Relational Spaces and Value Replacement: Community Involvement at the Gowanus Canal Superfund Site

Abstract

An unresolved challenge facing organizations, particularly those with a social role such as environmental stewardship, is how to navigate contention between organizational values and operating goals. Research has established that organizational values are commonly displaced as organizational actors struggle with pressing operating goals. Value displacement influences organizational actors’ responses to the local population’s needs. Using the case of the Gowanus Canal Superfund cleanup, this project asks, how can organizational values, once they have been displaced, be put back into place (value replacement)? I argue that, in the case of the Gowanus Canal cleanup, the process of value replacement hinged on a boundary organization that provided the setting for a unique relational space where organizational values could be reconsidered and reenacted. I create a typology of interaction settings and value replacement based on the presence or absence of a boundary organization and relational space. Overall, the research illustrates that despite the pervasiveness of operating goals, organizational actors can draw on an organization’s values to make decisions, based on interaction with the local population. Furthermore, it shows the connection between the space in which organizational actors interact with the local population and the way they deal with organizational values.