We introduce the concept of places of social inclusion-institutions endowed by a society or a community with material resources, meaning, and values at geographic sites where citizens can access services for specific needs-as taken-for-granted, essential, and inherently precarious. Based on our study of an emergency department that was disrupted by the threat of the Ebola virus in 2014, we develop a process model to explain how a place of social inclusion can be maintained by custodians. We show how these custodians-in our fieldsite, doctors and nurses-experience and engage in institutional work to manage different levels of tension between the value of inclusion and the reality of finite resources, as well as tension between inclusion and the desire for safety. We also demonstrate how the interplay of custodians' emotions is integral to maintaining the place of social inclusion. The primary contribution of our study is to shine light on places of social inclusion as important institutions in democratic society. We also reveal the theoretical and practical importance of places as institutions, deepen understanding of custodians and custodianship as a form of institutional work, and offer new insight into the dynamic processes that connect emotions and institutional work.In most Western societies, the democratic state establishes and funds particular places that play a special role in meeting citizens' needs and that contribute to the functioning of societies and communities. For example, citizens can freely access public emergency departments for medical care, public schools for education, public libraries and museums for information and culture, public
Stakeholder trust is pivotal to the social licence to operate and a source of competitive advantage for firms. While managing trust with stakeholders is recognised as a critical management competency and central to delivering coal seam gas (CSG) strategy, to date there has been little examination of stakeholder trust. This research examined the drivers and levels of trust in the CSG companies and industry from the perspective of core CSG stakeholder groups, and identified what stakeholders perceive to be critical for building and maintaining trust in the CSG industry. With the support of four major CSG companies and the University of Queensland (UQ) Centre for Coal Seam Gas, in-depth interviews were conducted with 145 participants representing five stakeholder groups: landholders, community members, regional leaders, regulators, and employees. An online survey was subsequently developed and completed by 561 CSG stakeholders. Analysis of the interview data revealed 11 key drivers of stakeholder trust and distrust. Seven drivers focused on how the CSG companies were perceived to operate in regard to: (1) integrity and transparency, (2) communication and interaction, (3) competence and efficiency, (4) community impact and contribution, (5) coexistence with landholders and the community, and having (6) a shared versus divergent identity, and (7) a positive versus negative comparative reputation. Four drivers focused on the broader CSG industry: (8) environmental concerns, (9) governance and regulation, (10) uncertainty and unpredictability of the industry, and (11) the power differential between CSG companies and stakeholders. Analysis of the survey data revealed significant differences between stakeholder groups in the level and drivers of trust. On average, CSG employees reported high trust, regulators, community and regional leaders reported moderate trust, and landholders reported low trust. In contrast to a minority of employees, the majority of external stakeholders reported concerns over the environmental impacts of CSG and the effectiveness of governance and regulation, and perceived the industry to be unpredictable and too focused on the short term. Stakeholder recommendations for enhancing trust and strategies for establishing a more resilient and trustworthy industry reputation are identified. Priority areas include: (1) building trust with landholders, (2) increasing the transparency with which companies share information, plans and regulatory compliance, (3) improving the effectiveness of CSG governance and regulation, and (4) addressing environmental concerns.
We shed new light on the processes through which institutions are created and changed by investigating the question how does institutional entrepreneuring unfold in an already organized world. We conducted a longitudinal case study of the field of scientific research production in Australia, which changed over three decades through entrepreneuring processes associated with the creation of a new ‘Smart State’ place in the city of Brisbane in Queensland. A new place is a form of organizing human activity that has materiality and meaning at a specific geographic location. Our findings showed how field change was interwoven with place creation through four processes of entrepreneuring: structural emancipation, dissociating and reimagining place meanings, bricolaging of place forms, and co-evolving place identities. These entrepreneuring processes constituted the field as a flow of ‘becoming’ that spilled over into temporary and provisional settlements in local places. Our findings make important contributions through: (1) deepening understanding of how organizational fields change through multilevel, distributed, cascading and often unreflexive processes of entrepreneuring processes in an already organized world, (2) bringing attention to a relationship between institutions and place, in which place is both the medium and outcome of institutional entrepreneuring, and (3) providing new insight into embedded agency by illustrating how institutions in ‘becoming’ continually (re)produce the resources and possibilities for agency within gradual institutional change over time.
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