Designing purposeful action among divergent stakeholders: A 'being-doing' Approach

Coordinating and organising divergent stakeholders to undertake action to improve a shared situation of concern is an increasingly perplexing problem. Industry, government and academia operate in siloes, make decisions at different speeds, have disparate worldviews and value sets, and do not share the same priorities and concerns. Whilst meetings between these stakeholders are not uncommon, progressing these conversations beyond ‘talk’ to achieve commitment to act, requires purposeful effort. This study investigates the persistent and relevant problem of how to design purposeful action, in a ‘wicked’ problem situation that cannot be solved by any one stakeholder operating alone, and in which the stakeholders do not share the same interpretation of the problem situation. Although such situations are common in cluster development, the literature on cluster development does not offer solutions as to how to design purposeful action, nor does it provide insight as to why attempts to intervene in systemic problems can result in a failure to improve the problem situation.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

School of Management Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• McDonogh, Jennifer Claire

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Elsje, Scott
• Sewchurran, Kosheek

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13157

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13157