This executive summary describes the author's dissertation which created and applied a storied systems design approach to understand how a local faith-based cross-sector social partnership envisions an ideal future partnership. The author interviewed 5 participants from the partnership and integrated their perspectives with her own stories and photographs from volunteering. The study framed organizational compassion and communitas to analyze how the partnership addresses suffering in society. Participants envisioned a future with safe relationships and sharing resources, while the study revealed gaps between this ideal and everyday realities faced by such partnerships.

1. Executive Summary for Dissertation
PhD Organizational Systems
Presented by
Dr. Dena Michele Rosko
May 17, 2018
This executive summary describes the what, why, how, who, and where of the dissertation by Dr.
Dena Michele Rosko titled, "Storied Systems Design for Faith-Based Cross-Sector Social
Partnerships via Organizational Compassion and Anthropological Communitas."
What
I created and applied storied systems design to learn from participants their vision of the ideal
partnership of the future in a society that supports them. The study integrated my stories and
photographs of my experience volunteering for a local faith-based cross-sector social partnership
(CSSP). In this faith-based CSSP, churches, government, and neighbors have come together to
solve a social problem, such as lack of shelter, resources, food, or belonging.
The study framed organizational compassion as the suffering that workers and clients of faith-
based CSSPs experience due to wealth disparity. Communitas comes in as the need to belong in
society to resolve suffering, and not be ostracized because of a lack of access to resources.
I found that I found support in the transition to motherhood, vocational ministry, and a desire for
spiritual family via volunteering with the faith-based CSSP. I found that the natural
environment's beauty nested the work, and that participants envisioned a future of safe and
loving relationships by sharing/receiving each other's gifts to provide what we need.
Why
This study helped a local faith-based CSSPs to imagine an ideal that propelled their work amid
the constraints that they encounter as they organize in a system that relies on wealth disparity.
I made transparent the research bent toward compassionate communitas by including the me as
the researcher as one participant in addition to the five individual adults.
This study mattered because no other known study has created storied systems design of
interviews, stories, and photographs, and analyzed findings via compassionate communitas, to
understand how people envision and experience partnerships.
This study offered unique approach to understanding faith-based CSSPs from a board and
volunteer perspective. Practitioners idealized what propels their work. Researchers can learn
how a faith-based CSSP can influence a more compassionate and communal society to counter
how society ostracizes people via limiting access to resources and safe love.
This integration mattered because ideals show what faith-based CSSPs, and society, needs to
improve access to basic resources and safe love.
The stories revealed gaps and connections between ideal and reality because they illustrated how
the researcher felt and made meaning from her experience volunteering, what she learned, as

2. compared to participants’ ideal vision of partnership amid the everyday realities of faith-based
CSSPs. This study honored both the researcher and participants.
How
I created and applied storied systems design to integrate partners' ideal visions of the future of
partnership with the researcher’s reflective short stories and photographs of the past.
First, I wrote seven stories that aligned with types of organizational storytelling to reflect on my
interpretation with volunteering for the faith-based CSSP.
Second, I included photographs from volunteering from 2012-2015. The photographs did not
show personally identifiable information, but included detail, nature, and establishing images of
the researcher's time volunteering.
Third, I asked participants of a local faith-based CSSP questions about their ideal vision of a
partnership of the future, and then rewind to present day to ask what realities impede that vision,
who they need to help change reality to match their ideal, and what they need from society to
support their work. The open-ended interview questions did not bias participants to
compassionate communitas because the questions use “ideal vision of partnership” instead.
Fourth, I explained findings by integrating stories and photographs with the idealized participant
conversations to discover the presence of compassionate communitas. Compassionate
communitas involved eight dimensions: (1) Collective responding, (2) Noticing suffering, (3)
Empathy, (4) Action to alleviate suffering, (5) Communicating concern, (6) Sense-crafting, (7)
Transitional experience, and (8) Transforming to complex wholeness.
Who
I interviewed 5 individual adult participants from a local faith-based CSSP with which the
researcher volunteered. These participants held various roles. I wove together my reflective
short stories and photographs of my time volunteering with the interviews for a past to future
glimpse of an ideal partnership's relationship with compassionate communitas.
Where
I recruited five adult participants from a local faith-based CSSP via email and at a board meeting
at the organization with two senior leaders' permission. I conducted interview conversations
during Spring 2017 on-site at a partner church with permission granted in a site permission letter
dated December 16, 2016. I successfully defended this dissertation on July 6, 2017, finished the
revisionary and graduation requirements in August 2017, and technically graduated with my
Ph.D in Organizational Systems from Saybrook University May 7, 2017.