![]() The conceptualization of sense of place for a whole organization is not well understood. However, most sense of place studies focus on the individual as a unit of analysis, while some have examined the environmental sustainability of organizations based on their collective actions. ![]() Researchers suggest that if individuals working in an organization have greater place-based connections to the land, the organization might make decisions that promote sustainability. Sense of place studies at an organizational level have implications for environmental sustainability and how the understanding of organizations is framed. There is growing interest in understanding how organizations contribute to environmental sustainability through their interactions with the natural environment, including their sense of place. Publication of this paper was supported, in part, by the Henry Mastin Graduate Student Fund.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The lead author is supported by a Zuckerman Fellowship. This work was funded in-part by start-up funds awarded to Kelly Biedenweg at Oregon State University in the Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences Department. ![]() The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The data underlying the results presented in the study are available in a zip file ( S2 File) uploaded with this submission.įunding: The authors received no funding specifically for this work. Received: MaAccepted: DecemPublished: January 14, 2022Ĭopyright: © 2022 Fleming et al. PLoS ONE 17(1):Įditor: Marcel Pikhart, University of Hradec Kralove: Univerzita Hradec Kralove, CZECH REPUBLIC (2022) Is there no “I” in team? Potential bias in key informant interviews when asking individuals to represent a collective perspective. These findings have implications for how researchers approach collecting information beyond the individual level.Ĭitation: Fleming W, King B, Robinson K, Wade E, Erickson B, Delie J, et al. Our research identifies a previously undiscussed potential bias of key informant interviews. We found that how individuals situated their perspectives into an organization reflects a complex personal and collective point of view reflecting five themes of personal versus collective language use: 1) sole personal perspective, 2) sole collective perspective, 3) distinction between collective and personal perspective 4) organization perspective with insertion of “I think” and 5) personal and collective perspective about organization and greater community. Our results indicated no difference in the frequency with which individuals use personal versus collective language. Methods included both quantitative analysis of personal versus collective language use frequency, and qualitative examinations of how individuals used personal versus collective language. This study specifically examined whether and how key informants, when prompted to speak for their organization, spoke collectively, reflecting a collective perspective versus their own. The use of personal and collective language is examined though in-depth semi-structured interviews from 15 environmentally-oriented organizations with a total of 17 interviews. In Bocas del Toro, Panama, ecotourism and environmentally based organizations are becoming more prolific due to abundant natural resources, making it an interesting case study for understanding sense of place from an organizational perspective. We examined the use of key-informant interviews as a method to understand collective sense of place. While there are well known methods for collecting information about sense of place at the individual level, there is a gap in understanding the best method to collect information at a collective level. Understanding a collective sense of place could illuminate place-based connections in natural resource industries, where it is as groups or as institutions that organizations interact with the environment rather than as individuals. This paper sought to understand the extent to which, and how individuals use personal or collective language when asked to articulate sense of place from a collective perspective.
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