Context and how it matters: Mobilizing spaces for organization-community sustainable change

There are growing expectations that organizations should contribute to the sustainability of our planet. These have increased recognition of relationships between organizations and their external communities and what they might accomplish together. However, such recognition does not extend to appreciation of the contextual dynamics inherent in organization–community relationships that affect their ability to reach common ground in their joint efforts. In this essay we explore how interpretive, relational, and spatial contextual features previously addressed within organizations play roles in joint organization–community sustainability efforts. We present an example of the multi-decade development of a local foods economy in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, that has been spearheaded by multiple communities and organizations. We show how an Appreciative Inquiry Summit, one of a set of large group interventions developed by Organization Development consultants, made use of the contextual characteristics we discuss to foster shared overarching logics that enabled collaboration. We conclude with a research agenda designed to explore how relational, interpretative, and spatial contexts affect organization–community initiatives to accomplish sustainability, how planned change interventions might affect these contexts, and how such initiatives and their contexts unfold over time.