The emergence of the emergence-based approach in community practice

ABSTRACT

Community practitioners are often challenged to work in complex environments and situations that naturally occur in communities. This article focuses on the theoretical and practical use of the Emergence-Based Approach that is relevant for work in complex community situations. Using this approach, the practitioner encourages the emergence of novel ideas and initiatives, and engages a decentralized network of activists, helping them develop their initiatives. Using a field study, we compare this approach to the traditional Outcomes-Based Approach. Although their mindsets are very different, and even contradict one another, we suggest practical ways to combine the two in an effective way.

KEYWORDS:

• Complexity
• Cynefin Framework
• emergence-based approach
• engagement
• outcomes-based approach

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our colleagues in the field of community practice and at the Jerusalem Intercultural Center for their valuable insights and comments during the development of the ideas in this manuscript. We would like to thank the Hanns Seidel Foundation for funding the MCCL research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.