Collective Capacity Research Articles

A multisectoral approach to advance health equity in rural northern Arizona: county-level leaders’ perspectives on health equity

BackgroundMultisectoral and public–private partnerships are critical in building the necessary infrastructure, policy, and political will to ameliorate health inequity. A focus on health equity by researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers prioritizes action to address the systematic, avoidable, and unjust differences in health status across population groups sustained over time and generations that are beyond the control of individuals. Health equity requires a collective process in shaping the health and wellbeing of the communities in which we live, learn, work, play, and grow. This paper explores multisectoral leaders’ understanding of the social, environmental, and economic conditions that produce and sustain health inequity in northern Arizona, a geographically expansive, largely rural, and culturally diverse region.MethodsData are drawn from the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative’s Regional Health Equity Survey (RHES). The RHES is a community-engaged, cross-sectional online survey comprised of 31 close-ended and 17 open-ended questions. Created to assess cross-sectoral regional and collective capacity to address health inequity and inform multisectoral action for improving community health, the RHES targeted leaders representing five rural northern Arizona counties and 13 sectors. Select open-ended questions were analyzed using an a priori coding scheme and emergent coding with thematic analysis.ResultsAlthough leaders were provided the definition and asked to describe the root causes of inequities, the majority of leaders described social determinants of health (SDoH). When leaders described root causes of health inequity, they articulated systemic factors affecting their communities, describing discrimination and unequal allocation of power and resources. Most leaders described the SDoH by discussing compounding factors of poverty, transportation, housing, and rurality among others, that together exacerbate inequity. Leaders also identified specific strategies to address SDoH and advance health equity in their communities, ranging from providing direct services to activating partnerships across organizations and sectors in advocacy for policy change.ConclusionOur findings indicate that community leaders in the northern Arizona region acknowledge the importance of multisectoral collaborations in improving health equity for the populations that they serve. However, a common understanding of health equity remains to be widely established, which is essential for conducting effective multisectoral work to advance health equity.

Transforming or tinkering: the world remains unprepared for the next pandemic threat

Transforming or tinkering: the world remains unprepared for the next pandemic threat

Geoscience Education Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science

AbstractPractitioners and researchers in geoscience education embrace collaboration applying ICON (Integrated, Coordinated, Open science, and Networked) principles and approaches which have been used to create and share large collections of educational resources, to move forward collective priorities, and to foster peer‐learning among educators. These strategies can also support the advancement of coproduction between geoscientists and diverse communities. For this reason, many authors from the geoscience education community have co‐created three commentaries on the use and future of ICON in geoscience education. We envision that sharing our expertise with ICON practice will be useful to other geoscience communities seeking to strengthen collaboration. Geoscience education brings substantial expertise in social science research and its application to building individual and collective capacity to address earth sustainability and equity issues at local to global scales The geoscience education community has expanded its own ICON capacity through access to and use of shared resources and research findings, enhancing data sharing and publication, and leadership development. We prioritize continued use of ICON principles to develop effective and inclusive communities that increase equity in geoscience education and beyond, support leadership and full participation of systemically non‐dominant groups and enable global discussions and collaborations.

Co-creating solutions to complex urban problems with collaborative systems modelling - insights from a workshop on health co-benefits of urban green spaces in Guangzhou

ABSTRACT Increasingly complex challenges and systemic risks in urban development and planning require systems methods and solutions. This policy brief summarizes the experience of a collaborative systems modelling workshop on the health co-benefits of urban green spaces in Guangzhou, China. The workshop shows that collaborative systems modelling has the potential to surface new, integrated, and sustainable solutions for complex problems, such as urban development, spatial planning, governance, and climate change. For the collaborative systems modelling approach to succeed, it is critical to have the participation of diverse interdisciplinary stakeholders for the co-creation of solutions. Further, while noting that collective learning and capacity building take time, we recommend policymakers apply this method where and when possible, for example in urban planning projects, to address complex problems in cities while at the same time ensuring the representation of the needs and visions of stakeholders in the modelling process. Collaborative systems modelling can be considered a contribution to intelligent urban systems governance.

Research, Sovereignty and Action: Lessons from a First Nations-Led Study on Aging in Ontario.

First Nations in Ontario are building capacity to leverage health services data in Ontario to provide robust, First Nations-driven health evidence. Beyond providing evidence, population health research processes must involve diverse First Nations' perspectives, collective capacity building and translation of research findings into action through integrated and community engaged knowledge translation and exchange (KTE) approaches. Suggested ways include integrating stories and traditional knowledge, prioritizing gatherings and establishing an enduring commitment to action. To effectively support First Nations' self-determination and sovereignty, First Nations' principles of ownership, control, access and possession (OCAP®) in research could be expanded to include "action" (OCAPA).

‘Amenable to Civil Power’: The Influence of the Periphery on British Policy on New Zealand, 1831 to 1837

ABSTRACT From 1831, the New South Wales government employee James Busby began lobbying to be appointed as British representative in New Zealand. Against a backdrop of official British reluctance to intervene in the country, Busby persuaded officials that the indigenous Māori population was not as threatening as was popularly believed in the early nineteenth century, and that its leaders could be persuaded to acquiesce to a more formal British presence in the country. Busby also argued (uniquely among settlers) that Māori chiefs could potentially act in a collective capacity as a form of rudimentary legislature, give the appropriate support. Busby became instrumental in the development of British policy on New Zealand from 1831 to around 1837, and in doing so, demonstrated the extent to which influences from the periphery of the Empire could inform and alter that policy. This article explores some of those core–periphery dynamics, and illustrates aspects of the process by which Britain’s stance on New Zealand evolved during this period in response to the reporting and activities of its official appointee to the country.

Networks, collaboration and knowledge exchange in creative industries: a comparative analysis of Brisbane and Shenzhen

This paper explores an expanding area of policy interest: the networks and collaboration mechanisms between universities and creative industries actors in cities. While much is known about such relationships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), they remain taken for granted and under researched in the creative industries. We argue that they are pivotal for different domains of research and policy, notably, cultural policy, higher education, innovation systems, and regional development. To that end, this paper aims to open up consideration of these relationships which we argue 1) stimulate innovation and 2) make broader contributions to local communities and economic regeneration via a creative economy approach. Using the Triple Helix framework, we explore university-industry-governemnt relationships and knowledge exchange mechanisms via a comparative analysis of two creative industries case cities: Shenzhen, China and Brisbane, Australia. Despite differences in certain important respects the two cities have both adopted creative industries policy frameworks. We found important differences between the cases in the roles and relative strength of the three sectoral actors. This study also shows a need for strategic incentives to foster collective capacity and governance interventions as a push to broker relationships that were not there before. Focussing on boundary spanning we also argue that cultural policy should have formal mechanisms and informal interactions to build a sustainable innovation ecosystem based on knowledge exchange.

How can critical reflection be promoted in professional learning communities? Findings from an innovation research project in four schools

This article presents findings from an innovation research project titled School-In, focusing on school staff’s reflection. Teachers in four schools participated in focus group discussions in the beginning and at the end of the innovation. Wackerhausen’s theory is used to understand reflection and how it develops in professional learning communities. Findings from the study indicate: (1) in the beginning of the innovation, reflection mainly of first order – focusing on how things are or should have been, and (2) at the end of the innovation, reflection mainly of second order – critical reflection on the school’s practices. Change is promoted by use of different reflective work forms in mixed groups, focusing on collective capacity and common expectations. The innovation releases teachers’ knowledge and experiences, enabling them to carry out second-order reflection and to critically analyzing their personal and the school’s practice.

Multilevel and multisite leadership development from a leadership-as-practice perspective: an integrative literature review

PurposeThis paper reviews what has been written on leadership development from the leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) perspective, which views leadership as emerging in everyday activities and interactions of a collective in a specific context. This paper aims to deepen the theoretical understanding of how leadership can be learned and developed from the L-A-P perspective.Design/methodology/approachAn integrative literature review was undertaken to review and synthesise what has been written on the topic in journal articles and scholarly books.FindingsThe importance of the context and the practices that are embedded in it is the most central aspect affecting leadership development from the L-A-P perspective. This places workplace leadership development centre stage, but several papers also showed that leadership programmes have an important role. Not only collective capacity building is emphasised in the papers, but the importance of individual-level leader development is also recognised.Originality/valueThe contribution of this study is twofold: First, it brings the currently fractured information on L-A-P development together to enhance theory building by providing a synthesis of the literature. Second, a conceptual framework is constructed to show how the L-A-P perspective on leadership development can take both leadership development at the collective and individual levels into account, as well as the learning that takes place either inside or outside the workplace. This study’s results and framework show that the development has its own specific purpose and suggested methods in both levels, in both learning sites.

Leisure Possibilities of Adults Experiencing Poverty: A Community-Based Participatory Study.

Background. Poverty disproportionally affects persons with disabilities, elderly individuals and racialized groups. Leisure, play and rest are not prioritized in either services for or research with people living in poverty. Purpose. This study aims to examine the facilitators and barriers to participation in meaningful leisure activities for adults living in poverty. Method. We used community-based participatory research and art-based elicitation strategies with 39 service users at a food security organization. Findings. Individuals experiencing poverty value and engage in a variety of free and affordable leisure activities, but they are not afforded the necessary leisure opportunities, accommodations and supports as the general population. We co-created a map of local leisure resources to foster collective capacity in leisure planning, and to support organizations working with this population. Implications. Occupational therapists can work alongside members of underserved communities to uncover and address the systemic and local contextual barriers to engagement in leisure activities.

Aligning Differences: Discursive Diversity and Team Performance

How does cognitive diversity in a group affect its performance? Prior research suggests that group cognitive diversity poses a performance tradeoff: Diverse groups excel at creativity and innovation, but struggle to take coordinated action. Building on the insight that group cognition is not static, but is instead dynamically and interactively produced, we introduce the construct of discursive diversity, a manifestation of group cognitive diversity, which reflects the degree to which the meanings conveyed by group members in a given set of interactions diverge from one another. We propose that high-performing teams are ones that have a collective capacity to modulate shared cognition to match changing task requirements: They exhibit higher discursive diversity when engaged in ideational tasks and lower discursive diversity when performing coordination tasks. We further argue that teams exhibiting congruent modulation—that is, those with low group-level variance in members’ within-person semantic shifts to changing task requirements—are more likely to experience success than teams characterized by incongruent modulation. Using the tools of computational linguistics to derive a measure of discursive diversity and drawing on a novel longitudinal data set of intragroup electronic communications and performance outcomes for 117 remote software development teams on an online platform ( www.gigster.com ), we find support for our theory. Our findings suggest that the performance tradeoff of group cognitive diversity is not inescapable: Groups can navigate it by aligning their levels of discursive diversity to match their task requirements and by having members stay aligned with one another as they make these adjustments. This paper was accepted by Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, organizations. Funding: Financial support fromthe NSF-CAREER [Grant 1847091] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4274 .

Industrial metabolism and territorial development of the Maurienne Valley (France)

The globalisation of exchanges has resulted in excessive growth of material and immaterial flows. The disconnection among the supply, production, decision-making and consumption sites generates new spatial interdependencies. It determines local socio-economic dynamics and affects ecosystems. In this context, the question arises if territorial capability—“localized collective capacity to serve territorial development”—influences, from local level, these globalised flows systems. By combining territorial economic principles and territorial ecology approaches, we study the industrial metabolism of the Maurienne valley in France. The Maurienne case shows how territorial characteristics contribute to the economic resilience in rural areas. The calculation of wealth flows provides information on the local economic base, the weight of industry and its social impact. The analysis of physical flows reveals the materiality of this industry and the dependence on external resources and international companies. It highlights the various pressures and risks on the environment. To deal with these constraints, companies rely on relational and geographic proximities with local subcontractors. These relationships determine both the proper functioning of the local industrial system and the territorial capability to maintain and transform industrial activities. Most rural European territories experience the same industrial issues and environmental challenges. Therefore, this study offers new research perspectives to better understand and promote ecological transition in old and often rural industrial areas.

The Potential to Build Collective Capacity for Organisational Learning in the Context of Teachers’ Use of Digital Technology for School Improvement

This article considers how digital spaces focused on whole school improvement combined with supportive leadership may be mobilised towards building collective capacity for evidence-informed practice and organisational learning. This topic originated from a qualitative, multi-method design-based research (DBR) project that studied practitioners’ use of an online resource for primary school practitioners called Pathways for school improvement, designed by Oxford University Press (OUP). Semi-structured interviews, participant observations and a documentary analysis were conducted with teachers and senior leaders in five primary schools across England between 2014 and 2016. Connections were made with the dynamic approach to school improvement (DASI) that encourages practitioners to systematically engage with a variety of evidence in their reflections and efforts to design school and classroom improvement strategies. Pathways’ four-step system and series of systematised tasks under each step seemed to provide opportunities for practitioners to explore elements of theory and practice in conjunction with empirical and pupil performance data, and potentially guide them through how to collaborate with others in developing specific whole school approaches to improvement. Opportunities and challenges in developing collective capacity for improvement are also explored.

Psychological compassion climate: Examining the nomological network of perceptions of work group compassion

Organizational scholars have begun to focus on the pervasiveness of human suffering at work and the capacity of compassion to ease such suffering. Recent conceptual work has shifted from the individual to the group by positing compassion as a collective capacity that involves noticing others' suffering, feeling empathic concern, and attempting to alleviate that suffering. Drawing upon this foundation, the current paper elaborates on the theoretical concept of psychological compassion climate, defining it as the individual perception of shared norms around compassion within one's work group/unit, and develops and validates a brief measure to assess this construct. Specifically, in Study 1, we developed a new measure of psychological compassion climate and examined its nomological network, including theoretical antecedents, correlates, and consequences. In Study 2, we cross-validated the compassion climate measure using a time-separated design. In this study, psychological compassion climate assessed at Time 1 predicted improvements from Time 1 to Time 2 in three well-being indicators (i.e., anxiety, depressed mood, psychological flourishing) over a month-long span during the summer of 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (when suffering of a variety of types was widespread). In addition, we also found that psychological compassion climate predicted compassion experiences at work over the one month interval, including compassion received from others as well as compassion given by the focal employees to others and to oneself.

Best intentions and local realities: unseating assumptions about implementing planned community-based adaptation in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Community-based adaptation (CBA) has gained traction in the management of climate risks within developing societies, due to its capacity to include local knowledge and build the adaptive capacities of vulnerable groups and communities. Yet little is known about what happens when such projects are implemented on the ground. This paper presents the results of a research project that sought to understand local perceptions and responses to planned CBA interventions in rural coastal communities in Bangladesh. Based on a qualitative approach, this paper presents the dominant narratives within local communities about the NGO-initiated CBA project. Findings highlight there is a deep disconnection between the objectives of CBA interventions and the perceptions of local communities about the project. Such a difference in perceptions meant that project participants prioritized personal gains over the creation of collective capacities to adapt to climate change. The paper concludes that in order to resolve such tensions, the gap between ‘community-based’ adaptation theory and practice needs to be addressed.

Because how we talk matters: using action inquiry to nurture a coaching culture

ABSTRACT This account explores the experience of an action inquiry approach to develop a coaching culture within a public service organisation. We position action inquiry as a fresh interpretation of action learning that draws on a variety of roots and traditions and focuses on the nurturing of the collective capacity to lead through everyday interactions. Working with an initial core group of staff, we expanded our reach through an iterative process to intentionally bring more people into the work. We show how we adapted our original plans to respond to the COVID pandemic, the use of stories to propel inquiry and playback insights into the inquiry process, how we deepened inquiry in some settings and how ultimately being online was an opportunity to connect people across a system that we had not anticipated. We share insights into the commissioning process and of the importance of internal sponsorship. It concludes with a striking, participant-led call to approach scaling differently by supporting the co-creation of local implementation strategies and sponsor confidence in the case to use this approach in more circumstances, where participants in action inquiry explore, rather than assume, what the organisation and its staff need.

RETHINKING THE VIEWS ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN CULTURE

Human culture has recently gained unprecedented importance in explaining the uniqueness of our species. Throughout the history of formal education human culture was the topic of interest of subjects like sociology, behavioral biology, and cultural psychology. The present communication critically considers the views of three disciplines about human culture in the light of history and contemporary knowledge. Social norms of a human group govern many aspects of culture. Recently, human culture has elegantly been analyzed utilizing the theory of mind. Collective capacities of minds of the group as repository of social information are important in understanding human culture. Similarly, biology of a cultural group, not the individual biology as well as the genome, not a candidate gene can explain nature of human culture satisfactorily. Size as well as the heterogeneity of the human group, their biological endowment including genetic makeup, capacities of the brain and mind determine the richness of social information in a social repository. However, uniform statement is perhaps not applicable to human culture because of its vast diversity, fragility, and context and thus it may lead to oversimplification.

Origin of the Human Soul: Making Sense of Emotional Fossils (trans. by Andrey Korchevskiy)

That humans evolved to be hyper-cooperative has always been problematic for the Darwinian view of evolution: a struggle among individuals for scarce resources. The most fundamental fossil findings are consistent with the proposal that the appearance of humans 6 million years ago represents a rare major biological transition. For the first time, individual mammals (humans) began dividing and coordinating their functional activities while assembling into organism-like groups. The refinement of this collective capacity for teamwork is the decisive human adaptation and constitutes our core human instincts evolved over millions of years, referred to as the “old mind.” Our own Homo sapiens species appeared 300,000 years ago. Because the evolutionary mechanisms of sexual selection and group selection became predominant, 1) cultural evolution, 2) the rise of economic behavior, 3) chronic war, and 4) mental illness resulted. The major mental illnesses are viewed as “emotional fossils” that provide insight into the evolutionary development of our emotions and motivations. The symptoms of bipolar disorder reflect the breakdown of instincts evolved by sexual selection for the benefits of cohesion among groups. The symptoms of schizophrenia reflect the breakdown of instincts evolved by group selection for the benefits of groups prevailing in competition with each other. These often-disruptive instincts constitute our “new mind” that seeks equilibrium with our old mind, which persists as the humanizing legacy of collective functioning refined through the ages by our hominin ancestors and now experienced as our innermost soul.

Involvement and Trust in Poland and Bulgaria in Comparison with Other European Societies

A developmental analysis of the two waves: 2008 and 2016 ESS Indicators of social engagement (we mean here organisational engagement) are treated as a measure of the process of social modernisation (Herrmann, 1999, Matei, Apostu, 2012). It is assumed here that higher scores of indicators demonstrate the 'maturity of civil society, the quality of the functioning of democracy and the process of its evolution (Boulding, 2010). The concept of generalised trust and trust in political institutions have a somewhat similar status, and they are treated as indicators of collective capacity and a premise for conclusions about the effectiveness of the development processes (Putnam, 1993, Sonderskov, 2011). The proposed presentation will focus on the changes we were able to register over eight years in Poland and Bulgaria (2008 and 2018) to indicate the position of the societies of these post-communist countries in comparison to other European countries. The main hypotheses would be to verify the relationship between trust indicators and declared involvement in NGO sector organisations as well as basic sociodemographic variables in a temporal perspective. The quantitative analysis will be preceded by a form of qualitative description and interpretation of the existing state of knowledge. ESS data would be used for the analysis, and the basis for inference will be the indices of “generalised trust”, “trust in national political institutions”, and “involvement in NGO” using regression analysis.

The social dynamics in establishing complex community climate change initiatives: the case of a community fridge in Scotland

Multiple factors are involved in community change processes, yet understanding how factors interact to shape these complex social processed is limited. This has important implications for both research and sustainability practice. This study examines key social dynamics in establishing complex community change initiatives using an in-depth action-oriented transdisciplinary approach with a case study of the development of a community fridge. Four critical social dynamics were identified: reinforcing interpretations, reinforcing interconnections, re-alignment of identities, and quality social relations involving multiple normative facets converging and diverging in different ways as the process unfolded. Initially, this led to a degenerative dynamic that heightened tensions between actors; however, re-alignment with wider social identities and expressions of the underlying normative dimensions involved in the initiative, a regenerative dynamic was created. This strengthened the conditions to support shared understanding, learning and enhanced relationships to enable different actors to work together to shape aspects of the initiative. Overall, the study highlights that future community-based change initiatives need to be guided by explicit approaches that work with social relationships, but where these relationships are conceptualised as dynamic normative spaces of interaction and exploration. This can inform understanding on how to develop beneficial reinforcing regenerative dynamics, where advances in one aspect of social relationships within initiatives can begin to reinforce others and ways that increase collective capacity as a whole. Developing this regenerative potential through social relationships within initiatives is thus critical for engaging with complex challenges across communities.