Call for Papers

Climate change, armed conflicts, refugee crises, contested globalization, and the proliferation of ‘place-less’, digitally-enabled organizations (Davis, 2023) have underscored that we live in a global world. Nevertheless, these issues continue to have impact on, and are acted upon by, place-based communities anchored in neighborhoods, cities, and regions. While some communities show resilience and sustain cultural meaning, social networks, and physical infrastructures through various forms of organized action (Klinenberg, 2018; Dutta et al., 2021; Brandtner, 2022), others are significantly impoverished, their organizational, institutional, and mobilization capacities severely depleted (Edin et al., 2023; McAdam & Boudet, 2012; Han et al., 2021; Putnam & Garrett, 2020).
 
Place-based communities are formed in geographic settings, which are characterized by manifold possibilities for interaction among members and shared elements of culture, identity, and norms (Georgiou & Arenas, 2023). They are both sites and drivers of organizational action, shaping the behavior, practices, and strategies of organizations. At the same time, place-based communities are also constructed by organizations through their actions, such as their location and production choices, their resource allocation decisions locally and globally, and their (lack of) commitment to nurture and sustain the resilience of place-based communities (Marquis et al., 2011).
 
This sub-theme seeks to offer a forum for explorations into and discussions on drivers of organizational action in place-based communities. We seek to attract explorations of how place-based communities come to be organized, either through the efforts and initiatives of organizations formally tasked with governing places (such as city administration and governance), or networks of organizations (such as philanthropy organizations and cross-sector partnerships pursuing sustainable development and revitalization), or through self-organization by community members (e.g., via neighborhood, civic, or citizens’ associations).
 
Inspired by the historical notion of the Athenian polis (a city-state) as both a community structure based on the oikos (the household) and a center of commerce, culture, political, and religious activity, we invite explorations into regions, cities, and neighborhoods at the nexus of heritage conservation and innovation, of the lasting and the fleeting, of locals and strangers. We welcome research that enriches organizational theory (e.g., perspectives on place-based communities, governance, and identity) with established and novel theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of neighborhoods, cities, and regions.
 
The sub-theme will pursue three main directions of conversation:

1. Mutual influence between organizations and place-based communities. We invite scholars to submit work that pays attention to the relationships of mutual influence between organizations and place-based communities. For example, we encourage contributions that study the relationships between top-down strategies for building and advancing the identity, brand, and governance of places such as neighborhoods, cities, and regions, and the bottom-up dynamics through which community members and organizations challenge or contribute to the organization of these places (Jones et al., 2018; Kornberger et al., 2017; Levine, 2016; Bell & Avner de-Shalit, 2011).

2. Roles and forms of collectivity. We seek submissions that offer explorations of how activists, community organizers, network leaders, and public officials engage with regions, cities, and neighborhoods as a canvas for different initiatives and causes, from the creation of sustainability districts as a testbed for eco-solutions, to artistic and political activism (Marwell 2009; Brandtner et al., 2017). We are also curious about various forms of collectivity and their modes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as self-organization and governance (Douglas, 2019; Borch & Kornberger, 2015), among which localizing passion as a shared emotional energy that drives people’s affective attachment to spaces that offer activities of enjoyment (Aversa et al., 2022).

3. (Re-)balancing acts. We welcome studies that investigate how neighborhoods, cities, and regions resourcefully address stigmatization, polarization, and inequalities, as well as attempt to ignite civic life and active citizenship (Safford 2009; Klinenberg, 2018; Parkinson, 2012). We also invite explorations into ways for building social infrastructures, resilience and action capacity in communities in relation to crises, climate action, poverty, hunger, or marginalization (Edin et al., 2023).

 
The sub-theme welcomes empirical papers with different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that address, but are not limited to, some of the following questions:

• What new organizational forms, mechanisms, and phenomena are emerging at the intersection of organizations and place-based communities?

• How are different place-based communities sustained and developed through organizations and organizing?

• How do communities organize and self-organize? How do differences across place and time shape the organization-community nexus?

• How do management concepts and organizing tactics diffuse among places around the world, and with what implementation challenges and consequences?

• How do neighborhoods, cities, and regions develop resilience, capacity to act, and equitable governance configurations?

• What are the physical, cultural, and institutional infrastructures that sustain flourishing place-based communities?

• How do place-based policies and industrial policies influence and are influenced by communities and organizations?

• What are the implications of private arrangements for neighborhood and city representation for democracy, sustainability, and equality?

• Which cutting-edge methods allow us to trace and test the influences of organizations on their local environment?

• How can established approaches in urban theory, architecture, urban sociology, geography, urban complexity, urban and rural economics, and neighborhood effects advance the burgeoning literature on organizations and communities?

References

• Aversa, P., Furnari, S., & Jenkins, M. (2022): “The Primordial Soup: Exploring the Emotional Microfoundations of Cluster Genesis.” Organization Science, 33, 1340–1371.

• Borch, C., & Kornberger, M. (2015): Urban Commons: Rethinking the City. London: Routledge.
• Brandtner, C. (2022): “Green American City: Civic Capacity and the Distributed Adoption of Urban Innovations.” American Journal of Sociology, 128 (3), 627–679.
• Brandtner, C., Höllerer, M., Meyer, R., & Kornberger, M. (2017): ”Enacting Urban Governance through Strategy: A Comparative Study of City Strategies in Sydney and Vienna.” Urban Studies, 54 (4), 1075–1091.
• Douglas, G.C. (2018): The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Edin, K.J., Shaefer, H.L., & Nelson, T.J. (2023): The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America. New York: Mariner Press.
• Georgiou, A., & Arenas, D. (2023): “Community in Organizational Research: A Review and an Institutional Logics Perspective.” Organization Theory, 4 (1); https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877231153189.
• Jones, C., & Svejenova, S. (2017): “The Architecture of City Identities: A Multimodal Study of Barcelona and Boston.” In: Höllerer, M.A., Daudigeos, T., & Jancsary, D. (eds.): Multimodality, Meaning, and Institutions. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 54B. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 227–258.
• Kornberger, M., Meyer, R.E., Brandtner, C., & Höllerer, M.A. (2017): ”When Bureaucracy Meets the Crowd: Studying ‘Open Government’ in the Vienna City Administration.” Organization Studies, 38 (2), 179–200.
• Klinenberg, E. (2018): Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. New York: Crown.
• Levine, J. (2016): “The Privatization of Political Representation: Community-Based Organizations as Nonelected Neighborhood Representatives.” American Sociological Review, 81 (6), 1251–75.
• Marquis, C., Lounsbury, M., & Greenwood, R. (eds.) (2011): Communities and Organizations. Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Cheltenham: Emerald Group Publishing.
• Marwell, N.P. (2009): Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• McAdam, D., & Boudet, H. (2012): Putting Social Movements in Their Place. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Parkinson, J.R. (2012): Democracy and Public Space: The Physical Sites of Democratic Performance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Putnam, R.D., & Romney Garrett, S. (2020): The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Safford, S. (2009): Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown. The Transformation of the Rust Belt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
•