The Role of Power Dynamics in Cross-Sector Partnerships for Sustainable Socio-Ecological System Transformation

Abstract

This study aims to identify how power dynamics influence multi-stakeholder cross-sector partnership (CSP) processes for socio-ecological system (SES) transformation. We draw on a four dimensional framework of power (resource, decision-making, meaning-making and systemic) to analyze an in-depth, qualitative case study of a CSP that failed to progress much beyond the initial formation and strategic plan formulation stages of the CSP process. We uncover how the initial positioning of the CSP triggered diverse instances of power use (and power oversight) that had a dampening effect on the progress of this SES transformation initiative. Specifically, we reveal the paradoxical pitfalls of an overly collaborative approach during the early stages of a CSP initiative, and, in so doing, advance scholarship on CSPs as well as managing socio-ecological system transformation.

1. Introduction

Complex social and environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and global inequality are getting worse [1]. The socio-ecological system (SES) approach to grappling with such complex grand challenges involves addressing the relationship between ecosystems and their associated social systems [2,3]. It examines how ecosystems fulfill social needs, how social needs affect the integrity of ecosystems and “the way in which both social and ecological systems respond to endogenous and exogenous drivers of change” [2] (p. 632).

Because SES transformations are considered “too large or intractable for one organization or sector to tackle alone” [4] (p. 303), multistakeholder cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) have been touted as a vehicle for collectively addressing them [5,6,7,8,9]. However, some scholars note that the CSP process is subject to both external and internal challenges [7,9,10,11], which can lead to either positive outcomes (“societal benefits”) or conflictual failures (“societal costs”) [11,12,13,14,15,16]. Accordingly, they advocate for a critical perspective which more explicitly considers the role of power in CSP failures, e.g., [12,17,18].

Yet, this critical line of research has had its own limitations. The literature is largely conceptual, has focused almost exclusively on overt power conflicts and has failed to sufficiently investigate variations in where and how power has been used (e.g., power dynamics may be internal or external to the partnership), all of which mean that it inadequately examines how the CSP and its individual partners may be empowered towards positive SES transformation [19,20]. As such, the main research question for our study is as follows: How do power dynamics influence the CSP process for advancing socio-ecological system transformation?

To explore this question, we applied a critical theoretical lens on empowerment [21] to a qualitative case study of a not-for-profit/civil society CSP in Ottawa, Canada, which failed to launch as anticipated: The Ottawa Centre EcoDistrict (henceforth EcoDistrict). According to this theoretical lens, empowerment refers to the use of power dynamics to provide resources, access to decision-making arenas and/or to manage meaning. The EcoDistrict tried to undertake an ambitious sustainable reinvention of the city center by making the downtown core more environmentally sustainable, socially vibrant and economically attractive to businesses and organizations looking to relocate or expand [22]. Although this CSP resulted in a handful of successful outputs (i.e., pilot initiatives, educational events), it offers an insightful example of the use (and neglect) of power dynamics in a context where the overall outcomes fell far short of achieving the CSP’s strategic plan, and, by extension, the CSP’s collaborative potential for meaningful socio-ecological impact.

Our case study contributes to the literature on CSPs for socio-ecological system transformation in several ways: First, it offers needed empirical evidence of the real-world messiness that can arise within a CSP, particularly when it is led by a relatively resource-poor organization (e.g., as is the case with many nonprofit/civil society organizations) with powerful stakeholders external to the partnership. Second, it reveals how, even when a CSP lead is resource poor, sources of power remain available to it. Third, it demonstrates how the CSP’s lead organization’s failure to leverage its available power (to advance partners’ agentic empowerment) can contribute to the CSP’s demise. Fourth, we demonstrate how partners other than the lead organization likewise may mismanage the power potentially available to them. By demonstrating such variations in the availability and use of power, both internally and externally, within a CSP, our study extends Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan’s [21] critical, post-modernist power framework to the SES context. Moreover, we advance this framework by highlighting the consequences not only to wielding the power dimensions available to an actor, but also to not wielding them.

Our next section takes a closer look at the stages of the CSP collaboration process, and the determinants of their success/failure for SES transformation. We then explore the power dynamics behind empowerment, using Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan’s [21] framework to illuminate the role of power, specifically in the critical early stages of the CSP’s collaborative process. Subsequently, we describe the empirical context for our CSP, the Ottawa Centre EcoDistrict, present our findings and discuss their implications for both research and practice.

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Cross-Sector Partnerships (CSPs): A Closer Look

Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are organizational arrangements that have emerged to promote socio-ecological system transformation [4,6,10]. They involve two or more organizations from different sectors that collaborate “to realize a mutual goal or to tackle a common problem” [23].

CSPs for SES transformation develop through roughly five stages: partnership formation, strategic plan collaboration, implementation and finally, realization of the collective strategic plan [7,10]. Through this process, organizations and their stakeholders review how they influence systemic processes for transformation [1,24]. The first stage (partnership formation) is a tacit, informal process that develops as individuals from organizations from different sectors begin informally testing the viability of a longer-term relationship [14]. The second stage (collaboration on the strategic SES transformation plan [4,6,10] to achieve a CSP’s transformation objectives) is meant to connect each partner’s own organizational sustainability strategies with collective performance metrics that could be used to monitor and ultimately evaluate the achievement of various elements of the plan [12]. This process generates outputs (agreements, norms, guidelines, activities, products or services) that represent the final outcome(s) of the CSP process [16]. The overall socio-ecological impact of these partnership outcomes is defined as “the longer term, direct and indirect effects on whole issues…that the partnership brings to the wider society” [16] (p. 1348).

Research suggests that CSPs are effective when they follow this process. For example, Clarke and Fuller [10] studied the collaborative strategic management processes of two CSPs (formal partnership arrangements between municipal governments, businesses and other sectoral actors) that pursued regional sustainable development strategies in Canada (in Montreal and Antigonish). Similarly, Forrest & Wiek [25] conducted a cross-case analysis of four UK sustainability transformation projects which focused on driving various sustainability initiatives at the community level (e.g., community gardens, voluntary household energy reduction programs). These CSPs engaged a core group of committed activists who gained access to public funding.

Both examples illustrate how the distinctive perspectives and capacities that accompany the CSP arrangement (i.e., involving diverse levels of governments, businesses and other sectoral actors such as nonprofits) assisted in navigating multiple challenges [12,26]. Although different leadership configurations exist for CSPs [11], most successful CSPs have a central oversight entity (i.e., a bridging agent, in the form of a secretariat or decision-making body) which helps to orchestrate this collaboration process [27]. The lead or co-lead of this oversight body is often (but not always) the local municipality, which undertakes several important tasks related to the collaboration process [5]. Also, successful CSPs employ an ‘opt-in’ approach to implementation whereby each participating party could choose which sustainability actions to pursue. For example, Le Ber & Branzei [13] uncovered that CSP success hinged on partners’ motivation to develop a closer relational attachment, to look for ways to co-create social innovation together and to then iteratively recalibrate their roles within the partnership.

Yet, CSP failures have also occurred. As Grin, Rotmans & Schot [18] (pp. 79–80) observe, “the transition to a sustainable society is but one possible outcome of changes in the institutional rectangle of the realms of market, government, science and technology and civil society and their mutual alignment–stagnation is another”. Without an evolving bond, partners may become complacent or disillusioned, which can accelerate the momentum towards CSP failure [13]. Development of this relational bond (and its ensuing role recalibrations) is constrained by partners’ capacity for ongoing communication of the social value and risks involved in the partnership.

Powell et al. [11] found that the way that partners collectively addressed conflicting material interests differentiated successful ventures from those that became one-sided or inactive. Specifically, stakeholders who did not surface and attend to conflicts, but rather engaged in ‘departing behaviors’ in their partner relations (i.e., excluded voices, worked in silos and/or talked past each other) ended up hindering rather than facilitating the achievement of collective prosocial organizing efforts. This is consistent with Westley et al.’s [28] observations about SES transformation, wherein commitments to openly enhance partners’ agency proved facilitative, while neglect of this impeded successful outcomes. Critical theorists have studied the role of power in such failures. Powell et al. [11] observed that power can be distributed and negotiated more effectively among partners with similar SES transformation objectives. Etchanchu & Djelic [17] conceptualized these problems as stemming more from managerial styles, such as paternalistic approaches to influencing (or coercing) stakeholders in a desired responsible direction. Selsky and Parker [24] suggested that tensions among CSP partners may stem from both divergent organizational identities and relative power advantages. Tomlinson [15] concurred that tensions between trust and power lay at the root of implementation challenges. Gray et al. [12] likewise noted that partnership alignment may be constrained when power differences exist, adding that such differences may influence CSP leaders to favor more powerful players over others.

This body of work has contributed a valuable critical perspective. However, it suffers from several limitations: First, apart from Powell et al. [11], most of these articles have been conceptual in nature. Empirical evidence is needed to more directly link power dynamics to CSP outcomes. Second, most of these critical studies focus on power use under situations of overt conflict over resources, depicting conflict “as a result of the unequal distribution of power and wealth among social groups” involved in the CSPs [11] (p. 625). Likewise, Etchanchu & Djelic’s [17] work on parentalism pointedly depicted the explicit use of power, authority and control as contrary to the use of benevolence, nurturing and care. However, this overlooked the potential opportunity cost of members’ non-exercise of power, the use of which may advance potentially benevolent, empowering outcomes. Although Gray et al. [12] acknowledged that more covert forms of power (e.g., consciousness raising) may spur a partner’s ‘self-recalibration’ of their role identity (to adopt Le Ber & Branzei’s [13] terminology), they assumed that this would be challenging to accomplish. More problematically, they speculated that covert power use could risk shifting a field from quiescent to volatile, ultimately impeding partners’ goal alignment [12].

Third, these studies focused exclusively on endogenous disruptions, which refer to power dynamics that may be leveraged within the partnership [1]. Although exogenous disturbances are widely recognized to also exert influence within the context of CSPs, comparatively little critical attention has been devoted to the effects of potential exogenous disturbances by non-partners. Exogenous influences include factors that are beyond the partnerships’ complete control, such as “natural fluctuations” (e.g., rising sea levels) or “social fluctuations” (e.g., other organizations’ greenhouse gas emissions or new policies) that may cause the system to hit a ‘tipping point’ [1] (p. 1221). Attention from external stakeholders (e.g., investors) who wield influence may also be regarded as potential exogenous power disturbances [29].

In summary, despite advances in considering the role of power dynamics within the CSP process for SES transformation—and multiple calls for further investigation along these lines [15,24] to provide a more nuanced understanding of the challenges of the CSP process—empirical data remains sparse. Accordingly, we now turn to the literature on power dynamics for guidance.

2.2. Empowerment and the Dimensions of Power

In any organizational context, the capacity to take decisions may be affected by both overt and covert power dynamics [21]. Lukes [30] described power as a multi-dimensional construct, identifying three dimensions according to which power may be exercised. The first dimension, managing resource dependencies, is often used in overt conflict contexts. It refers to the capacity to influence outcomes by directly accessing and mobilizing scarce, critical resources. The second dimension, managing decision-making processes, may be overt or covert. It pertains primarily to the capacity to permit or restrict others’ access to decision-making arenas. The third dimension, managing meaning, is considerably more covert. It reflects the capacity to influence the meaning that shapes others’ lives and actions (e.g., by institutionalizing norms to a point where individuals/groups may be unaware that the exercise of power is contributing to issues of concern to them).

Although Lukes [30] stopped at the third dimension, Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan [21] integrated post-modern and post-structuralist research to describe a fourth dimension of power, which they posited cannot be managed because it is deeply systemic. Within any system, there is an existing set of power relations that not only ‘normalizes’ discourse for some (third dimension) but constrains what all actors can see/think. Thus, contrary to Lukes’ [30] third dimension, which adopts a critical lens of clear winners and losers, this fourth dimension suggests that everyone who is embedded within this shared web of power relations is ultimately constrained in their capacity for both exploitation and resistance. In other words, it suggests that even systemic change may simply establish a newly reconfigured set of power relations that ultimately continues to impose constraints, albeit perhaps differently. Similarly, as Hochrainer-Stigler, Deubelli-Hwang, Parviainen, Cumiskey, Schweizer & Dieckmann (2024) more recently note, powerful stakeholders may not be obstructing transformation simply for the sake of being difficult [31]. Rather, they may simply perceive a risk associated with engaging in endeavors initiated by less powerful players. This nicely illustrates the potentially hindering (or facilitative) role of the fourth dimension of power by acknowledging that even the powerful act according to constraints.

While other, more recent models of empowerment also address the role of empowering participation in decision-making (e.g., Hurlbert & Gupta (2015) [32]), and do so more directly in relation to advancing sustainability transformations, the Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan [21] framework goes beyond participation in decision-making to also recognize that power dynamics also arise in the third and fourth dimensions. Thus, the Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan [21] framework for empowerment represents the most integrated view of all dimensions and remains a potentially valuable addition to the discourse on power within CSPs. In view of the imperative for agentic empowerment to achieve SES transformation, we retained the Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan [21] framework as our theoretical lens to explore the question “How do power dynamics affect the CSP process for advancing SES transformation?”. We now describe the methodology for our qualitative research project before presenting our empirical results and discussion.

3. Methods

3.1. Research Design

Research questions that explore the “how”/“why” of an issue warrant a qualitative methodology that permits rich examination of a phenomenon [33,34]. A case study methodology was selected “to deal with a full variety of evidence documents, artifacts, interviews and observations—beyond what might be available in a conventional historical study” [34] (p. 11). The case study for our research setting was The Ottawa Centre EcoDistrict CSP.

3.2. Profile of Case Study Organization

The EcoDistrict CSP was Canada’s first official instance of the broader North American urban EcoDistrict movement [35]. Founded in 2012, it fit Vestergaard et al.’s [16] description of a micro-partnership CSP focused on SES transformation because it sought to undertake both education and community-building in order to impact economic development and environmental sustainability. According to the EcoDistrict’s own documentation, it was designed to “make the downtown Ottawa core more socially vibrant and attractive to businesses and organizations looking to relocate or expand, and to achieve this objective while upholding sustainability standards” [35].

The impetus for the EcoDistrict’s environmentally sustainable focus was originally economic. Federal government buildings leased within the heart of Ottawa required major retrofits to improve their carbon footprint, but government policy only permitted federally regulated Public Works to renovate government offices. Repeated federal governments had neglected to include environmental responsibility specifications (e.g., waste management, energy or water efficiency or any other sustainability standard) in their commercial leases. Faced with the daunting costs of retrofitting aging infrastructure after the financial crisis of 2008–2009, the federal government aimed to reduce its presence in the downtown core and transition to offices elsewhere. This contributed to the present-day environmental challenges to the owners and lessors of buildings in the city center.

It was against this background context that the affected commercial property stakeholders met over drinks at a variety of green building industry events. After some discussion about the federal government tenants’ intentions, they discovered a common interest in the economic and environmental sustainable development of the downtown core. These founding members established a steering committee, which eventually formalized and grew into the board and advisory committee for an Ottawa Center EcoDistrict CSP. The EcoDistrict board of directors ultimately comprised individuals from diverse professional sectors and backgrounds, including consultants, a real estate broker, a chief energy management officer from the dominant local utility and others with knowledge of (and commitment to) environmental sustainability. Notably, the board did not include representation from the local municipal government, and many advisory board members did not work within the geographical boundaries of the EcoDistrict. Nevertheless, each board member was considered to possess distinct capabilities and social capital that, collectively, offered potential to engage municipal and local business partners’ support for the EcoDistrict.

At its peak, the EcoDistrict had 49 members, including representatives from the local residents’ association, local private sector firms, sustainability-minded nonprofits and public sector utilities. The EcoDistrict’s CSP structure may therefore be characterized as a business–NGO configuration (with government parties representing interested/engaged but largely exogenous observers) [16].

Partner collaboration ranged from transactional to transitional levels of engagement, with no single partner other than the EcoDistrict Executive Director (henceforth ED) stepping up to assume a transformative role [16]. The EcoDistrict classified its CSP partners according to one of three categories: staff members (of whom there were only two), Champions (mainly organizations located within the geographical boundary of the EcoDistrict) and Ambassadors (mainly organizations that fell outside the physical boundary of the district, but who were meant to serve the EcoDistrict by offering environmental services to other members and/or by promoting the EcoDistrict outside of the city centre). In addition, the EcoDistrict assigned the category of Observers to external organizations that had not signed on as Champions/Ambassador partners, but who were nonetheless interested in the EcoDistrict and maintained varying degrees of engagement with it, such as by co-sponsoring activities and/or contributing their perspective at events (e.g., other Ottawa-based eco-nonprofits and the Ottawa Centre community residents association).

Overall, this EcoDistrict CSP can be classified as a ‘strong’ collaboration for sustainability in that it involved “frequent interactions, integrated across multiple organizational functions” and “a high level of contextualization, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach” [34] (p. 1045). It was a paradigmatic example of a CSP for SES transformation in that its intent was for actions to “lead to a significant alteration within a system, potentially leading to substantial impacts” [4] (p. 308). Notably, the EcoDistrict never achieved its potential impact due to its dissolution in 2018.

3.3. Recruitment of Study Participants

The first author submitted a brief overview about the proposed study to the EcoDistrict ED, who then expressed a willingness to coordinate data collection with members of the EcoDistrict. The ED then emailed members on behalf of the research team. Participants were subsequently selected for participation based on three criteria: first, ensuring sectoral representativeness (i.e., public/private/nonprofit); second, including representation from all four categories of EcoDistrict members; and third, aiming for Yin’s [34] recommendation of 20–30 participants for a viable case study but stopping when the data appeared to reach saturation. In total, 22 data collection interviews were conducted (≈approximately 45% of the community membership), including 11 private, 6 nonprofit, 3 public sector and 2 EcoDistrict administrators.

Table 1. Participants by organization sector and membership type.

Sector	Ambassador	Champion	Observer	Staff	Total #
Private Sector (six from Property sub-sector and five others)	6	5			11
Nonprofit	2	1	3		6
Public Sector (arts, utility and govt services)		2	1		3
EcoDistrict Admin				2	2
Total Interviews	8	8	4	2	22

provides the complete breakdown of participants by sector and EcoDistrict membership category.

3.4. Procedure for Data Collection and Analysis

Qualitative data included semi-structured interviews, observational data (e.g., of EcoDistrict learning events such as Environment Week, and the physical environments of members’ workplaces) and secondary data (e.g., the EcoDistrict website, its annual reports and published research on the broader EcoDistrict movement). The protocol for the semi-structured interviews was aligned with the CSP process framework and addressed critical incidents of activities that were seen to facilitate/hinder the socio-ecological system transformation process. Following each interview, the data was transcribed and returned to the interviewees for clarification or confirmation of accuracy. All interviews were conducted by the lead author and lasted an average of 60 min. In addition, reflective memos were written after each interview, and updated for completeness and accuracy after each interview was transcribed and coded. An ‘overall process’ journal was also maintained to observe patterns of themes across the reflective memos, and these themes informed the coding process. Of particular interest was that our data collection period began in the spring of 2016, two years before the Ottawa EcoDistrict CSP was dissolved.

To analyze the data, each transcript was coded by the lead author and a research assistant using the software program “Atlas.ti”. We used an inductive approach where the coding, naming of data fragments and analysis were performed simultaneously [35]. Our approach was also iterative [33], continuously consulting the literature while coding to both make sense of the data and to draw implications for theory. The rigor of the first order codes was further ensured by inter-rater agreement: When coders disagreed about the appropriate coding of a segment of text, either the definition of the code was clarified to obtain agreement, or a new code was created. This iterative coding process continued until the codebook stabilized. At a later stage, once the role of power dynamics in the early stages of the CSP became evident, the second author independently coded the data specifically for evidence of power dynamics. As such, the final data analytic method was a combination of both inductive and abductive methods.

4. Findings

While a handful of sustainability initiatives emerged from the EcoDistrict CSP, the overall goal of facilitating an SES transformation for the downtown core remained elusive, and the EcoDistrict project was dissolved two years after our data collection began. It remained mired in the CSP stages of partnership formation and collaborative strategic plan formulation, with very minimal tangible implementation. We therefore focused our analysis on how the use (and neglect) of the four dimensions of power influenced the first two phases of the CSP process (partnership formation and collaborative strategic plan formulation) and impeded the CSP from achieving a full-scale SES transformation.

It is important to note at the outset that, despite the stereotype of power within the CSP literature, which stresses the role of power in seeding overt conflict and disagreement [11], we found the opposite. All of our interviewees spoke of the EcoDistrict efforts in almost effusively positive terms, praising its collaborative ethos and potential. We demonstrated the darker implications of this in our findings, and returned to this important observation in our discussion. Next, we explored the use/neglect of the dimensions of power observed in the CSP process, noting our informant sources by alphanumeric code.

4.1. Power Use/Neglect Within the CSP Process

4.1.1. First Dimension of Power: Use/Neglect of Resource-Based Power

Within the CSP formation stage, securing core funding was a primary resource concern for the EcoDistrict from the start, and they believed the municipal government would be the most appropriate source for it:

Our biggest challenge…is recurring funding. We need some sources of funding that we can rely on looking at a 3–5 year horizon like in any business… It can’t all be, you know, day to day, month to month… If I look at successful EcoDistricts in North America (and there are some), I’m not aware of one that the major government agencies are not engaged… The type of money we’re looking for, relative to the budgets that these organizations have, it’s not even a rounding error…I’ll give you a number, $400,000 a year. City budget is $2.4 billion, okay?

[5C2, Public Sector, Champion]

To substantially sustain their initiative financially in the interim (until the City was prepared to offer core funding), the steering committee sought (and were successfully awarded) substantial seed funding from the Province of Ontario’s Trillium Foundation and from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. These funds enabled the EcoDistrict CSP to recruit a variety of human resources to the operational arm of the oversight body, including one full-time ED, one full-time support staff member and seasonal co-op students. It also allowed the partnership to lease a temporary office within The Impact Hub Ottawa (situated within the EcoDistrict boundary), and to develop a virtual location (a website) from which they could launch their formation. As one larger Ambassador member noted, this outreach to granting agencies represented a necessary tactic to secure some predictable level of funding, even if temporary:

…within the environmental sector, there are no provincial, nor federal current funding opportunities that are specific to sustainability working with businesses. So for us [an eco-nonprofit], and for the EcoDistrict, it’s an Ontario Trillium Foundation. And it’s that or bust.

[6A4, Nonprofit, Ambassador]

As an additional part of their strategy for expanding their financial resources, the EcoDistrict sought to grow their membership because of the immediate funds it could provide (via membership fees and/or sponsorship of individual events). Importantly, the board felt that growing the EcoDistrict’s membership would also help to portray the initiative as having widespread political support, which they considered important for eventually securing municipal funding. Accordingly, they launched a series of “Discovery Events” in which their advisory board met and engaged individually with a wide range of potential alliance partners. This continuous recruitment process enabled the EcoDistrict ED to discern prospective members’ resourcefulness for the EcoDistrict (i.e., their transformation capabilities and financial resources), and enabled the prospective partner to learn how participating in the EcoDistrict might prove resourceful for their own organization’s goals.

However, when it came to contributing financial resources beyond annual membership fees (e.g., requests to commit significant resources to collaborative CSP-level initiatives, such as efficient district-level energy infrastructure, or to invest more in their own building efficiency), property developer members declared that they were powerless due to a variety of resource constraints. One was the lack of municipal policy incentives, which might have helped offset the cost of building more environmentally sustainable buildings [16S2]. A second constraint was competition among property developer members for scarce tenants. They were reluctant to commit financial resources that could instead be applied as incentives to secure their own tenants:

You can imagine that property owners who have vacant space in their buildings are competing to fill that vacant space, are not always going to want to collaborate with each other because they have their own vested interest. So there are those types of dynamics that fall into play.

[10c3, Private Sector, Champion]

Although property manager members could conceivably have obtained greater financial resources to contribute to the EcoDistrict’s environmental objectives by increasing their commercial tenants’ expenditure contributions (e.g., rent), this, too, was presented as infeasible in light of both the competition for tenants and the fact that tenants were already burdened with basic energy-efficient replacement costs:

A lot of times one of the issues is the lease doesn’t create any incentive for the tenant to do anything [environmentally responsible], right? Then, if the tenant does anything, the entirety of the savings goes into the pockets of the landlord. It doesn’t even split.

[16S2, Nonprofit, EcoDistrict Admin]

Establishment of a formal alliance among co-located property members may conceivably have empowered them to circumvent competitive pressures and garner the needed extra financial resources by conveying common expectations to tenants (e.g., higher rents across the entire district to cover environmental costs). However, while the EcoDistrict ED encouraged meetings among this subgroup, formalization of an alliance along these lines was never pursued.

Ambassador members (who were not part of the subset of co-located property developer members but were rather smaller businesses that offered environmental services to the property developer and other CSP members) also considered themselves to be at a resource-poor disadvantage in terms of both time and money. They had attended informational events geared toward the collaborative strategic plan initially, but they noted their diminishing engagement with (effective departure from) the CSP over time. As small businesses, the inability to generate sufficiently profitable demand for their environmental services at these events reduced their commitment to further time contributions:

From our standpoint, when we got involved… we were optimistic we might receive more introductions, referrals to partners within the EcoDistrict willing to make that choice [for our eco-services], and that’s yet to happen. We haven’t even seen one…

[19A7, Nonprofit, Ambassador]

4.1.2. Second Dimension of Power: Exclusion/Inclusion in Decision-Making Processes

The EcoDistrict’s initial position was that gaining the City’s support was of primary importance and this propagated throughout its CSP process, especially in the CSP formation stage. The EcoDistrict’s preliminary discussions with Ottawa municipal government representatives, however, convinced them that core funding would only be forthcoming if they could persuade the municipality that they would not be a politically risky beneficiary for municipal funds. Accordingly, with regard to the CSP formation stage, their desire to grow their partnership and include many influential organizations was driven by their effort to reassure the City of widespread political support for the EcoDistrict, thereby framing the risk of the EcoDistrict venture as minimal. Because each of the founding members of the EcoDistrict board had been in the property sector for some time, they had established contacts with the major players in the industry.

The board encouraged the ED to be highly inclusive in the process of member recruitment, enabling any of these major players who wished to partner for the sustainable development of the downtown core to do so (as Ambassador members). Indeed, the ED did so in a highly collaborative manner, enabling them to define the role that they might play:

When you’re trying to grow, you’re very humble, you’re very flexible. Because if you visit the client [potential member] three times [for funding], and they’re turning you down and then you say, “Well what exactly would work for you? Or how can I massage this proposal for it to work for you?” So I got to give [the EcoDistrict ED] credit for that. A lot of what you’re seeing out there right now has been tailored to engage people… We wanted support in the community, we wanted people to know about us, we wanted people to start talking about us…

[5c2, Public Sector, Champion]

However, the EcoDistrict ED and the board were mindful that, as a result of this collaborative approach to recruitment, the board members and many Ambassadors, worked outside the physical boundaries of the EcoDistrict (i.e., the downtown core). They were concerned that this potentially posed a challenge for acceptance of the EcoDistrict’s mission among those who were (residentially and/or commercially) located in the downtown core:

Part of the challenge… is that a lot of the people that came in deciding…to create an EcoDistrict weren’t necessarily people [geographically situated] in that area…there were people from the outside that thought, ‘Well, you know what? I think this would be a great idea.’ …But… it was [not] something that was born from the people in the EcoDistrict wanting this, saying, you know, ‘We need this for our community or area to be able to distinguish ourselves or raise our profile or value.

[10C3, Private Sector, Champion]

Therefore, in the CSP’s strategic plan formulation stage, the EcoDistrict made a concerted effort to collaborate with businesses and others in the local community. Their strategic use of decision-making power to empower community members was evident in the inclusive planning session that they held at City Hall: It was advertised widely and was well-attended by both members and external observers (municipal government representatives and community members). Participants were invited to rotate from table to table, with each table holding group discussions on how to render the downtown core greener. Ideas were transferred onto post-it notes, affixed to a central board, categorized by themes, and then voted on by attendees (to prioritize certain strategic themes for action) [4A3].

The EcoDistrict CSP incorporated the most popular member-generated strategies from the City Hall event into their collaborative community strategic plan. The resultant set of activities, which reflected community input, consisted of a multi-level strategy that included (1) district-level environmental strategies (e.g., reducing vehicle congestion by determining ideal dedicated cycling lane locations, developing a plan for district lighting and heating), (2) partner-level environmental strategies (e.g., directly enabling partner organizations to explore how to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions) and (3) partner-level social strategies (e.g., establishing community events to learn about grassroots activities, such as test-driving electric vehicles, which people could undertake individually or together with fellow residents to develop purchase intentions). A central criterion in the EcoDistrict’s decision to include popularly supported activities in the plan was its potential to maximize engagement; this was viewed as another way of accommodating the desire on the part of the municipality (their target funder) to see evidence of widespread political support for the EcoDistrict.

Following the identification of activities, a timeline for implementing those goals was communicated to the membership via a plan posted on the EcoDistrict website. However, it was conveyed without prior consultation. This exclusionary incident in the EcoDistrict’s decision-making process effectively presumed that the CSP mission would not benefit from broader input on the matter of scheduling. The unfortunate result was that members were left confused as to why certain activities were undertaken at different points in time. Although there was a general consensus that the ED was continuously open to input, such ad hoc input was initiated only intermittently. Thus, the lack of any organized forum impeded the empowerment of members to collectively and systematically provide input on the scheduling.

Likewise, metrics for evaluating the achievement of environmental objectives were neither collectively deliberated, nor subsequently communicated. Instead, the EcoDistrict ED, in the eagerness to adopt a collaborative approach to the recruitment of prospective new members, intentionally adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward performance metrics, by simply acknowledging whether members engaged in any recognized environmental certification process at all:

We’re looking at the process… We’re just there to see, you get a checkmark for us knowing that you are using and participating in a [sustainability] program of sorts. So… you [just] have to demonstrate that you’re moving towards your targets.

[16S2, Nonprofit, EcoDistrict Admin]

Rather than complain about their exclusion from these aspects of the EcoDistrict’s decision-making processes, members’ objections centered on the non-inclusiveness of diverse levels of government decision-making. For example, it was challenging for property owners and developers to establish a business case for more standardized environmental performance metrics in the absence of incentivizing regulation, because retrofitting costs were externalized inconsistently to the commercial property managers. Unfortunately, the federal government neglected to include such considerations in its decision-making, showing an unwillingness to nudge its federal departmental tenants toward greater environmental responsibility, be it in buildings where the federal government were the owners/landlords or in buildings where they were simply tenants. The federal government’s decision-making approach was thus judged to be exclusionary, and members regarded this as a significant challenge to the EcoDistrict:

How do you get the federal government onboard, because they are half of the [tenants in the] downtown core? …If they’re not involved, then it’s kind of one sided … We’re doing everything we can, there’s very little we’re not doing, but half of the downtown is not participating in this, and that’s the Feds…

[2C1, Private Sector, Champion]

This is all about the federal government in my opinion… They’ve just done some astoundingly stupid environmental decisions in terms of how they use their buildings… I see [the need for federal government engagement in more environmentally responsible leases]…as being one of its [the EcoDistrict’s] major challenges, and major objectives.

[7A5, Private Sector, Ambassador]

Given the recent arrival of a climate-friendly federal government in 2015, the EcoDistrict staff and board members’ hopes were high for increased attention to their emerging strategic environmental priorities:

Currently this [the EcoDistrict] is a voluntary program. No business is mandated to report on their carbon footprint. But [with the prospect of federal] government incentives and/or regulatory requirements for these businesses to report on their energy consumption or their total carbon footprints… There is an opportunity to get those businesses to be a little bit more engaged.

[6A4]

We know that there will be mandatory energy disclosure soon, so we will soon know how much energy every building uses, and we will be able to approach those buildings in a different manner.

[16S2, Nonprofit, EcoDistrict Admin]

At that time, members felt it imperative for the CSP collaboration process to proceed swiftly to implementation to take advantage of some emergent environmentally supportive initiatives. One of the Champions noted the following:

There’s a window of opportunity here that doesn’t come by every year or every even five years. The EcoDistrict’s been around for five years. With the latest development, globally, nationally, provincially, and municipally, at the municipal level, all winds are [now] favourable for an EcoDistrict in Ottawa. If we don’t firm that up, with…everything we’ve talked about here—the partnerships, the funding, the incubation, work with academia and all that—within, I’ll say the next three years… I don’t think it will be an EcoDistrict after that. So timing is of the essence here.

[5C2, Private Sector, Champion]

In view of the property members’ concerns regarding having these issues addressed in higher-level government regulatory decisions about building efficiency, the EcoDistrict could have used its decision-making power to invite other (higher) levels of government to their strategic planning events. However, direct engagement was never persistently pursued. EcoDistrict members/partners were also excluded from government decision-making at the municipal level. For example, provincial laws were strict on waste handling. Nevertheless, the City unilaterally decided to discontinue recycling services in business districts, including those within the EcoDistrict, without consultation. Similarly, albeit with regard to decisions over new property development applications within the district, an EcoDistrict member—a car-sharing services company—was excluded from the City’s deliberations over parking arrangements in a new property development. This car-sharing partner’s presence in the process might have facilitated the consideration of more pro-environmental options for property development planning decision-making (e.g., mandated parking spaces for car-share vehicles in new developments):

There’s not room at the table for the little guys–the bicycle people, the car-share people, the rideshare people, even the taxi people. How do we get access into that area? … There’s a whole bunch of other [environmental] players that aren’t included in the conversation…

[7A5, Private Sector, Ambassador]

Despite the municipality’s exclusion of the car-sharing member, the EcoDistrict did not hold any follow-up meeting to empower its members to collectively decide how to respond to the City. Yet, the impact of this exclusion was not lost on its members:

Based on what we see in other areas for how [successful] EcoDistricts work, it’s really [supposed to be] a partnership with the municipality, [but] so as far as I understand, I do not believe that the City of Ottawa is a direct participant in the EcoDistrict.

[6A4, Nonprofit, Ambassador]

In summary, the Ecodistrict board and/or ED could have decided to remedy this exclusion from all levels of government decision-making arenas by holding events that would empower its members to engage directly with government representatives. Yet, it unilaterally chose not to, opting instead to focus on the myriad awareness-raising activities generated at the original City Hall planning activity, and accepting a less involved engagement approach, as the discussion on the next dimension of power indicates.

4.1.3. Third Dimension of Power: Managing Meaning

During the formation stage, as the EcoDistrict began recruiting a complex, broad mix of members, they invited the government representatives to be listed as official “Observers” of the EcoDistrict. Observer members included representatives from the municipality, the federal government and the National Capital Commission (NCC; a federally regulated body which governs specific properties within the provinces of Ontario and Quebec near both sides of the Ottawa river). Observers were considered external to the CSP process; they were not partners, but were meant to engage by following the EcoDistrict’s progress and events calendar, in the hope that they would eventually formalize their involvement as either Champion or Ambassador members. Occasionally, government observers participated in events that allowed them to portray a cooperative role (e.g., the Electric Vehicle awareness-raising day, or the well-publicized ‘Cycle to Work’ event to witness cycling challenges that might inform the determination of the appropriate location for a pilot of dedicated cycling paths). Apart from these occasions, however, they did not become actively involved.

The EcoDistrict also managed meaning with its early potential EcoDistrict partners via the value proposition that it presented to them. The message was twofold: First, that forging collaborative relationships with all stakeholders to support triple bottom line outcomes for the district was challenging, but would be more achievable as a collective rather than by working in isolation (as individual businesses and associations); and second, that participation in the EcoDistrict could be essential to their own competitive advantage, particularly in regard to furthering their corporate social responsibility portfolios.

Accordingly, some Ambassadors viewed their role as transactional in nature, lending support to others within the EcoDistrict through their products or services: For example, one sustainable retailer saw their role as supporting the EcoDistrict by attending their events and offering gifts in kind, “offering seminars or kind of being included as a subset of events” [3A2, Private sector, Ambassador]. Another noted the following:

We’ve tried to [deal directly with Champions]… The EcoDistrict…obviously, doesn’t want to shove an Ambassador down a Champion’s throat to take on a product they’re doing. But certainly through networking events we’ve been introduced to some people.

[4A3, Private Sector, Ambassador]

Other Ambassadors, however, viewed their involvement with the EcoDistrict as largely symbolic:

I think being in the EcoDistrict especially for us, a lot of the time is a symbolic thing. It’s very important to us symbolically to be a part of that, to help them when they need help.

[4A3, Private Sector, Ambassador]

For similar reasons, in their strategic plan, the EcoDistrict also prioritized a myriad of high-profile sustainability activities. The objective was to gain positive media coverage which would influence the public’s (and the municipality’s) perception of the EcoDistrict partnership as something of value to the City. In so doing, however, several less-high-profile opportunities to manage meaning effectively were missed. For example, several newer members who had joined the partnership in later formation stages, but who had not participated in the original development of the collaborative strategic plan, felt at a disadvantage in terms of grasping the meaning behind this plethora of busy activity. By extension, they felt disempowered to understand how to contribute constructively:

I’m not clear of what their objectives are… I don’t know if they haven’t properly defined them or whether they have defined them and I’m just not aware of what they are. But since I’m not aware of [their] objectives, I’m not in a position to be able to contribute [and] help drive the motion forward.

[10C3, Private Sector, Champion]

Relatedly, the ED’s desire to recruit a multitude of partners (for the sake of managing perceptions of a vibrant partnership) also led the EcoDistrict ED to be highly accommodating in the approach to evaluating success metrics. Although many members retained strong interpersonal trust in their ED, the absence of mutually understood partner-level metrics made ‘success stories’ more difficult to communicate back to members in any regular communications (e.g., newsletters). This effectively disempowered both partner members and observers from discerning any substantive SES progress amidst the EcoDistrict’s pace and range of activities, beyond mere idea sharing:

I think that what’s lacking [with the EcoDistrict] is more and more examples of how they’re doing… I think there could be more in terms of that, showing actual results coming out of it.

[4A3, Private Sector, Ambassador]

Right now, if we [the EcoDistrict] were a shopping mall, we’re missing the anchor store… If I had 30 s to describe to you the value of [the EcoDistrict] right now, the elevator pitch, it’s not easy…

[5c2, Public Sector, Champion]

The lack of active meaning-making about progress by the EcoDistrict also curtailed partners’ willingness to commit further investment of their (or their respective organization’s) time/money. This further hindered more substantive progress of the EcoDistrict’s goals. Some members also struggled with distinguishing the mission of the EcoDistrict relative to that of other Ottawa environmental organizations with a more established program of activities:

One of my skepticisms of it from day one was, well, EnviroCentre [another local econonprofit] is kind of doing it [i.e., raising awareness about sustainability] … The Zibi [property] development is doing an Eco-District [near the downtown core], [and] we’ve got Carbon 613 [in Ottawa], which is a small business [-oriented service conducting] carbon accounting, carbon reduction program. And those are just the three that I have some interest in… And I know there’s Ecology Ottawa and Ottawa Riverkeeper. I heard at some point there were 160-something environmental-type organizations in the city. So… one concern I have with the EcoDistrict: Although I think it’s got good legs, and it gets a great amount of press… I think its message gets diluted.

[2C1, Private Sector, Champion]

The EcoDistrict’s failure to more meaningfully demonstrate that its mission complemented, rather than competed with, co-located eco-organizations was also seen as problematic for persuading the municipality of its added value:

In terms of process, they’re [The City of Ottawa] dealing with public money. They have to be extremely transparent on the whole process… Everyone [including other local econonprofits chasing the same green dream for Ottawa] is looking for some funding… So, it’s tricky business and that’s why city staff are extremely, extremely conservative in what they do.

[5C2, Public Sector, Champion]

Even EcoDistrict partners who were co-located environmental nonprofit observers to the EcoDistrict shared this concern. They considered their respective organizations’ objectives to overlap somewhat; nevertheless, they perceived some degree of complementarity and thus expressed support for it:

I think the more people they [EcoDistrict] can arm themselves with, in terms of support, and bolster a better understanding of who they are and what they do, then they would be able to be more of a force to be reckoned with, yeah… It remains to be seen… But I would like to think that somebody higher up is taking them seriously. I hope.

[3A2, Private Sector, Ambassador]

Members also believed that collaboratively establishing shared terms of reference with other more established, local environmental nonprofit organizations could conceivably help avoid actual duplication of efforts (and, importantly, the appearance of same). The EcoDistrict advisory board likewise recognized this too:

[2C1, Private Sector, Champion]

The other issue…[is] competition [with other local eco-organizations]… Everyone is looking for some funding, for some help. We’re all chasing the same vision, dream: a better Ottawa, cleaner Ottawa, greener Ottawa, vibrant Ottawa. So we work closely with [other eco-organizations]… They need funds. [But when] a new program is available from the city…who should do it? … So… Politics are certainly a part of this.

[5C2, Public Sector, Champion]

Despite this recognition on the part of the CSP’s members and allied eco-nonprofits, the opportunity to manage meaning by establishing formal terms of reference for collaboration among these local environmental organizations were never established. This complicated the potential for meaningful empowerment to advance beyond the strategic plan stage:

Have we been meeting with…all those guys? Absolutely, yes. Are they allies within all of our initiatives? Absolutely, yes. How do we now, organizationally, take that and be able to implement it so that we get actual meaningful change within the space that we’re trying to achieve? That’s the missing link.

[13C6, Private Sector, Champion]

4.1.4. Fourth Dimension of Power: Systemic Power Constraints

In the formation stage, the decision to pursue core funding from the City may have been what spurred the EcoDistrict board’s primary strategic emphasis on forming a closer relationship with the City, but another reason was the recognition that any actions the EcoDistrict considered would be ultimately constrained or facilitated by municipal regulations (by-laws, etc.):

Based on what we see in other areas for how EcoDistricts work, it’s really a partnership with the municipality … [But] because the City of Ottawa is currently… not involved in such a hands-on, direct way, there is a limit to what the EcoDistrict can do because it is on city property and a city designated area. So with the support of, you know, a municipality, it could potentially enhance the progress.

[6A4, Nonprofit, Ambassador]

Accordingly, the EcoDistrict ED attempted to work within these constraints by concluding that his approach to the City had to be collaborative:

I have spoken to and developed relationships with about half of the councillors. I’ve known the mayor for 25 years, but I’ve established a professional relationship around the EcoDistrict with the mayor. I’ve worked with many different departments in the city. The city is as bureaucratic as any other municipality, it takes time to get results, but I understand my role. I understand that my role is cooperation and collaboration rather than confrontation…

[16s2, Nonprofit, EcoDistrict Admin]

Yet, in contrast to the EcoDistrict board’s view of the municipality’s potentially influential role, some EcoDistrict members considered the municipality to be comparatively powerless in relation to the Province of Ontario (in which the City resides) when it came to developing environmental policy decisions for business operations:

City doesn’t have any enforcement of those things [environmental expectations for building applications]… In the [United] States and Europe, they [cities] have a much, much stronger political role to play…Canadian cities, are very…weak jurisdictions.

[7A5, Private Sector, Ambassador]

There’s [sic] a lot of environmental regulations that are connected to moving and managing waste… there’s [also] been lots of great ideas for simple approaches to composting [in multi-unit commercial buildings] that are all illegal in Ontario. You could do them in Alberta, you might be able to do them in Quebec, but you can’t do them in Ontario because we’re “very concerned” about how we manage our waste.

[16S2, Nonprofit, EcoDistrict Admin]

Despite this recognition on the part of other members, the EcoDistrict’s engagement with the Province never extended beyond application for funds from provincial granting agencies (e.g., the Trillium foundation). Doing so could have risked conveying a lack of collaboration with the City, by potentially creating a contentious situation for them with the Province (e.g., with regard to divergent approaches to waste management).

Another systemic constraint on the EcoDistrict’s power had to do with the position of EcoDistrict members within the structure of their larger (home) organizations. While the participating member may have been the geographically appropriate representative for that partner organization within the Ottawa Centre district (insofar as the branch office was physically located within the EcoDistrict), often the member was not the partner organization’s prime representative on environmental or corporate social responsibility matters. As a result, several members felt unable to pressure their fellow corporate employees, located elsewhere, who were the ones actually in charge of corporate environmental initiatives. For example, the corporate offices of one of the Canadian property management partner organizations in the EcoDistrict operated an environmental improvement program that sought to engage tenants in recycling; however, it did not fall within the scope of the local property manager’s job to conduct a follow up analysis of the effectiveness of that program, nor to pressure their headquarter colleagues to do so, nor even to request follow-up evaluation data from their corporate counterparts. Indeed, it was felt that exerting any such pressure would be regarded as inappropriate interference:

We’ve got our corporate group that’s developed this [environmental] program, and I would hope that they’ve done their surveys… (because I think we’ve spent a lot of money on this program)…but I can’t say if they have or not… But, within…our side of things…the property management staff…they’ve got their hands full with their day to day… they don’t have time…it’s not a requirement for their job to follow up and survey people and make sure that they’re using this program.

[2C1, Private Sector, Champion]

Relatedly, with regard to contributing to EcoDistrict activities, several partners remarked that they could more easily contribute their own human resources’ volunteer time than contribute any further significant financial support, because the latter would have required a stronger business case to their respective organizations [10C3]. Similarly, some members’ local offices formed part of a larger organization that was national or even international in scope. In such cases, members perceived their local (Ottawa) office as being a relatively insignificant player in the structure of the larger organization, which they considered to have also reduced their authority to mobilize greater responsiveness even if they wanted to:

Being in Ottawa, we kind of, we get the aftermath of everything that happens in Toronto and Vancouver… I’ve been trying within our company to try to push… But I’m just a manager in Ottawa so I don’t get much traction, I annoy them more than anything else… So I have these conversations… and…it goes nowhere. Well, I don’t know, maybe it goes somewhere but I don’t see it.

[2C1, Private Sector, Champion]

The net effect was that, more often than not, the local EcoDistrict member of the partner organization lacked influence in their home organization to win a budget (or even information) that might have been applied to the implementation of eco-initiatives within the EcoDistrict partnership. Yet, even faced with such constraints, the EcoDistrict never solicited membership from the pertinent representatives in partner organizations beyond the City of Ottawa. Doing so could have risked conveying a lack of collaboration with the local EcoDistrict member, creating the appearance of inappropriate interference with their organization.

5. Discussion

5.1. Summary

Our main research question in this study was: How do power dynamics influence the CSP process for advancing SES transformation? Using a critical theoretical lens applied to an in-depth case study of the Ottawa Centre EcoDistrict CSP, we revealed how four dimensions of power use and power neglect (resources, decision-making, managing meaning and systemic constraints) played out within the CSP’s effort to empower both internal and external stakeholders to take meaningful, sustainable and long-term action.

This use/misuse of power dynamics ultimately appeared to impede the CSP from achieving its SES transformation ambitions. More specifically, while a small number of sustainability initiatives were successfully held (i.e., outputs realized such as ‘Electric Vehicle’ days, which were community education events; ‘Cycle to Work’ days, which engaged municipal councillors in testing the safety of cycling to the downtown core; and a ‘food court recycling’ pilot, which resulted in the diversion of food court waste in one commercial building in the district), the overall outcome of the CSP hardly represented the attainment of the full district-level strategic sustainability plan envisioned by the EcoDistrict’s founding members. Nor, by extension, did it reflect the kind of impactful SES transformation that the EcoDistrict sought.

5.2. Emergent Model

We now illustrate the apparent role of power dynamics within this failure to achieve full-scale SES transformation. See Figure 1 below. Our next section explores the theoretical implications of these findings.

5.3. Theoretical Implications

5.3.1. Disuse of Available Internal Power

In a number of respects, the CSP neglected sources of power available to it. For example, while the EcoDistrict leadership was able to marshal financial resources from provincial funders (resource power use), they failed to sufficiently leverage the financial resources of their own members, most notably the property developers (resource power neglect). This disempowered the CSP members.

Interestingly, we observed that it was not only disuse of the first dimension of power (resource-based power) that appeared to impede the empowerment of the CSP and its individual partners. The process also appeared to be hindered by the neglect of other, less overt dimensions of available power. For example, members’ exclusion from the environmental decision-making arenas (second dimension) of their respective headquarters (located elsewhere) left little space for members to calibrate their roles and act effectively. This reinforces Le Ber & Branzei’s [13] claim that inclusion represents a key factor in supporting the successful momentum of a CSP.

In addition, the EcoDistrict leadership’s overarching collaborative ethos—evident in their partnership formation and strategic plan development stages—appeared to impede the management of meaning (third dimension of power) in myriad ways. It disempowered diverse members’ (Ambassador vs. Champion) understandings of their roles in contributing to the EcoDistrict, just as it muddled other local eco-NGOs in this regard. This was pertinent to the development of both the final authoritative strategic plan text and to the timeline. These points align with what Koschmann et al. [9] might describe as a failure of the CSP to create value by failing to manage meaning through communication processes. That is, for a CSP to have value as a CSP it must develop a ‘collective agency’ or the “capacity to influence a host of relevant outcomes beyond what individual organizations could do on their own” [9] (p. 333) through authoritative texts that have the capacity to marshal others and attract capital.

5.3.2. The Paradox of Collaboration: Too Much of a ‘Good’ Thing?

To elaborate on the last point above, the possibility that an excessively collaborative ethos applied during the process may be counterproductive has been relatively neglected in previous studies of power in CSP which assume that partnerships will be ripe with conflict and strife between key stakeholders, e.g., [11,12]. In the case of the Ottawa Centre EcoDistrict CSP, no member held ex ante material interests where “the socio-economic well-being of one member of a collaboration—or those they represent—occur[ed] at the expense of short or long-term deterioration in the socio-economic well-being of another” [11] (p. 623). We found no evidence that the partnership organizers were intent on using power to manipulate or dominate, promoting or protecting “organizational interests of the powerful, to co-opt weaker players or to prevent opponents from gaining power and reconfiguring the field to their advantage” [12] (p. 2). Rather, our informants (representing almost 50% of the members of the EcoDistrict) expressed universal support for the project, its ED and staff. Rather, it is this collaborative ethos which appeared to be a double-edged sword with regard to the CSP’s effort to achieve its SES transformation goals. Indeed, our findings reveal that the CSP leadership’s initially collaborative position vis a vis the municipality disabled power dynamics which could have accelerated ideas into the desired CSP implementation stages. Thus, although the EcoDistrict was a stellar example of collaborative relationships that empowered it to collectively demonstrate their worthiness to the municipality, it appears that a strict norm of collaborative discourse may have paradoxically perpetuated dependencies (e.g., on the municipality), constrained independent critical and creative idea generation and impeded the desired transformation.

To put this in terms of Hurlbert & Gupta’s (2015) reference to the split ladder of participation [32]: The EcoDistrict’s collaborative approach to the unstructured nature of the challenge led them to shift somewhat from a position of low trust to higher trust internally, but the leadership still maintained a largely placating approach toward internal stakeholders’ roles, and more problematically, toward external stakeholders throughout its existence. In general, attributing power externally can risk creating a disempowering dependency [24,36]. In this sense, the ‘collaborative ethos’s’ diminishment of controversy within the EcoDistrict reinforces our conclusion that they may have benefitted from addressing the political issues more overtly. This conclusion reinforces Turnhout, Metze, Wyborn, Klenk & Louder’s (2020) emphasis on the importance of (re)politicizing co-production by allowing for the contestation of knowledge [37]. Turnhout et al. astutely suggested that depoliticization may actually reinforce (rather than mitigate) existing unequal power relations, ultimately hindering wider societal transformation. We would concur that the EcoDistrict CSP leadership could have, instead, attempted a reversal in their collective view of the nature of their own powerlessness and switched strategies to focus on seeking a private sector sponsor rather than municipal support. However, they missed this opportunity to build resilience into the CSP process. The next point illustrates how internal trust arising from ‘staying the course’ may also have been a contributing problematic factor.

5.3.3. Questions of Powerlessness Amidst External Power Imbalances

Indisputably, there are some sources of power that lie completely beyond a CSP’s control. Unequal distribution of power both within, and in various sectors external to, the partnership also hindered the successful full-scale SES transformation envisioned by the EcoDistrict. Most notably, the failure to secure federal, provincial or even municipal representatives into the collaboration in the early stages (as more than ‘observers’ or ad hoc event participants) meant that the balance of power remained external to the CSP. Previous studies of power in interorganizational relationships have pointed out the important role of formal authority and control of critical resources in determining partnership outcomes [5,15].

It is true that, in some instances, where the oversight body of a partnership has no formal authority or limited access to resources, they may still influence other members through ‘discursive legitimacy’. However, this is “only if they are recognized as the authentic voice of those affected by the issue with which the collaboration is concerned” [15] (p. 1172). With the proliferation of Eco-NGOs in the Ottawa area (and the failure to establish terms of reference for each NGO’s role vis à vis the City), the EcoDistrict CSP was constrained both internally and externally in achieving even this form of process legitimacy. Without access to these determining factors, the EcoDistrict was unable to garner enough power itself to drive through the kind of transformation that it envisioned.

Nevertheless, it seems noteworthy that, despite members’ recognition of this complex web of multi-sectoral and multiorganizational power relations in which they were situated, partners did not consider the EcoDistrict to be powerless. Indeed, members exhibited strong faith in the power of collaboration. They were optimistic that the CSP would provide an empowering ‘collaborative advantage’—positive outcomes that would not be achievable if member organizations continued to work independently on sustainability projects [9,15]. They admired the EcoDistrict leadership (board and director) for their ability to recognize, and seize, several opportunities for organizational empowerment via a highly collaborative approach with partners (e.g., allowing for considerable flexibility in terms of internal partner goal-setting, asking little in terms of unified effort and imposing no district-level metrics), and to do so with limited resources.

6. Conclusions, Limitations and Future Directions

6.1. Conclusions

While causality cannot be definitively confirmed, it is nonetheless evident from our analysis that an underuse or neglect of important power dimensions not only occurred, but appeared to be key mechanism by which the EcoDistrict CSP failed to achieve its SES objectives. By also focusing on power dynamics in the absence of overt conflict, we further reveal the counterintuitive costs of an overly collaborative approach: namely, it appeared to reinforce an optimistic complacency that obscured power-pertinent decisions and contributed to a failure to achieve larger SES transformation goals.

6.2. Limitations

This study is not without its limitations. It is a single case study and, as with any qualitative case-based research, our findings may not generalize to other CSPs. We have also bracketed the findings to the time frame between the CSP formation and dissolution, which curtails discussion of any positive outcomes that may have arisen from the CSP subsequent to its existence. For example, Le Ber & Branzei [13] note that even in cases of CSP failure, key people, activities or initiatives may live on through role recalibrations such that positive trajectories towards successful CSP outcomes are maintained. Indeed, we observed (post-data collection) that key members of the EcoDistrict moved on to (perhaps) more powerful roles within other organizations connected to the partnership, thus enabling the original vision of a sustainable downtown core to be pursued via other means.

6.3. Practical Implications

Despite these limitations, our paper nonetheless offers several important practical insights that may offer direction to other CSPs seeking SES transformation. We list these below.

First, the sectoral locus of the oversight entity (i.e., the board) needs careful consideration. In the case of the EcoDistrict, the nonprofit sector was the least powerful location for it. Notably, studies of successful sustainable urban CSPs have involved oversight entities that were positioned within the municipality or championed by a private sector organization (Clarke & Fuller, 2010) [10].

Second, we highlight the limitations of unstructured collaboration within a cross-sectoral partnership context, and the risks of overly optimistic faith in the same. Whether leadership is to be permanently assigned or rotated, some degree of directive leadership from the oversight entity appears required to advance the partnership toward its mission [9]. A CSP may be too complex to operate as an organic, self-managed team.

Third, and highly relevant to the previous point, is that although the ED was continuously open to input, such ad hoc input was initiated only intermittently. Thus, ED establishment and the moderation of an online communication forum for member suggestions may have better enabled the empowerment of members to (a) raise suggestions on various matters (i.e., nature of events, scheduling of events, etc.) and (b) collectively and systematically provide input on those suggestions.

Fourth, and also highly relevant to the second point, is that, despite collaboration within the broader CSP, competition for tenants among property management members of the CSP appeared to impede collaboration. Had the ED established a formal alliance among co-located property members, it may conceivably have empowered them to circumvent competitive pressures associated with conveying common expectations to tenants (e.g., modestly higher rents across the entire district to cover environmental costs, while also underscoring savings associated with gains in energy efficiency). Therefore, EDs may assist their CSPs not only by encouraging meetings among potentially competitive members of a particular subgroup, but also by directing them regarding how to explore ways to formalize and incentivize an alliance along these lines.

Fifth, in the course of recruiting members to the CSP, our findings suggest it is important for EDs to be mindful of the status of organizational members with regard to their individual (home) organization. If the local representative of a member organization does not have influence over decisions made at its headquarters (which may be situated elsewhere), it would be advisable for the ED to connect with an HQ-based member with whom the CSP may negotiate more effectively.

Sixth, funding agencies (such as the Trillium Foundation) could have played an enhanced oversight role as well, by incentivizing CSPs to work more closely together with other co-located environmental NGOs as a condition of receiving grants. This would not only have alleviated inefficiencies arising from competitive pressures (e.g., due to some degree of overlapping mandates), but could potentially also have enhanced the achievement of transformative outcomes by assisting with both internal communications (member relations) and external communications (lobbying). For example, as noted previously, EcoDistrict Ambassador members were organizations that joined (even when not co-located in the CSP district) to offer their environmental services to CSP members. They paid membership fees, promoted the EcoDistrict on their websites and attended informational events geared toward the collaborative strategic plan. However, the private sector Ambassadors’ engagement with the CSP diminished over time because of their inability to generate sufficiently profitable demand for their environmental services (either at these member events, or with the general public, through their visible association with the CSP). Had the funding agency required the CSP to demonstrate formal collaborative plans with a co-located environmental NGO (e.g., the Envirocentre or Ecology Ottawa, both of which have well-established outreach channels and a high public profile), the latter could conceivably have more actively assisted with the promotion of Ambassadors’ services, and ultimately retained their support. In addition, regarding external communications, co-located partner NGOs with lobbying expertise could have focused on lobbying different levels of government to address the CSP’s desire for incentivized regulation around performance metrics. This, too, could have liberated the CSP to focus more of its efforts on internal dynamics and projects.

6.4. Future Directions

As noted in our theoretical contributions Section 5.3, our attention to the role of power dynamics in the CSP process for SES transformation has integrated emergent management research from the literature on CSPs, e.g., [10] with the literature on empowerment, e.g., [21]. By delineating the use/neglect of different dimensions of power (resource, decision-making, meaning, systemic constraints), and demonstrating how this impeded the ability of this promising CSP to progress beyond initial planning stages, we advance the empowerment literature and respond to the multiple calls for a better understanding of the role of power dynamics in socio-ecological system transformation [12].

The rich descriptive data in this qualitative study also enabled us to develop a novel multi-stage process model of an (un)realized SES transformation partnership as per Figure 1. This figure, and the empirical data underlying it offers direction for future larger scale empirical research.