Chantale Mailhot

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

This paper explores how large-scale social-driven collaborations might grow in scale and help promote political change. We present the results of a qualitative investigation of a complex platform where multiple and hybrid collaborations co-exist and where civil society plays a central role. Based on a longitudinal comparative case study, we draw a processual model describing micro-practices and pathways of engagement. We show that the emergence of these collaborations requires a new type of convener, one that is able to manage the interplay between the sharing/co-creation of abundant resources and the coordinated decentralization of informal authority. Our study extends existing debates on the role of resources and authority, showing the complementarity between possession and practice perspectives of power. Finally, we identified synergies between collaboration and social movement literatures, particularly showing that large-scale collaborations could be mobilized to refine social movement agendas and achieve more purposive collective action.

Commercializing Academic Knowledge in a Business School: Orders of Worth and Value Assemblages

Abstract This article draws on the literature on valuation and evaluation and the orders of worth framework to consider the process of knowledge commercialization from academia to practice. Based on the study of two knowledge commercialization projects in a business school, the study contributes by showing how the orders of worth framework may assist in understanding the assignment of worth to knowledge-based objects in the context of multiple and potentially competing systems of valuation. The study also adds to the literature on the orders of worth framework by showing how “composite objects” or “assemblages” that achieve compromise or synergy (i.e., mutual reinforcement) between different value systems may be constructed and potentially sustained.

Citizens Engaged to Improve the Sustainability and Quality of Life of Their Cities: the Case of Nossa Sao Paulo

The focus of this article is the emerging phenomenon of citizen participation in civil society movements at the municipal/city level. In various parts of the world, ordinary citizens have been engaging in social movements so as to more purposively engage with and exert influence on public policies regarding important issues like the improvement of quality of life and sustainability of their cities. The overall goal of the article is to understand a network called the ‘Latin American network of cities’, which in 2011 linked more than 50 Latin American cities, including Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, Quito and Rio de Janeiro. One of the most important components is a movement located in Sao Paulo, Brazil, called Nossa Sao Paulo, which mobilizes citizens representing more than 600 organizations of varying types. From a management perspective, this study describes and analyses the means employed by Sao Paulo civil associations to create a space for debate and action that leads not only to adoption of common principles and goals, but also to concrete influence on municipal programmes and political decisions.

Modeling the Evaluation Process in a Public Controversy

Public controversies have attracted increasing attention in the organization studies literature. They emerge when critical issues are not defined and understood in the same way by different stakeholders, influencing the way they evaluate the worth of other actors, objects, and situations. In this paper, we show how the “orders of worth” perspective of Boltanski and Thévenot may throw light on the evolution of an evaluation process occurring during a public controversy. In particular, we study the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012 that followed a proposed major increase in higher education tuition fees. We conducted an in-depth case study based on media coverage of the actions and discourses of the major actors to examine how objects and actions associated with a controversy are successively defined, redefined, and evaluated over time through a series of tests of worth. Our article contributes to the organizational literature on public controversies by drawing attention to the role of six types of evaluative moves in situations of controversy, and by offering an abductively developed model for understanding the evaluation process as it evolves over time. We suggest that actors, through these evaluative moves, may displace the object of a test, and therefore the foci for evaluation, through actions intended to bolster their positions.