Negotiating shared Responsibility for sustainable urban Development: Pronouns and In-here-ness as rhetorical Resources

• This article explores how issues of shared responsibility are negotiated in the realm of managing collaborative efforts between organizational actors for sustainable urban development abiding to the Agenda 2023 – with a particular focus on the rhetorical resources used in such negotiations. Through empirical material from recorded meetings in a one-year project at a municipal company, the article contributes to previous literature on collaborative ways of organizing and managing complex public challenges. With a focus on the discursive construction of shared responsibility, the concept of in-here-ness is introduced to denote accepted and assumed responsibility, which may shift through the use of pronouns: from a narrow ‘I’ or ‘we’ of stakeholders to a wider ‘we’ of collaborating parties. The article further contributes to the empirical field of sustainable development at the municipal level.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary (hsv//eng)

Keyword

discursive psychology

collaboration

negotiations

shared responsibility

sustainability

industriell ekonomi och organisation

Industrial Economics and Organisations

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)