Expectations and Realities of Engaged Scholarship: Evaluating a Social Economy Collaborative Research Partnership

This paper examines and evaluates the dynamics of engaged scholarship within a complex communityuniversity research partnership. The British Columbia–Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (BALTA) brings together academics and practitioners with the goal of advancing understanding of the social economy and contributing to the development of a social economy research network in western Canada. Engagement in BALTA refers to both internal (academic and practitioner research partnerships) and external (research process) project components. Our findings indicate that the structure of the project, dictated in large part by funder requirements and the professional cultures of research participants, greatly influenced the nature and quality of engagement. This paper examines the BALTA initiative and the reflexive and adaptive process it has undergone as it responds to various challenges and seeks to realize the ideals and potential of engaged scholarship. Vol. 4, No. 1—JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND SCHOLARSHIP—Page 25 Introduction This case study assesses the successes and challenges of participants in an engaged scholarship project as they navigated the requirements of an academic funding agency and negotiated their shared and sometimes conflicting research objectives and outcomes. BALTA is one of six regional research partnerships established across Canada to investigate the social economy, with five years of funding (2006–2011) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the federal agency for higher education research and training in the humanities and social sciences across disciplines and all sectors of society (http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/about-au_ sujet/index-eng.aspx). Created by an act of Canada’s Parliament in 1977, the SSHRC reports to Parliament through the Minister of Industry. These partnerships, collectively referred to as the Canadian Social Economy Research Partnerships, are “made up of university-based researchers and representatives of community-based organizations operating as intellectual partners to create regional nodes (networks) that will conduct research relevant to the social economy in Canada” (SSHRC of Canada, 2006, p. 3). The BALTA partnership consists of 50 academics and practitioners based in British Columbia and Alberta, as well as nine national and international collaborators, and over 70 student research assistants. In addition to practitioners from a number of different social economy organizations, the academics involved represent a range of social science disciplines. BALTA’s definition of the social economy includes those organizations animated by the principle of reciprocity in pursuit of mutual economic or social goals, often through social control of capital. This definition would include all cooperatives and credit unions, nonprofit and volunteer organizations, charities and foundations, service associations, community enterprises, and social enterprises that use market mechanisms to pursue explicit social objectives. It would also include for-profit businesses where those businesses share surpluses and benefits with members (and/ or the wider community) in a collectively owned structure (for example, a cooperative). For the purpose of our study, this definition would not include entirely grant or donation-dependent nonprofit and voluntary organizations. Conceptually, the social economy is often considered to be the third sector of the economy, as distinguished from the public and private (forprofit) sectors. The social economy is, however, engaged in a process of continuous evolution and may partner with public and private sectors and, in this way, is founded on the principles of pluralism, reciprocity, and social integration (Pearce, 2003;