Understanding the potential for duplicity to undermine legitimacy

Literature on impressions management and organizational identity suggests that in order to gain legitimacy with a variety of constituents many organizations must manage impressions of organizational constituents such that different organizational identities develop. What has not been well thought out, however, is the potential for differing or divergent organizational identities to be perceived by constituents as an attempt by the organization to be duplicitous. This paper builds and elaborates on a model for understanding the potential for such duplicity to decouple the functions of substantive management from symbolic management thereby undermining organizational legitimacy

Assessing Community Contributions to Sustainable Food Systems : Dietitians Leverage Practice, Process and Paradigms

Food systems are not sustainable, and efforts to address this are paralyzed by the complex networks of food system actors and factors that interact across sectoral and geographic scales. Actions at the community level can positively contribute toward globally sustainable food systems (SFS). Assessing such contributions has two central challenges: 1) a lack of methods that support alignment between communities and across scales, balanced against the need to involve the community in developing relevant indicators; and 2) the absence of adequate, fine grained data relevant to the community. Addressing these two challenges, this paper illustrates a proposed procedure that supports community engagement with, and assessment of, their contributions. Engaged by a community of Canadian dietitians, researchers used the Delphi Inquiry method, guided by the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, to address the first challenge, and causal loop diagrams informed by the Cultural Adaptation Template to address the second. Indicators were developed for dietitian-identified actions and outcomes for SFS. Modeling indicator interactions provide insight into how some actions are influenced by and reinforce the value placed on SFS within the professional cultural paradigm, as well as priority areas for action and measurement. Process-oriented assessment is useful in the context of partial and subjective understandings of a dynamic system, and supports continual adjustment in action. This article offers theoretical and practical insight for community engagement in addressing some of the systemic challenges in food systems. It accommodates community-based knowledge, applies process-indicators, and emphasizes the importance of cultural paradigms as a driving force of community-level actions, and overall system change. Under current conditions, facilitating SFS literacy among dietitians can amplify adaptations for broader SFS development. © 2020, The Author(s).open access </p

Understanding governance barriers and enablers for municipal and regional transition towards sustainability—Presenting a comprehensive diagnostic tool based on six case studies in Sweden

Municipal and regional leaders' achievements for synchronised sustainability transitions are still not enough. Systemic, systematic and strategic cross-sectoral collaboration and co-creation are needed. However, sectors isolated in silos leads to suboptimal measures and strategies, and a reductionist view on what hinders and enables joint action towards full sustainability. Consequently, methodological support for addressing the coordinative challenge is often not asked for. This study investigates the observed reductionist perspective as foundation for developing enhanced methodological support for strategic sustainable development (SSD) and further aimed to gain insight into how leaders can be better supported to understand their current reality of barriers and enablers for cross-sectoral SSD work and to prototype such support. Results from fieldwork with leaders in six municipalities and regions suggest that both frequency and depth of barriers and enablers in relation to elements for SSD are insufficient. Nine categories were identified and combined with SSD core elements into a diagnostic tool

Learnings from emerging implementation of strategic sustainable development in a regional context– the case of Åland

An implementation model for a systemic, systematic, and strategic approach to integrate sustainability across sectors has been tested and developed further within a four-years action research project. Valuable insights on how the approach can be best introduced to facilitate broad application can be gained already from test uses of the preliminary model and this study aims to evaluate and learn from one of the regions participating, Åland (an autonomous protectorate of the Republic of Finland). With a comprehensive sustainability initiative for the whole community, including funding and human resources in place, Åland had particularly favourable conditions and came out as best practice in the research project. We examined what had been done and how initiatives have been received through interviews with process leaders and stakeholders from different sectors of society and through desktop reviews. Key success factors and challenges for the work were put in relation to elements of the implementation model. Indeed, the work has come a long way in terms of collaboration platforms and structures, and much can be learnt from at the Åland case. However, parts of the strategic sustainable development (SSD) perspective are seemingly forgotten or in hibernation. Reintroducing and reinforcing concrete SSD informed processes and support could arguably address several of the expressed challenges while making use of key success factors, such as the capacity building centre

Rethinking globalisation in the light of Contraction &amp; Convergence - CONVERGE Project Final Summative Report

New visionary concepts need to be created to enhance the pursuit of sustainable development at a global scale, to respond to policies and international multilateral agreements in line with political commitments already made (like the Millennium Development Goals) and innovative approaches are called for to ensure the coherence of integrated policy-making at EU level

Children living with HIV in Europe: do migrants have worse treatment outcomes?

International audienceTo assess the effect of migrant status on treatment outcomes among children living with HIV in Europe