Nineteenth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

While municipalities have a crucial role in creating sustainable communities based on their functions in the city, they do not have institutional and organizational capacity to direct sustainable development. Problems of sustainability often involve uncertainty and risk and so it needs a more flexible and innovative structure to be able to manage new and more complex problems that need new procedure and actions. It seems to have sustainable development we require a new organization to conduct municipality activities toward sustainability. In other words, we are looking for a new knowledge-based organization which is innovative and flexible to direct and conduct municipality activities comprehensively. This organization is called Municipality Research Center in this research. While there are similar cases all over the world (APUR in Paris, IPPUC in Curitiba, TUPRC in Tehran and others), analyzing the organizational structure and main goals of these cases shows the diversity and fundamental differences between them. Talking about Vancouver, this diversity makes it more crucial to find out which type of research center and organizational form help municipalities in Vancouver to achieve more sustainable cities. This research debates two main subjects: What is the main goal and duties of a Municipality Research Center in Vancouver? What is the appropriate organizational structure of the Municipality Research Center in Vancouver?