Robert Vanwynsberghe

There is a proliferation of Public Sector Innovation Labs (PSI labs) around the world, with estimates that more than 500 now exist. They are under-studied as a contemporary innovation construct, making them a potent area for study. The definition of a PSI lab is still contested, although they commonly describe their relationship with government, their topics of focus, and the techniques that they use. The goal or purpose of innovation pursued by these PSI labs is often not described, though most efforts tend to focus on finding efficiencies and improving services for users and tend to operate within dominant governance paradigms. In this dissertation I explore the potential for PSI labs to imagine and catalyze transformative and emergent version of innovation, working at the intersections of personal, organizational and systems scales.I use a critical qualitative research bricolage, pulling together methodologies that challenge Western ways of knowing, allow for multiple truths to coexist, and invite a researcher with an active role in the research questions. Participatory action research (PAR) and constructivist grounded theory (CGT) are the backbone research methodologies in this bricolage. Research is conducted with co-researchers from three different PSI lab action research sites in Canada, and through interviews with expert practitioners in Canada and Europe.This dissertation opens up a cabinet of curiousities, rather than proposing definitive conclusions. It is grounded in interdisciplinary theory and has an ambition to be useful and accessible for practitioners. One part of the cabinet offers up a framework to more strongly theorize the work of PSI labs. A second part describes systemic interventions to create stronger enabling conditions for transformative and emergent innovation. A third section focuses on building transformative innovation learning infrastructure and practices. A thread that connects each section considers ways that we might think about measuring and evaluating the impacts and outcomes of PSI labs. Together, this cabinet of curiousities offers researchers and practitioners a plurality of ways to think about a transformative and emergent approach to PSI, and also what PSI might need to become in this time of urgent and complex challenges facing the public sector.

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Water is life. For millennia, the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo has nourished many Indigenous peoples along its 1,255 mile length, from it's source in the San Juan Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. The river is the lifeline, read as a map between the interrelated communities. Colonization turned the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo into an international border between the United States and Mexico, and in the last 40 years, our river/border has become heavily militarized. This project engages a practice of Indigenizing/decolonizing the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo as ancestral waters to various local Indigenous peoples, drawing from the collective memory of intergenerational indigenous fronterizxs (border residents) to examine the relationships between people of the Laredo/Nuevo Laredo community and the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo. To do this, I theorized a new theoretical framework called an Indigenous Fronterizx Cosmography, which braids Indigenous epistemologies, Xincanx ontologies, and borderland positionalities. This way, first-hand accounts are understood as intellectual traditions that revitalize, restore, and restory the holistic ancestral knowledges of the land and river. Next, I created a culturally-centric research methodology, named Fronterawork, drawing from Indigenous methodologies, oral history/testimonio sharing, and witnessing to document the lived experiences of 25 community elders and knowledge-keepers in/of/with/near/over/across the river's waters. Participants shared their knowledge of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, as well as their perspectives of how the river has changed over their lifetimes. Their testimonios were examined holistically, and in-context as embodied and emplaced situated knowledges of the river. When considered in conversation with each other, themes and subthemes emerged, suggesting two major approaches to understanding: river-as-water (Water Thinking) and river-as-border (Border Thinking). In response, I created a Pedagogy of Water that builds on the collective memory of community elders in order to teach the next generations about our river. This pedagogy interrupts dominant forms of displacement and violence against the diverse Indigenous peoples of the river/border communities, while revitalizing the ancestral relationships between the Indigenous peoples and the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo. Our collective memory serves as foundation from which to revitalize and honor the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo as part of the sacred landscape of what is today called south Texas.

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the United Nations (UN) have had an ongoing relationship over the past 80 years that culminated in granting the IOC Permanent Observer status at the UN General Assembly in 2009. This is an honor usually reserved for quasi-states and inter-governmental organizations: very rarely do non-governmental organizations (NGO) obtain this position. This dissertation critically examined the links between the IOC and the UN in a bid to gain an understanding of how and why the IOC obtained this status at the UN. Four research questions guided this study: (i) How, and in what contexts, has the UN engaged with the IOC in the past; (ii) Why/how is the UN currently engaging with the IOC; (iii) How/Why did the IOC obtain Permanent Observer status at the UN General Assembly; and (iv) What are the potential implications of the partnership between the IOC and the UN? In my pursuit of these questions, I drew in particular from the work of Dorothy Smith and Michel Foucault to aid my underlying examination of how forms of knowledge are socially constructed in ways that privilege some groups over others. The work of these theorists supported my attempts to contribute especially to the emerging field of research focused on inequitable power relations within and around the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) ‘movement’. My findings demonstrated that there were various factors at play that have influenced the relationship between these two organizations, including the neoliberalization of development, the global power of sport, and processes of legitimation for both the IOC and the UN.

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This dissertation examines event leveraging for health promotion with the outcome of increasing physical activity participation. The case of the Tour of Flanders (Flemish: Ronde van Vlaanderen) is unique because it is a medium-sized, joint spectator and participatory sport event. Although the literature provides examples of social event leveraging for health promotion, one of the limitations of the existing social event leveraging framework is that it does not integrate any concepts and principles of the field of health promotion. Therefore, social ecological theory has been applied to further examine event leveraging through an understanding of systems and targets. In doing so, a socioeconomic event leveraging framework for health and physical activity has been developed and proposed. Qualitative interviews were conducted with former and current event organisers of the Tour of Flanders (i.e., Het Nieuwsblad and Flanders Classics), start and arrival host cities (i.e., Sint-Niklaas, Ninove, Bruges, and Oudenaarde), and municipalities that hosted the Village of the Tour (i.e., Zwalm, Torhout, and Rekkem). In addition to interviews, quantitative surveys were administered with participants from the 2013 edition of the Tour of Flanders Cyclo, before (N = 1,091) and after the event (N = 639). The findings confirmed the socioeconomic nature of event leveraging aimed at increasing bicycle tourism in the region, as both the properties of the event and the context of the host were recognised as leverageable resources. The use of Flanders’ cycling heritage was an excellent tactic to inspire host residents and international visitors to actively participate in new cycling initiatives. Social ecological theory promoted consultation between the event organiser and the host government to develop initiatives that complemented each other in terms of systems and targets. Environmental targets were employed by the regional government by developing new cycling infrastructure and organising participatory cycling events, whereas individual targets were employed by the municipal government by providing cycling education to children. The findings provided sound evidence for organising joint spectator and participatory sport events to promote physical activity participation, while at the same time leveraging these events by providing physical, structural, and social resources in the host community.

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This dissertation consists of a critical examination of the City of Vancouver’s urban policies during a significant era of urban governance: the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. To do so, I will create two embedded case studies: one, featuring the creation of a social housing legacy to be left in the Athletes’ Village in Southeast False Creek, and the other on the enforcement of policies affecting or alleviating homelessness in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. How social housing and homelessness came to be incorporated into the event’s objectives, how the discussions and deliberations around these issues proceeded, and how the 2010 Winter Olympic Games impacted the City of Vancouver’s policy making process in the years leading up to the start of the 2010 Games will all be explored in the chapters to follow. The methodological approach I applied provides insights on how policies, operationalized under the guise of preparing to host a sport mega-event, were able to alter the political and social trajectory of the City of Vancouver. Guided by the overarching theoretical framework offered by critical urban theory, I relied on critical policy studies and critical discourse analysis. By carefully tracing the origins, nature, and intent of these policies as they unfolded in various iterations between 2000 and 2013, it was my ambition to contribute to a broader understanding of how sport mega-events influence urban policies and social outcomes. The 2010 Games, once marketed as a socially inclusive event, instead brought an intense wave of punitive urban measures that functioned to criminalize homelessness. Instead of filling the rooms once occupied by Olympians with those in need of housing, the number of social housing units made available shrunk gradually over time, eventually dwindling to but a handful of units actually constituting social housing. In critically disassembling the policies that bore direct influence on social housing and homelessness, my findings demonstrate the ways in which policy-making processes are altered, abandoned, or exacerbated as the mega-event drew near.

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