyond a “simple” replication: multiple cases produce differences in findings that are first analyzed and theorized individually, and then on a cross-case basis to refine and amend the initial theoretical insights (Yin, 2013). In our study, this comparative process revolved around the difference in how the two social partnerships constructed the problem of gender inequality, which evolved in a distinctive way over the course of each partnership.

Practically speaking, our focus on partnerships targeting gender inequality was based in part on the first author’s experience in and concern for the Turkish women’s movement. Based on this experience, she identified one partnership through a series of 7 exploratory interviews with NGO leaders and companies involved in social partnerships in Turkey. Her focus at this point was to identify an NGO-business partnership with the aim of tackling gender inequality and operating on a national basis. To identify the second partnership that would be comparable to the first, the first author worked from the Economist’s report on the top 50 women’s empowerment partnerships in Turkey and found a case with similar characteristics as described above. These similarities were established by conducting initial interviews with the NGO partnership coordinator and company CSR manager in both partnerships.

The first partnership, which we refer to as TAHSIL (“education” in Turkish), was established by a leading Turkish manufacturing company (TAHSIL-CO) and a Turkish NGO (TAHSIL-NGO). TAHSIL came to construct gender inequality as a social problem that was embedded in broad social structures, systems, and cultural context. The second partnership, which we refer to as MESLEK (“occupation” in Turkish), was formed by a Turkish technology company (MESLEK-CO) and a Turkish NGO (MESLEK-NGO). MESLEK constructed gender inequality as a social problem that was relatively independent of broader social structures, systems, and cultural context.

Data Collection

To establish an understanding of the evolution of the partnerships over time, we gathered data through initial exploratory interviews followed by semi-structured interviews, site visits, and the collection of archival material, including Facebook and Instagram pages, organizational documents, newspaper articles (see Table 1).

Table 1 Summary of data collection

Interviews

At TAHSIL, the first author conducted 20 interviews (including one written interview, conducted by email) between June 2016 and December 2017; at MESLEK, she conducted 26 interviews (including two written interviews, conducted by email) between August 2015 and December 2016. The interviews lasted between 45 min and 3 h each, with an average length of 1.25 h. All interviews were conducted in Turkish, which allowed interviewees to describe their experiences more easily. We also wrote clarification emails to our interviewees when needed. We recorded and transcribed all in-person interviews. Our priority in sampling was to interview the most informed actors working specifically on the partnership in each of the participating organizations, including partnership coordinators, field staff working on the partnership, volunteers who participated in the field work of TAHSIL and MESLEK, and beneficiaries.²

The initial phase of the interviews occurred when the partnerships had been ongoing for approximately 18 months. Initially, the first author conducted semi-structured interviews with the most informed agents, such as company CSR managers and NGO partnership managers. These initial interviews provided an overview of the partnerships, including how they started and how they evolved. Approximately 6 months later, the first author conducted a second round of interviews, which included repeat interviews and new participants accessed through snowball sampling. These included for instance MESLEK field staff in city offices and TAHSIL volunteers. The focus of this round of interviewing was to explore how the partnership had evolved, changes in the partner companies and NGOs, and the experience of the individuals involved in the partnership.

Archival Documents and Other Material

Our second source of data was archival documents and other media. This included partnership documents, organizational documents, external reports, partnership websites, press releases, newspaper articles, and partnership Facebook and Instagram pages. We also collected publicly available videos produced in the scope of the partnerships. In addition, during our field visits, partnership members also provided us with some partnership materials such as booklets of success stories, partnership handbooks, and so on. Overall, this comprised 410 pages of documents and 58 min of videos. These materials were particularly helpful in understanding the initial social construction of the problem addressed by the partnerships and how the partnerships communicated with the public.

Observations

Our third source of data came from observation of a variety of partnership activities and field visits to partnership members’ offices. During field visits, the first author had informal conversations with partnership members and other stakeholders, after which she took extensive notes. In TAHSIL, she observed nine activities, including student training sessions, teacher meetings, and local supplier visits. She also traveled with TAHSIL members during their field work. In MESLEK, she attended partnership activities including credit distribution to beneficiaries and repayment of the credit, as well as visiting some beneficiary women’s business and local NGO offices. This allowed the first author to familiarize herself with the context of the partnerships and develop insider knowledge to build rapport. Initial visits to partners’ workplaces occurred when the partnerships were roughly halfway through, with repeat visits occurring toward the end of partnerships.

Our access to multiple sources of data helped us triangulate our findings. We conducted interviews with a diverse range of individuals holding different positions within the partnerships as well as other stakeholders. Our interviewees include individuals whose day-to-day responsibilities involve organizing and managing partnership activities, such as partnerships managers in both NGO and CSR & HR departments within the companies, as well as those involved implementing or attending fieldwork, including field staff members in MESLEK and company volunteers in TAHSIL. In addition, we interviewed external stakeholders such as a representative from the Ministry of Education and other NGO members and beneficiaries. We also collected a wide range of archival data, including press releases, partnership brochures, and booklets, as well as observation data from the implementation of the partnerships and their respective work environment.

Data Analysis

To analyze our data, we adopted an inductive approach that integrated Yin’s (2013) observations on analyzing multiple case studies and Gioia et al.’s (2013) guidance with respect to inductive coding and theorizing. The appropriateness of inductive approach stemmed in part from the lack of existing theory explicitly focused on the social construction of social problems in partnerships (Corbin & Strauss, 2014; Gioia et al., 2013) and the challenges of working with a small set of comparative case studies (Lawrence & Dover, 2015; Yin, 2013). Our data analysis consisted of two main phases, both of which relied on Atlas.ti software. The aim of the first phase was to develop an in-depth understanding of the two cases to comprehend “what is going on” in each (Wolcott, 1994, p. 16). The aim of the second phase was to identify the similarities and differences in both cases to understand the role of social-symbolic work in the social construction of social issues, and the outcomes of the partnerships, serving as the basis for our coding process.

Establishing Case Chronologies

The aim of the first phase was to gain an understanding of each case as “a stand-alone entity” (Gehman et al., 2018, p. 287; also see Yin, 2013). To do so, we followed other inductive case-based research in developing detailed chronologies of the evolution of each case (Hampel & Tracey, 2017; Hampel et al., 2020; Lawrence, 2017). In each chronology, we sought to capture the key activities and events for each partnership. Given our theoretical focus, we focused in particular on identifying how each partnership constructed the problem of gender inequality, the different forms of work done within each partnership, and the outcomes of each partnership, using in -vivo codes whenever possible (Langley, 1999). These chronologies included important events (such as signing partnership agreements, organizing partnership communication materials and press releases, terminating partnerships, partnership trainings) and conflicts that interviewees suggested were important in shaping the partnership process. We relied on interviews and archival data as well as observation notes in this stage for triangulation purposes. This process gave us a detailed overview of the two partnerships.

Identifying Cross-Case Similarities and Differences

In the second phase, we examined cross-case patterns to identify the similarities and differences in how the partnerships evolved and how this shaped their construction of the social problem. This phase also constituted the basis of our coding and comprised of five main steps. We coded interview data as well as field notes from observation and archival documents for triangulation purposes. Initial coding was conducted mainly by the first author with regular discussions with the second author. Throughout these coding processes, we iterated between our data and the relevant literatures in order to “make analytic progress” (Locke et al., 2022, p. 262).

Comparing Case Chronologies

This first step involved comparing the two chronologies developed in the first phase: our theoretical aims guided this process such that we focused on how the partnerships constructed the problem of gender inequality and the forms of social-symbolic work in which they engaged. For each of these broad categories, we engaged in first-order coding that drew initially on the text segments embedded in our case chronologies (as rough guides to key activities and events) and then more broadly on the interview transcripts, field notes, and archival data. Later, we broadened our scope to identify the instances that could potentially fall within these categories but were not specifically linked to key activities and events. At the end of this process, our first-order codes started to emerge, which were based on the similarity of segments of texts that provided “an adequate account of the informants’ experience” (Gioia et al., 2013, p. 18).

In this step, we engaged in what Grodal (2021, p. 597) describes as “asking questions”: “drawing on existing categories to select and approach field settings with specific questions to which we would like answers.” Mainly focusing on each key event and key activities, we asked questions such as “What social-symbolic work are they engaged in?”, “What is the purpose of this work?”, and “What constituted problem for partnerships?”. Through this analytical process, we observed similarities across the partnerships concerning the organization of partner relationships and the implementation of partnerships at the field level.

For example, during the initiation phase of both partnerships, a key event that emerged in our case chronologies for both partnerships was a series of initial meetings held prior to formalizing the partnerships. Interviewees frequently mentioned these meetings and provided detailed descriptions including the regularity of the meetings, attendees, atmosphere, and agendas. Similarly, our case narratives highlighted the importance of communication and the establishment of communication channels within both partnerships. We referred to these efforts as “getting to know each other,” constituting one of our first-order codes. Similarly, both partnerships described various instances of experiencing tensions and described how they approached these tensions in each of these occasions. This constituted the basis of our code about navigating challenges. Other similarities between partnerships related to partnership implementation also emerged, including the observation that both partnerships worked to create awareness about gender inequality in Turkey by advertisement campaigns, press conferences, and other forms of media: we refer to these efforts as, “creating awareness around the issue.” Overall, this analytical process showed that the two partnerships dealt with similar issues in terms of managing their relationships and organizing operational aspects of their partnerships.

Iterating with Theory to Identify the Work Types

In this second step, we sought to identify the categories that were firmly grounded in empirics while also based on theory (Ramus et al., 2017). In this step, we used two analytical moves suggested by Grodal et al (2021): merging categories and relating categories. For instance, while reviewing our first-order codes, we recognized that all of them represented different forms of the same type of work. To develop these categories (that would eventually form the basis for our second-order themes), we iterated between our first-order codes and the social-symbolic work literature (Lawrence & Phillips, 2019) and constructed second-order themes based on axial coding that developed relations between first-order codes (Strauss & Corbin, 1997). This led us our grouping the dominant forms of work that were common across TAHSIL and MESLEK as “relational work” (Zelizer, 2012) and “practice work” (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010): we described the efforts of members to influence interpersonal relationships that cut across the partners (NGOs and companies) merged as relational work, and their efforts to influence and disrupt broader societal practices merged under the category of practice work. This back-and-forth between data and existing literature allowed us to formulate commonalties across the cases more clearly and avoid proposing new types of work based on our data that would replicate types already established in previous research.

Iterating with Theory to Identify the Construction of Social Issues

Another important focus in this exercise was to understand how partners socially constructed the issue. More specifically, we examined how the partnerships constructed the social issue in terms of its boundaries, significance, material and relational environment (Lawrence et al., 2014). For instance, in TAHSIL, they identified families, teachers, and male students as important agents in addition to female students in both the emergence and evolution of the problem. In contrast, in MESLEK, the boundaries were more clearly defined, focusing on women entrepreneurs, a relatively limited segment of the population. Similarly, in TAHSIL’s construction, societal norms and stereotypes had an important role, whereas MESLEK primarily tied to problem to economic factors. This contrast in partners’ approaches to construction of gender inequality became evident. By referring back to literature on embeddedness (Zukin & DiMaggio, 1990), we identified that TAHSIL’s approach could be summarized as more embedded in contrast to the relatively disembedded approach taken by MESLEK. This led to our developing second-order themes and aggregate dimensions that emphasized the social construction of the problem of gender inequality in the partnerships in terms of its “embeddedness.”

Comparing and Contrasting Work Types to Develop Relationships Between Work and Social Construction

After we identified the forms of work and partners’ constructions of the issue, we compared and contrasted the forms of work we observed in TAHSIL and MESLEK in relation to the social construction of social problems and gender inequality and partnership outcomes. This process is similar to what Grodal et al. (2021) refer to as “relating” and “contrasting” categories. This process initially revolved around identifying what was common and distinct across the partnerships in terms of relational and practice work (e.g., how members of the partnerships worked to get to know each other; how members worked to address conflicts, how members worked to eliminate barriers that prevent women participating in economic life, engaging stakeholders to create awareness of gender inequality) and how these patterns were connected to differences in the degree to which the partnerships constructed gender inequality. For instance, in terms of relational work, MESLEK's approach was different from that of TAHSIL: while TAHSIL aimed to create a closer bond between partners, MESLEK focused on developing efficient relations to expedite and streamline the organization of partnership work. In this line, there was also a strike contrast between partnership in navigating conflicts, where in TAHSIL partners sought solutions to arrange a mutual agreement by fully embracing conflicts whereas MESLEK’s approach was different by softening conflicts by avoiding them. We called TAHSIL’s relational work extensive and in contrast MESLEK’s relational work efficient to capture the differences. This contrast was also clear in terms of practice work: TAHSIL, for instance engaged in practice work focused on address the social problem in deep ways, whereas MESLEK concentrated on quick fixes. In this exercise, both co-authors worked together and engaged in detailed discussion both in deciding the types of work and the degrees associated.

Creating Aggregate Dimensions for Foundation of Our Model

Finally, we merged the codes into aggregate dimensions. In creating aggregate dimensions, our objective was to merge our categories to ground our model (Ramus et al., 2017), which allowed us to develop relationships that directly addressed our research questions. In this instance, relational work, practice work, social construction of the social problem, and partnership outcomes became the aggregate dimensions. Across the different phases, our analysis yielded 18 first-order codes, eight second-order codes, and four aggregate dimensions (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Data structure

Constructing the Social Problem in Tahsil and Meslek

Our first main finding was the difference in how the social problem was constructed in TAHSIL and MESLEK. Although the partnerships began with the common aim of increasing women’s participation in the economy—for TAHSIL by increasing the number of women going into engineering and for MESLEK by increasing the number of female entrepreneurs—they came to construct the problem in distinctly different ways. Over the course of the partnership, TAHSIL came to construct gender inequality as a problem that was embedded in broad social structures, systems, and the cultural context. In contrast, MESLEK constructed gender inequality as relatively disembedded—as largely independent of broader social structures, systems, and the cultural context. (See Table 2 for supporting data.)

Table 2 Social construction of the social problem

Social Construction of Social Problem as Embedded in TAHSIL

In TAHSIL, the idea to increase the number of female engineers working in TAHSIL-CO was a practical goal that arose from a lack of job applications from female engineers and, more generally, the small number of female engineers in Turkey. As TAHSIL-CO’s Partnership Manager explained:

“We were at the Istanbul University student festival. We were trying to collect CVs … It was difficult to find women engineers … We checked the ratios. There were 25% women engineers, 75 % men engineers. Then, we started to think whether we could work on equality project for engineering.” (Interview)

As the partnership evolved, TAHSIL began to broaden their understanding of the problem, conceiving of the lack of female engineers in TAHSIL-CO and the country as rooted in broad cultural stereotypes and traditional gender roles that discouraged women from aspiring to become engineers. This embedded construction was reflected in TAHSIL advertising brochures:

“Due to traditional gender roles, engineering is perceived to fit men more than women, and these roles and stereotypes recommend women to work where they can contain their care responsibilities at home and prompt them think they cannot be successful in these profession … This partnership aims to encourage women to work in this area and to decrease prejudices and anxiety driven from gender roles.” (TAHSIL brochure, 2016)

This approach continued to evolve. Although initially focused only on female students, TAHSIL broadened its reach to male students: as TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator explained, “working with female students exclusively would not be sufficient to achieve what [TAHSIL] had initially planned” (Interview). Similarly, TAHSIL began to organize organization-wide training sessions in TAHSIL-CO to foster awareness of how gender roles and stereotypes restrict women’s participation in economic life. These sessions were instrumental in further developing the embedded construction of the issue adopted by the TAHSIL members: as expressed by the TAHSIL-NGO Partnership coordinator, the sessions led to them questioning taken-for-granted gender roles:

“That was a radical event. Men and women engineers were trained by gender experts to deal with their fears and prejudices, which helped to bring about behavioral change. They questioned what gender means and how they reproduce gender roles in their everyday work and private lives.” (Interview)

In summary, TAHSIL’s construction of the social problem that motivated the partnership shifted toward an embedded construction that continued to evolve throughout the partnership. The partnership constructed gender inequality as a societal problem that affected male students, company employees, family members, and organizations as well as the young women who might be discouraged from studying engineering.

Social Construction of Social Problem as Disembedded in MESLEK

In MESLEK, the initial aim of the partnership was to “increase the number of women entrepreneurs in the country” (MESLEK partnership brochure, 2015) and create “equal opportunities for entrepreneur women” (newspaper article, 2014). The MESLEK partners constructed this problem as a relatively disembedded phenomenon: they conceived of it as an essentially financial problem—that women from low-income backgrounds did not have the financial resources to start businesses. Thus, to achieve their objective, MESLEK sought to financially “encourage women from low-income families [to participate] in economy, and socially and economically empower them to start a new job or grow their business” (newspaper article, 2016) and thus “increase women’s participation in economic life” (MESLEK partnership advertisement video, 2012).

The MESLEK partners maintained this construction of the problem throughout the life of the partnership, even as partners encountered situations that might have suggested the limitations of their construction of the problem. MESLEK members organized regular meetings with beneficiary women to introduce them to other stakeholders that might help them grow their business, or to get their feedback on MESLEK implementations. On most such occasions, however, MESLEK partners were challenged to ensure the participation of beneficiary women because they “need[ed] to get permission from their husbands, fathers or mother-in-law to attend” (Interview, Istanbul Field Representative). Despite these kinds of occasions, in which MESLEK members might have become aware of how gendered relationships and the cultural context can shape the problem of women’s access to economic participation, it seemed that they maintained their initial construction of the problem as simply a lack of economic resources. The partnership thus constructed gender inequality as a relatively disembedded problem—as a locally situated problem that could be tackled directly.

Social-Symbolic Work In Tahsil And Meslek

Our second key finding was that the two types of social-symbolic work—relational work and practice work—seemed to underpin the partnerships’ different constructions of gender inequality. (See Table 3 for supporting data.)

Table 3 Relational work in TAHSIL and MESLEK

The Role of Relational Work

Relational work describes “the creative effort people make establishing, maintaining, negotiating, transforming, and terminating interpersonal relations” (Zelizer, 2012, p. 149). The main relational work we observed involved efforts to establish and shape the relationships between the companies and NGOs within each partnership. Two forms of relational work were key: getting to know each other to build the relationship and navigating differences to sustain the relationship. The relational work we observed differed significantly between the two partnerships: whereas the partners in TAHSIL engaged in “extensive” relational work, partners in MESLEK tended to engage in “efficient” relational work.

Extensive Relational Work in TAHSIL

TAHSIL-CO and TAHSIL-NGO engaged in extensive relational work that involved frequent, frank communications, asking questions, and active listening. At the partnership’s outset, for instance, TAHSIL-CO top management was hesitant to work with a small, “less institutionalized” NGO with a strong feminist stance perceived as “very radical for the company” (Interview, TAHSIL-CO Partnership Manager). In response, TAHSIL-CO managers asked, “difficult questions … concerning the NGO’s political stance” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Founder). TAHSIL-NGO also challenged the company, asking about “support mechanisms for women in the company, male engineers’ perception of gender equality” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Founder) to understand how sincere they were. These early, frank exchanges helped the partners understand each other and establish norms of open communication. A TAHSIL-NGO General Manager summarized their relationship work positively: “We are progressing by getting to know each other. I am expressing this not with blind optimism but by seeing the reality. I believe we do understand each other correctly” (Interview).

This kind of relational work also occurred among individuals working together in the field. Individuals from TAHSIL-CO and TAHSIL-NGO worked and spent leisure time together, sightseeing, shopping, dining out and even “going to hamam [Turkish bath] together” (Interview, TAHSIL-CO Partnership Manager). They established friendships, shared experiences in the field, and engaged in deep discussions of gender inequality (Field notes). This relational work created a positive atmosphere in which members saw the partnership as a relationship of equals: “We got along very well. … They make an effort to not do anything without consulting us and we do the same” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Board member).

The second important form of relational work involved navigating differences. As partners were “coming from different worlds” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator), there were clear differences between partners in terms of how they work, who they work with, their perceptions. These differences surfaced many times. Tensions and differences arose in relation to issues such as external communication (e.g., the content and scope of press releases, ad campaigns), data collection methods (e.g., coordination, efficiency), and partnership processes (e.g., signing contracts, division of labor). TAHSIL members described addressing these issues with goodwill and through joint decision making. As the TAHSIL-CO HR Director described it: “Were there any obstacles? Certainly. Often, we spent three times the amount we said we would. But we decided to find resources instead of bemoaning our lot. We’re solution-oriented” (Interview). A TAHSIL-CO Partnership Manager described how they navigated differences by embracing conflict and learning from their mistakes as:

“We had to release the partnership’s announcement to the press urgently … We made it to the press next day, but then a crisis arose because we had not listed the NGO as a partner, but had just thanked them … The next day, the NGO’s general manager sent a very harsh and angry email asking why their name hadn’t been given as a partner... Then my HR director calmed her down and we apologized.” (Interview)

This approach helped them to strengthen their relationships and was instrumental in every stage of the partnership as put by a TAHSIL-NGO Board Member as:

“This is an example of the friendliness between us outside of the partnership; an event was going to be organized in the company on March 8th and they asked us what it should be. This is very important, because it shows that our ideas are valued. We’re always exchanging ideas, they ask us questions and we ask them questions, we even have a WhatsApp group.” (Interview)

This pattern of relational work seemed to dominate the partnership: good-faith efforts to solve conflicts and support each other allowed them to deepen their relationship and understand each other better.

The extensive relational work engaged in by the TAHSIL partners seemed to shape how they constructed the problem of gender inequality by fostering learning from each other. This occurred in two main ways. First, extensive relational work facilitated knowledge sharing between partners. Frequent, open communication between partners led to the frequent exchange of information on topics such as the “legal context in Turkey” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO General Manager), “scholarly information on gender matters in Turkey” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Board Member), and “details about the engineering profession” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator). This knowledge sharing was mutual:

“At the end of the day. … The NGO has learned … it can use the relations it acquired through this project to explore new avenues, particularly about young women’s issues, and create new projects.” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator)

TAHSIL-CO employees echoed this sentiment. The HR Director described how: “TAHSIL also helped me to ask questions such as ‘what do we have about this in our company?’ and ‘what can we implement in our company?’” (Interview). Mutual knowledge exchange thus led both partners to look at the problem of gender inequality in greater depth.

Second, extensive relational work helped partners develop mutual trust and respect which allowed them to take in the views of the other even when they were challenging. The extensive relational work convinced partners that both parties were “sincere in their intent” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator), that they “trust each other” (Interview, TAHSIL-CO HR Manager), and that they even felt “loved” (Archival data [Facebook post], 2016). As expressed by TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator:

“We surrendered to one another. But I use the word surrender positively, and it was a voluntary surrender as well. We trusted each other extremely deeply and compromised on many shared issues.” (Interview)

Both parties accepted the expertise and leadership of the other partner in relation to specific issues and learned from each other. For example, TAHSIL-CO trusted the NGO in its attempts to challenge the gender bias of company employees: they were “not even monitored, not told what to do, left to our [their] own devices and this was respected…This made us [them] feel relaxed and trusted” during trainings given to the TAHSIL-CO employees (Interview, NGO Board Member). Through these trainings, TAHSIL-CO members came to see the organization as implicated in the problem they were attempting to address. The TAHSIL-NGO General Manager described how this showed them that, “wherever [we] look, whether a factory, or a street or a place of entertainment, a sports facility or even when reading a book, [we] should consider gender inequality” (Interview). The perspective that TAHSIL-CO members gained through this process led them to conceive of gender inequality as a complex, deeply embedded problem—an awareness they brought to TAHSIL meetings and the implementation of partnership activities. In summary, extensive relational work seemed to bridge the gap between TAHSIL members helping them build a deep, stable, warm relationship. Extensive relational work fostered learning from each other throughout the partnership process, including challenging partnership members’ views and TAHSIL’s initial construction.

Efficient Relational Work in MESLEK

In contrast to TAHSIL, partners in MESLEK engaged in what we describe as “efficient” relational work. Their interactions were relatively formal and instrumental, aimed at maintaining partnership activities rather than building a deep relationship. Most of the initial partnership negotiations involved only the top management teams, which decreased opportunities for members to get to know each other. Communication was frequent, but tended to be brief and one-directional, often taking the form of directives from MESLEK-CO to MESLEK-NGO. MESLEK partners exchanged emails most days, but email and communication from MESLEK-CO was perceived by NGO members as making demands in terms described as “short” (Interview, MESLEK-NGO Partnership Coordinator), “urgent” (Interview, MESLEK-NGO Istanbul Field Staff), and “last minute” (Interview, MESLEK-NGO Istanbul Field Manager). The form and rhythm of this communication began at the outset of the partnership and rapidly became the norm. The MESLEK Partnership Coordinator described it this way: “They are in a meeting in their company and during these meetings something came to their mind. They write me: ‘Ayse,³ can you do this this and this’” (Interview). As such, the company could ensure that decisions made in company meetings were swiftly translated into action without extensive negotiations with the NGO. Although the communication was efficient, it seemed to limit deeper discussions about the nature of the partnership, its beneficiaries, and the problem on which it was focused. MESLEK-NGO members described that they only “act[ed] as a middleman” (Interview, MESLEK-NGO HR Manager).

Efficient relational work in MESLEK was also evident in how the partners navigated differences, which was characterized by a tendency to avoid conflict; while embracing conflicts and working to solve them might have helped partners understand each other better, it would require some time and energy investments. Crucially, the MESLEK-NGO Partnership Coordinator worked hard to ensure that MESLEK-CO’s demands were met on time, effectively avoiding any potential conflicts. She described working to: “convince [field staff] that the partnership activities are urgent. I tell them ‘Ms. Fatma⁴asked for it. Please. Please. Please… [MESLEK-CO] are busy I know… our staff also says [dealing with TAHSIL] is not my only job, but now staff started to receive with understanding.” (Interview, MESLEK-NGO Partnership Coordinator).

From the perspective of MESLEK-NGO managers, MESLEK-CO’s priority was to get things done efficiently, which made them seem unwilling to invest in their relationship. Most of the time, this required some compromise from MESLEK-NGO. When, for instance, MESLEK-NGO asked for training based on the Company’s marketing expertise, their request was turned down: “We were looking up to the company. We asked to receive marketing trainings, HR trainings for our staff many times. They did it once, but not again” (Interview, MESLEK-NGO HR Manager). Even though there were instances that made them feel rather unhappy and uncomfortable, they refrained from discussing these aspects in order to avoid damaging relationships. The gap between partners was also acknowledged by the MESLEK-CO CSR Manager: “MESLEK-CO is a great teacher, if you use it efficiently….We are a very big company and even normal organizations have trouble working with us because we are so strong.” (Interview).

In summary, efficient relational work seemed to undermine opportunities to develop a deep relationship between partners. MESLEK-CO took on the role of teacher and in response, MESLEK-NGO became relatively passive. This dynamic seemed to prevent mutual knowledge exchange between the partners or deeper discussions of the social problem MESLEK was formed to tackle.

The Role of Practice Work

The second form of social-symbolic work was practice work, which aims to create, disrupt, or maintain practices (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010). The main practice work we observed was intended to disrupt practices that reproduce gender inequality. Two forms of practice work were key: eliminating barriers that prevent women from participating in economic life and engaging stakeholders to create greater awareness of gender inequality. Although both partnerships engaged in these forms of practice work, the quality of the practice work differed: partners in TAHSIL engaged in what we call “deep” practice work, whereas partners in MESLEK engaged in “shallow” practice work (see Table 4).

Table 4 Practice work In TAHSIL and MESLEK

Deep Practice Work in TAHSIL

TAHSIL engaged in deep practice work targeting practices that prevented women from becoming engineers. It provided training sessions on gender issues to high school students and to TAHSIL-CO employees, and organized meetings with teachers and parents to motivate efforts to dismantle barriers to women’s economic participation. TAHSIL focused on important actors who influenced young girls’ everyday lives and relationships. It also engaged with a network of stakeholders to reshape wider understandings of gender inequality.

The main practice work of TAHSIL involved educating high school students about gender inequality. Through this work, TAHSIL aimed to disrupt societal practices reproduced through social relations among three key stakeholders with impact on the educational experiences and choices of young girls: parents, peers, and teachers. Similarly, TAHSIL worked to change how young girls perceived themselves and made decisions—the partnership aimed to free girls from cultural roles and stereotypes imposed on them. TAHSIL members traveled around Turkey delivering training designed specifically for the partnership to break the bias.

“We speak to both male and female students, we have face-to-face discussions with parents and teachers. We try to explain that this [engineering] is a profession practiced not only by men but also women, and women can do it very well too.” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO General Manager).

The training that TAHSIL provided included discussions of gender roles, how to choose a profession, a role play by students, and the personal stories of TAHSIL-CO engineers. The aim was summarized in the TAHSIL communication brochure:

“The support given in the career choice decision will affect the lives of students in an extremely important way. At this point, eliminating gender-based biases that affect their [students] attitude is one of the significant objectives of TAHSIL” (Archival Material, TAHSIL Communication brochure).

One specific practice that TAHSIL members worked to change was the use of gendered stereotypes in career counseling (e.g., steering boys toward science and technology careers, while steering girls toward teaching), which was tied to broader societal practices in which women were cast as mainly responsible for housework and childrearing and consequently investing more in the education of young boys at the cost of girls’ educations. For instance, to disrupt these practices, TAHSIL got students to participate in a role play involving a conversation between a mother, daughter, and a neighbor in which the neighbor attempted to convince the mother her daughter could pursue an engineering career and still have a family. The role play was intended to put students inside a conversation that challenged the commonplace notion that pursuing a career in engineering would necessarily act as a barrier to having a family (Field notes).

According to the TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator, the most “influential” session of these trainings was the last, in which female engineers gave 30-min presentations about their engineering journey and their workdays. In these sessions, female company volunteers shared their engineering journeys: these presentations “provided a tangible role model and solidif[ied] what [we] are talking about in the audience’s eyes” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator). The training might have been perceived as contentious because it ran counter to the local culture by challenging institutionalized gendered practices and stereotypes. TAHSIL-NGO’s Founder described how the training, “has created a breathing space, a wonderful environment … I regarded it as the apple of my eye and hoped nothing bad would happen to it, like an antique vase, a family heirloom that you go and hold in your hands every morning” (Interview).

The second main form of practice work involved engaging with stakeholders to broaden awareness of the challenges facing aspiring and practicing women engineers. This was done through “public advertisement campaigns … and social media” (Interview, TAHSIL-NGO Communication Manager), “press conferences” (Interview, TAHSIL-CO Partnership Manager), and targeted communications. As they visited cities, they spoke with TAHSIL-CO suppliers, local NGOs, and Ministry of National Education officials. TAHSIL-CO suppliers in particular were influential figures in their local regions, therefore reaching out to them was important. TAHSIL-CO’s HR Director described how:

“We tell our dealerships to notice instances of [gender] discrimination. We explain the issues of discrimination and inequality in Turkey … There is awareness now. You must know that you can’t change anything of which you’re not aware.” (Interview)

TAHSIL members also organized meetings with teachers and parents, focusing on creating awareness of gender roles and stereotypes that prevent female students becoming engineers.

Deep practice work seemed to shape how partnership members constructed the problem of gender inequality by fostering learning from practice. The first key mechanism in this regard was the facilitation of joint sensemaking. For instance, through the educational programs and ensuing conversations, TAHSIL members observed how gender roles were reproduced and influenced the lives of high school students—a dynamic most members had not experienced as directly as what they observed, especially outside the major cities.

“These [engineers] are all crème de la crème … When they are in the field, they experience something incredible. They would have never thought about [inequalities in Turkey] this way before.” (Interview, TAHSIL-CO Partnership Manager)

Thus, the issue of gender equality became more concrete in their eyes and started to have a human face as TAHSIL members experienced it together and jointly made sense of it.

The second was by energizing TAHSIL-CO and TAHSIL-NGO employees. For women engineers working in TAHSIL-CO, for example, their practice work was revelatory and empowering, helping them see more clearly how gender inequality had affected them personally. TAHSIL-CO’s Partnership Manager expressed it this way:

“Think of it this way, you are woman, an engineer, you’ve got wounds that no one sees. You are at a company, a select environment and you are reasonably well off. And you never talk about [the wounds]. But someone comes up to you and says, I’ve created a project about this, tell your story to others so they don’t become victims.” (Interview)

Similarly, the practice work “opened the eyes” of TAHSIL-CO engineers who met students from different parts of their country, well beyond their normal social circles and allowed them to observe how gendered relationships unfolded. They started feeling useful as a TAHSIL-CO volunteer related, “It is important to see the light in the eyes of the female students. … that has touched me a lot” (Interview). The energy created by this practice work thus fueled commitment to the partnership and the problem. A TAHSIL-CO HR manager described how employees’ motivation contributed to a more complex understanding of gender inequality and pushed them and company to do more:

“They might have some previous awareness that come from the family but with TAHSIL, they became even more eager to change things. They came up with new project ideas, or when they see something that is broken, they became aware of it and came back to us to fix it.” (Interview)

In summary, deep practice work led to TAHSIL members gaining direct experience of how gender inequality in Turkey influenced the lives of high school students and their own lives. It also allowed partners to develop a more embedded construction of gender inequality in the country and their first-hand experiences pushed them to evaluate TAHSIL’s construction of gender inequality constantly.

Shallow Practice Work in MESLEK

Unlike the deep practice work undertaken by TAHSIL, we observed comparatively shallow practice work in MESLEK. The partnership worked primarily to reshape practices that created financial barriers to women’s participation in economic life. A principal activity in this regard was providing women with loans to engage in entrepreneurship since one of the main barriers for women entrepreneurs were access to financial resources. Entrepreneurship has often been associated with men, and access to credit for women entrepreneurs from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds was relatively restricted, so providing these loans aimed to challenge gendered assumptions about who can be successful in business. In addition to providing loans, MESLEK solicited “SMS donations, and this has also shifted the perception,” and “opened up a new e-commerce site to sell our members’ [beneficiary women] products” (Interview, Istanbul Field Manager). These activities opened up women’s access to markets. MESLEK also worked to eliminate knowledge gaps that acted as barriers to entrepreneurship, including: “launching training programs, bringing in successful entrepreneurs to give talks, and organizing training sessions on marketing and accounting” (Interview, MESLEK-CO CSR Project Specialist).

The second form of practice work involved engaging stakeholders to create greater awareness of challenges faced by Turkish women entrepreneurs. MESLEK-CO aired advertisements on national television and “organized press conferences with the participation of celebrities” (Interview, MESLEK-NGO Partnership Coordinator). It also published a series of inspirational booklets, titled “Success stories of women”. MESLEK-CO also leveraged their country-wide network of suppliers and “local branches supported and organized partnership activities locally” (Interview, MESLEK-CO Sales Manager) which increased awareness in MESLEK-CO’s network and the general public. A Field Staff member underlined the benefits of this work:

“When [women] participate in programs organized by the company, it gives them the opportunity to appear in newspapers, magazines, and television programs. To see women appear on these programs, and in newspapers, is a huge plus for us… to get more beneficiaries and to improve our relationships with public.” (Interview)

Overall, MESLEK’s practice work, which aimed at eliminating barriers and engaging stakeholders to create awareness, was primarily focused on relatively quick fixes and short-term solutions. This approach was fueled by and contributed to the partnership’s disembedded construction of gender inequality as a social problem. These dynamics seemed to prevent partnership members from further reflecting on or collaboratively exploring the problem.

Partnership Outcomes and Trade-Offs

Our third main finding concerned the outcomes of the two partnerships. Although both partnerships had significant success in terms of concrete outcomes, there were also important differences: TAHSIL’s embedded construction of the social problem was associated with holistic outcomes but on a relatively limited scale; in contrast, MESLEK’s disembedded construction of the social problem was associated with simpler outcomes but on a greater scale (see Table 5).

Table 5 Partnership outcomes in TAHSIL and MESLEK

TAHSIL: Holistic Outcomes on a Limited Scale

TAHSIL socially constructed the problem as embedded and appeared to deliver holistic outcomes. At the individual level, TAHSIL-CO employees took an active role in partnership activities, which allowed them to develop their understanding of traditional gender roles and stereotypes that reproduce gender inequality. Most informants described for instance, their surprise that their own taken-for-granted, everyday practices and even “words could reinforce gender inequality” (Interview, Volunteer). The TAHSIL-NGO Partnership Coordinator gave examples how TAHSIL influenced individuals:

“[Company employees] noticed certain things. At a job interview for example. Let’s say a male and a female engineer are being interviewed, the man is asked a friendly question, such as which football team do you support? Or where do you come from? Whilst the woman is asked hostile or invasive questions about whether or not she is married, whether she plans to have children, whether she would be able to travel for business and whether it would make her cry if something made her angry at work.” (Interview)

In parallel, the high school students that TAHSIL worked with described gaining awareness and voiced their commitment to stop engaging in actions that reproduced gender inequality: “I learned there is something called ‘gender.’ It is a nasty thing, I realized that, and I will no longer do these kinds of things” (Male student, in a Partnership video).

At the organizational level, it seemed that TAHSIL-NGO developed a greater understanding of the how the private sector operates while TAHSIL-CO managers came to understand the challenges facing civil society organizations. These dynamics helped the partners to overcome their prejudices in relation to the other sector. A TAHSIL-NGO board member expressed it this way:

“We can shake hands with capitalism. I don’t know whether we should, but we can. That is what we also learned, that if the counterpart is sincere and if we are a bit more open minded, we can take a step forward.” (Interview)

At the field level, TAHSIL provided inspiration to female engineers working in other companies. Female engineers from TAHSIL began to contribute to the activities of other women’s organizations and toward the creation of a new platform focused on bringing female engineers together. TAHSIL also became an exemplary project for other partnerships in Turkey: “an embassy started a new partnership in the same topic with TAHSIL-NGO” (Interview, NGO Partnership Assistant). Similarly, TAHSIL-NGO was approached by other companies to initiate similar partnerships. More broadly, it seemed that TAHSIL created widespread excitement: TAHSIL members repeatedly described “receiving phone calls from female engineers and engineering students” (Interview, TAHSIL-CO HR manager) inquiring how they could become a part of TAHSIL.

In terms of the partnership’s quantitative outcomes, it connected with almost 20,000 individuals including female and male students, high school teachers, parents, and volunteers. (Field notes). Looking to the future, partnership members were negotiating how to further support female students, they were committed to provide internships and scholarships.

MESLEK: A Simple Outcome with Greater Scale

In contrast to TAHSIL, the disembedded construction of the problem by MESLEK was associated with a simpler set of outcomes that were achieved at a greater scale. At the organizational level, thanks to this partnership, the MESLEK-NGO gained access to a new technology that facilitated credit repayment process. The greater speed and efficiency provided by this technology were welcomed by MESLEK-NGO members. A Field staff member explained the benefits of the new technology:

“[The] Company introduced us [to] a new technology so we can work more efficiently when we collect on loans. This is automatically reported, so we don’t spend time in reporting, and we can use the rest of the time to listen to the problems of our beneficiaries.” (Interview)

Another development for MESLEK-NGO was their opening a branch in the eastern region of Turkey, which was made possible by donations from MESLEK-CO.

The most significant outcome of MESLEK was supporting more than 100,000 women by the end of the partnership. MESLEK members were proud of this achievement: incorporating a multiplier effect, they estimated having influenced at least 500,000 people in Turkey. This provided many benefits for MESLEK’s beneficiaries at the individual level, including being able to open their own small business (e.g., drycleaners, restaurants, farms, supermarkets) or improving their existing business (Archival material, Success stories handbook). MESLEK’s success was also recognized by various global and local awards.

Despite these positive effects, some of the partnership activities did not flourish, which seemed to stem from the partners not developing a collaborative understanding of the context and realities of women. For instance, MESLEK partners initiated a Short Message Service (SMS) campaign and shared text messages with beneficiary women daily. The content of the SMS texts contained useful tips and information about entrepreneurial activities. A MESLEK-CO CSR Manager reported, however, that: “Only 8% of the beneficiaries read the messages, because they were either afraid that they would have to pay for them or they were illiterate.” Looking at the future, MESLEK partners were also committed to continue working on partnerships and issues related to providing gender inequality in Turkey. Overall, MESLEK experienced trade-offs in terms of its outcomes: compared to TAHSIL, the partnership’s outcomes were relatively simple but at a greater scale.

Discussion

Our aim in this paper is to understand how social-symbolic work shapes the construction of social problems in social partnerships and how this process influences the outcomes of such partnerships. Our study suggests that the extensiveness of relational work and the depth of practice work shape the embeddedness of social problems and ensuing partnership outcomes. We draw on these findings to develop a process model and discuss its theoretical and ethical implications for research on social problems, on social-symbolic work and on gender inequality.

A Process Model of the Social Construction of Social Problems in Social Partnerships

Figure 2 presents a process model of our findings focusing on three key dimensions: social construction of the problem, forms of social-symbolic work, and partnership outcomes. Our model generates four key insights in response to the research question that motivated this study. First, a key dimension along which the social construction of social problems in partnerships varies is in terms of their degree of embeddedness. Second, a key form of social-symbolic work in this process is relational work, with more extensive relational work leading, through mutual learning between partners, to the construction of gender inequality as a more embedded problem. Third, the other key form of social-symbolic work we observed was practice work, with deeper practice work leading, through learning from practice, to a more embedded construction of gender inequality as a social problem. Finally, our process model highlights the relationship between how social problems are socially constructed and the impacts of the social partnerships in which those processes occur.

Fig. 2

The construction of social problems in social partnerships

Variation in the Embeddedness of Social Problems

The center of our model is the embeddedness of the social problem on which the social partnership is focused. Our study suggests this is a key dimension of social problems that stems from the social-symbolic work of partners and has important effects on the outcomes of social partnerships. Embeddedness describes the degree to which a problem is contextualized in broader social arrangements, including cognitive, cultural, structural, and political structures (Dacin et al., 1999; Granovetter, 1985; Zukin & DiMaggio, 1990). Thus, an embedded construction of a social problem conceives of it as arising from and shaped by these aspects of the social world, whereas a disembedded construction emphasizes its relative independence. More embedded conceptions of social problems draw the boundary of such problems more broadly: in our case, TAHSIL-CO employees began to conceive of themselves as affected by the problem of gender inequality and thus became beneficiaries, as well as agents, of the partnership.

The degree to which a social problem is conceived of as embedded in a partnership extends research that has highlighted the role that context plays in shaping “the manner in which a partnership unfolds” (Rein & Stott, 2009, pp. 80–81). Previous research on the context of social partnerships has tended to either compare how different country contexts influence partnership dynamics, as in Rein and Stott’s (2009) study of partnerships in South Africa and Zambia, or explore how partners’ countries of origin shape the partnership, as in Nguyen and Janssens’s (2019) study of a partnership between a European company and an African non-profit, or investigate how broader political context influences value creation (Karakulak & Faul, 2023). In contrast, our study examined partnerships established by local actors operating in their home country and thus led us to develop a deeper understanding of the national context in relation to the social problem on which the partnership focused and explore the differences in the contexts of beneficiaries and partnership members. Integrating the concept of embeddedness into a conception of social problems thus facilitates a more complex and contingent understanding of the social context in which partnerships operate (Mair et al., 2012; Trujillo, 2018). The concept of embeddedness also attends to the complexity of social problems by highlighting their cognitive, cultural, structural, and political underpinnings and thus extends research that has begun to acknowledge the complexity of social problems in partnership settings (Dentoni et al., 2018; van Tulder & Keen, 2018).

Relational Work and the Embeddedness of Social Problems

An important contribution of our study is showing how partners’ work on their relationships can lead to a more or less embedded construction of the social problem that motivates the partnership. We argue that relational work shapes the social construction of social problems by fostering learning from partners, which revolves around knowledge sharing and the development of mutual trust and respect. The impact of relational work on knowledge sharing may be especially important when, as is often the case in social partnerships that include private and voluntary sector organizations, partners operate from distinctively different knowledge bases (Gray & Purdy, 2018).

Extensive relational work also shapes the social construction of social problems by facilitating the development of positive feelings in relation to each partner, which may help overcome power asymmetries often present in social partnerships (Nguyen & Janssens, 2019; Sloan & Oliver, 2013). Positive emotional bonds can help less powerful actors acquire a position from which they are listened to (O’Mahony & Bechky, 2008) thus effecting mutual information exchange (Lawrence et al., 2002). These dynamics lead to more embedded constructions of social problems as partners learn from each other, re-assembling their newly shared knowledge to develop a broader collective construction of the problem (Loseke and Best 2003). Our model, therefore, contributes to social partnership studies by highlighting the important role of relational work not only for facilitating partnership interactions but also shaping social construction of the issue by facilitating mutual learning. In this specification, our model also contributes to the broader research on social construction of gender inequality (Chan, 2019; Minton & Knottnerus, 2008; Siddiqi, 2021), by highlighting the importance of knowledge exchange between different partnership members that might change how gender inequality is constructed.

Practice Work and the Embeddedness of Social Problems

The second form of social-symbolic work we identified as important in shaping the social construction of social problems was practice work. We found that practice work leads to social problems being constructed as relatively embedded by fostering learning from practice, which is concerned with joint sensemaking and energizing individuals. By “doing an activity” together in the field, partners test and improve their knowledge of the issue. This joint sensemaking is triggered by gaps between initial conceptions of the social problem and realities on the ground, thereby providing a real time reality check and constant feedback (Le Ber & Branzei, 2010a; van Tulder & Keen, 2018). Through their practice work, partnership members also broaden their relationships through the establishment of weak ties with stakeholders in different parts of the country and thus gain access to new knowledge, which can help them think about the problem in new ways (Montanari et al., 2016). The impact of practice work on the construction of social problems also occurs through its emotional effects on participants in the field (Lawrence, 2017), motivating them to invest more into solving the problem. In our case, the dual emotions toward beneficiaries as well as a feeling of doing something meaningful energized partnership members to invest more and to develop a deeper engagement with the issue (Goodwin et al., 2001; Zietsma & Toubiana, 2018), which eventually contributed to the development of a more embedded construction of the problem.

Our model highlights the practice work of partners, which may provide a foundation for examining what partnerships do to create social value—shifting our attention to the relationships between partnerships and the outside world, rather than within the partnership itself (Nguyen & Janssens, 2019). In this specification, our model also highlights different types of work that might be instrumental in disrupting the reproduction of gendered relationships in Turkish society (e.g., teacher-student relationships, parent-student relationships) and the significance of creating an awareness of one’s own practices which might create or sustain these inequalities.

The Effects of Embedded Social Problems on Partnership Outcomes

The final element of our model connects differences in the embeddedness of social problems to partnership outcomes. Specifically, we argue that a more embedded construction of a problem tends to lead to more holistic outcomes with limited scale, whereas less embedded construction leads to simpler outcomes with greater scale. Embedded constructions of a problem conceive of them as linked to cognitive, cultural, structural, and political aspects of the social world and call for solutions likely to address these different aspects. This leads partnership members to aim for holistic outcomes. Such aims, however, might decrease the efficiency and the scale of outcomes. In contrast, disembedded conceptions of social problems call for quick, efficient interventions that tackle the immediate symptoms of a problem (Westley & Antadze, 2010). Focusing on the symptoms of a social problem may offer an efficient, pragmatic approach to partnership action. We are not suggesting that embedded or disembedded constructions of a social problem are “better” but that they lead to different outcomes with distinctive trade-offs.

Implications for Research

Implications for Research on Social Problems

Our study builds on and extends previous research on social partnerships (Gray, 1989; Gray & Purdy, 2018) and social innovation (Lawrence et al., 2014) that has begun to acknowledge the socially constructed nature of social problems. Our answer extends current conceptualizations of social problems within partnerships by locating them as properties of social partnerships rather than objective phenomena that stand outside the partnership. While previous studies of social partnerships have emphasized the initial negotiation of social problems to establish a common purpose, we show that the process of constructing a social problem is a complex process that occurs over an extended period through relational work and practice work.

The potential importance of relational work is highlighted in research on alliances (Hardy et al., 2003): our model extends this work by focusing attention on the effects of relational work on the social construction of social problems, rather than on their solutions which previous research has examined (Lawrence et al., 2002). Whereas previous research shows how relationships shape collaborative partnerships by enhancing their social innovations (Le Ber & Branzei, 2010b) or forging common identities (Hardy et al., 2005), we show that partner relationships can be the target of work which in turn can transform the ways in which partnerships construct the social problems that motivate them.

The importance of practice work for our study stems from its effects on the individuals engaged in it, particularly by shaping their reflexivity. Previous studies of practice work were primarily concerned with its outcomes in terms of institutional change (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010), the transformation of institutional logics (Gawer & Phillips, 2013), and the abandonment of practices (Maguire & Hardy, 2009). We follow this tradition, but also attend to how the situatedness of actors involved in practice work shapes their understanding of social problems: through practice work, social problems become less distant as individuals experience the problem more directly—leading to a form of consciousness-raising (McCarthy & Moon, 2018). This greater awareness sensitizes individuals to recognize problematic practices, including their own, that reproduce the social problem. As a consequence, the construction of the social problem becomes more complex and more deeply embedded.

Studying the social construction of social problems also has important ethical implications for designing social partnerships. It might help in identifying negative unintended effects: in the case of global partnerships operating in developing countries, for instance, the social problem constructed within the partnership might evolve in ways that shape social policy in negative ways that are not in the best interests of the host country or might disrupt local communities access to the other limited resources (Stadtler & Karakulak, 2022). It is, thus, also an ethical responsibility of partnerships to evaluate the moral implications of how problems are socially constructed. Similarly, at the individual level, greater awareness gained through this process might sensitize individuals to unethical practices in partnerships and motivate them to address those practices.

Implications for the Study of Social-Symbolic Work

Our study contributes to the social-symbolic work perspective by identifying a set of mechanisms through which different forms of work interact with significant effects. While previous writing on social-symbolic work has suggested strategies through which different forms of work might be strategically combined (Lawrence & Phillips, 2019), we show how forms of social-symbolic work interact through the experience of the actors involved and the relationships among them. The effects of relational work on the social construction of the social problem occurred through its impact on the ability of the actors to learn from each other—knowledge sharing and the resulting trust. Practice work facilitated learning from practice through its effects on actors’ awareness and understanding of the social context in which they were working.

Our focus on the experience of actors engaged in social-symbolic work points to the importance of the unintended (at least initially) ways in which such work shapes actors’ perceptions of the objects on which they work, the actors they work with, and the broader social worlds in which they are embedded. In our study, efforts to shape relationships and practices altered conceptions of the social problem that motivated the partnership and significantly influenced the partnership outcomes. This dynamic may be especially important in relation to social problems—the awareness and reflexivity people can gain through social-symbolic work may sensitize them to dimensions and facets of social issues and their relation to them that might otherwise be left unexamined. Furthermore, reflexivity developed through their work might also sensitize individuals to their ethical obligations in relation to affected populations: thus, this process may help bridge the gap between individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds, fostering a more inclusive and equitable approach.

Implications for the Study of Gender Inequality in Corporate Social Responsibility

Whereas previous writing on the social construction of gender inequality has highlighted the role of “macro” factors, including feminist theories (Grosser & Moon, 2019) and geo-political contexts (Siddiqi, 2021), we show how constructions of gender inequality can be shaped by more “meso” processes such as relational and practice work in social partnerships. Our study suggests that more embedded constructions of gender inequality may result from the learning from partners and practice triggered by extensive relational work and deep practice work. These findings extend Grosser & Moon’s (2019) arguments that “gendering” approaches to CSR, such as post-structuralist and post-colonial approaches, render gender inequality in more deeply embedded terms—as the result of gendered processes built into societies and organizations. Our findings complement consideration of gendering by showing how actors may become “aware” of these dynamics and develop responses that motivate and facilitate responses to socially and culturally embedded gender inequality. If we consider, for instance, the knowledge sharing and trust that result from extensive relational work, we see how these dynamics may lead to sharing of knowledge specific to women’s NGOs, which might then allow for the development of emancipatory practices.

Our study also extends writing on social constructionist perspectives on gender inequality which allow for the exploration of gender inequality from a critical, multifaceted, and contextualized perspective (Chan, 2019; Minton & Knottnerus, 2008; Siddiqi, 2021). This has also important ethical implications: despite gender inequality being declared “central to ethics” (Kaufmann, 2022, p. 565), it has remained under-examined in debates around business ethics and CSR (Grosser et al., 2017). Our study specifically highlights the value of combining relational and practice theories of social construction, which we suggest allow a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of gender inequalities. Our hope is that adopting a social-symbolic work perspective on gender inequality might help to avoid misleading assumptions and inadequate CSR interventions by explicitly incorporating multiple conceptions of gender inequality and fostering more effective, ethical, and inclusive CSR practices to address the complexities of gender inequality.

Conclusion

In this study, we employ a social constructionist approach to study gender inequality in the context of social partnerships and explore the role of social-symbolic work in this process. Although this approach has allowed us to see potential variation in how actors understand and respond to social problems, it is vital to hear the voices and perspectives of marginalized people (Kaufmann, 2022), including the views and contexts of beneficiaries of such partnerships, to understand and tackle gender inequality. Although present, these voices were under-represented in our study; thus, we need more research on social partnerships that incorporates the voices of beneficiaries so that their constructions and experiences of gender inequality can be integrated into our theories of social-symbolic work and the social construction of social problems. As our study suggests a social problem does not exist in a meaningful way until “we perceive it, address it, discuss it, or do anything about it” (Blumer, 1971, p. 302): the processes through which social problems are constructed determine whether individuals and organizations believe they are worth tackling and shape how they might be addressed.