Telfer Research Seminar Series - Charlene Zeitsma

***M.Sc. Students, these seminars can count towards the six mandatory Telfer Research Seminars Series required for your program (MGT 6191/ MGT 6991 / MHS 6991) (4 seminars for MSc Project-based students).***

Charlene Zeitsma, PhD

Grand challenges demand interventions that are both locally adapted and globally scalable. Research on institutional translation explains how ideas can be edited to move from one context to another but focuses primarily on dyadic sender – receiver translation. We draw from recent works on ecologies of translation that explore multidirectional translations involving multiple actors. While this research considers translation ecosystems as emergent, we ask how an organization working across multiple contexts can create and manage such an ecosystem. Through a longitudinal study of Desjardins International Development (DID), a development organization promoting financial inclusion operating in 65 countries over 55 years, we identity a catalyzing model based on managing the tension between contextualizing and transferability in the translation ecosystem. DID catalyzed a continuously expanding ecosystem of translation by fostering contextualized experimenting and cross context learning supported by connecting and creating actors, double embedding (of actors in interventions and interventions in contexts), and structuring durable supports. Our research contributes to the grand challenge and institutional translation literatures by demonstrating how deliberately catalyzing a translation ecosystem can sustain an adaptive, resilient and scalable approach to address complex and evolving grand challenges.