The Beginning: Collective Engagement for a Social Purpose

In a new series for GovComms we will be going along for the ride to follow the journey of the University of Adelaide's latest multi-year, multi-phase research project, which is called Collective Engagement for Social Purpose.

For this new series, we will regularly be joined by Dr. Taylor Willmott and Professor Jodie Conduit, who are from the university's business school.

The project emerged as a culmination of several projects and research across several sectors. However, all projects and research had in common one thing... how organisations could better engage with their stakeholders to drive improvements in both their products and the service offering's. This latest research comes from the position that stakeholders aren't passive recipients, that they are people that you want to engage with to make change, to work better with them, and to really drive that enhancement in everything that you do.

"We were thinking about how we can bring people together to generate, not just engagement at an individual level, but engagement really at a collective level, where we know from work that we'd done to drive change in any sector... But, we need to have engagement among groups. And we wanted to do that in a really meaningful context. And we didn't want to be, I guess, tied down to any one sector. So we started to think about this notion of collective engagement towards, or driving a real social purpose in society. And, our discussions really took off from there." - Jodie Conduit

The project will advance knowledge on how managers, consultants, and leaders can cultivate a shared commitment among a group of individuals or team toward a common cause that benefits the broader community and their environment.

The trio also discuss how Government can play a crucial role in bringing together community initiatives to help drive behaviour change.

"I think government really is an enabler, a facilitator of change. But I think more than that, when we get movements happening that have become bottom up movements, ultimately, you do need someone to come in and provide some level of structure and organisation. And, for real change to happen in the long term, you really do need the government to take ownership and share responsibility." - Dr. Taylor Willmott

• For more information about this research head to: https://business.adelaide.edu.au/collective-engagement-for-social-purpose
• If you have any questions about this episode or would like to get involved in this research please reach out to Dr. Taylor Willmott via: taylor.willmott@adelaide.edu.au

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