Revitalizing Urban Places: How Prosocial Organizations Acquire Saliency in the Eyes of Resisting Stakeholders

Abstract

Prosocial organizations represent key actors in the quest to promote positive change, foster social impact, and revitalize cities. Notwithstanding their importance in tackling the increasing challenges threatening our society (e.g., pollution, socio-economic inequalities), these actors may not be perceived as salient in the eyes of different stakeholders, and thus their work may be jeopardized by multiple forms of resistance. Scant attention in research has been devoted to understand how prosocial organizations may acquire saliency and navigate these forms of resistance while pursuing urban revitalization. We address this gap by engaging in a qualitative investigation of a Sicilian cultural center. We found that the prosocial organization in our study could navigate different occurrences of resistance and acquire saliency by enacting mechanisms that leveraged the engagement of supporting stakeholders and the idiosyncratic characteristics of place. Our study contributes to the literature about urban revitalization, prosocial organizations, and stakeholder theory—while also complementing research investigating the role of place in management.