Tensions in stakeholder engagement through an evolving workspace: experiences and responses in a nonprofit organisation

Performance challenges are not limited to commercial enterprises but also affect nonprofit organisations (NPOs) that are mission-oriented and sustain themselves without seeking profit (Helmig et al., 2014; Liket and Maas, 2015). For NPOs, one way of responding to such challenges involves strengthening relations with stakeholders whose support is critical for organisational viability (Balser and McClusky, 2005; Wellens and Jegers, 2014). Stakeholder engagement also ensures that NPOs remain responsive and accountable while sustaining their mission (Wellens and Jegers, 2014; Fu et al., 2024). Prior research has paid uneven attention to different NPO stakeholder groups, leaving some internal stakeholder groups less developed in the literature Wellens and Jegers (2014), Plaisance (2023). Among internal stakeholders, governance elites such as managers and boards have been studied (Renz et al., 2023), but we know far less about the engagement of employees and volunteers in NPOs. These two understudied groups constitute key human resources for NPOs, and their roles can go beyond operational tasks to support broader strategic organisational objectives (Alfes et al., 2016; Plaisance, 2023).

Given the differing roles, work conditions, and expectations of NPO stakeholders, it is likely that tensions will emerge when they work together (Einarsdóttir and Osia, 2020; Rimes et al., 2017). Although studies have examined tensions between volunteerism and professionalism (McAllum, 2018), tensions and paradoxes in volunteer management have received limited systematic attention (Hedegaard, 2023; la Cour et al., 2023). This leaves room for further research on how tensions between differently positioned NPO stakeholders are situated in organisational settings and addressed over time.

While many organisations have introduced shared physical, virtual or hybrid workspaces for engagement, research further shows that such workspaces are tensioned as they are enacted in everyday practice (Sivunen and Putnam, 2020; Manca, 2022; Hasbi and van Marrewijk, 2024). In our study, we approach tensions as interdependent oppositions that are enduring and become enacted through communication and material arrangements (Putnam et al., 2016; Schad et al., 2016; Manca, 2022). Rather than treating workspaces as neutral backgrounds, we approach them through “twists” that conceptualise space as agentic and evolving in a way that it is “continuously under construction” (Beyes and Holt, 2020, p. 12). Drawing from these groundings, we ask: How do nonprofit employees and volunteers experience tensions when engaging with the continuously evolving shared workspace? How does the organisation respond to these tensions over time?

In our study, we focus on internal stakeholders' participation in strategy work in a newly introduced and professionally facilitated workspace, the Situation Room, as it was enacted in the organisation. The context of our study is the largest regional unit of a nationwide NPO in Finland, which has rapidly lost key sources of income due to declining membership and reduced revenues. This emphasised the importance of strategy work and internal stakeholder engagement in the NPO. By strategy work, we refer to the activities and interactions through which organisational actors contribute to the formulation, interpretation and implementation of organisational strategy (Golsorkhi et al., 2015).

We contribute to existing research in three ways. First, we reconceptualise tensions in stakeholder engagement. In this case, these tensions are closely intertwined with the ongoing enactment of a workspace that is both processual and agentic. Second, we demonstrate how organisational responses to tensions unfold through iterative adjustments to communicative and material practices, such as facilitation, language, and participation arrangements, without removing the tensions themselves. Third, we show how sustained engagement in such a workspace enables employees and volunteers to move beyond operational roles and become co-creators of both strategy content and participatory processes. These contributions shift attention from managing tensions as isolated issues to understanding how stakeholder engagement, tensions, and workspace are dynamically related, particularly in nonprofit settings.

Stakeholders can be defined as “any group or individual who can affect or [is] affected by the achievement of the organisation's objectives” (Freeman, 1984, p. 46). This definition encompasses both internal and external stakeholders whose interests and influence can potentially shape organisational strategies and achievement of long-term goals (Freeman et al., 2018; Parmar et al., 2010; Phillips et al., 2003). The stakeholder literature has largely focused on stakeholder engagement in the company context (Kujala et al., 2022; Radoynovska, 2024). Less is known about stakeholders' role beyond the corporate sector, such as NPOs (Heikkinen et al., 2019; Dicke et al., 2023). However, recent discussions acknowledge the key roles that a diversity of stakeholders can take and the influence they can have in public and third sector organisations, such as NPOs, nongovernmental organisations and cooperatives (Dicke et al., 2023; Fu et al., 2024). The objectives of NPOs focus on value-based, moral or political issues that are important to their mission and their members (Hasnas, 2013; Heikkinen et al., 2019). Accordingly, it has been suggested that an NPO “can be viewed as an ultimate stakeholder organisation, where the organisation and its stakeholders” objectives are intertwined and joint activities create value for all involved parties' (Heikkinen et al., 2019, p. 7). Based on these insights, stakeholder engagement in NPOs can be understood as ongoing interaction through which organisational activities are sustained and developed.

Among internal stakeholders, governance elites such as managers and boards have been studied (Renz et al., 2023), but we know less about the engagement of employees and volunteers. These two understudied groups provide key human resources for NPOs, and their roles may extend beyond operational tasks to contribute to strategic organisational goals (Alfes et al., 2016; Plaisance, 2023). Compared with paid employees, volunteers contribute their time in an organisational context without, or with only limited, financial reward, and they form an internal stakeholder group on which many NPOs rely (Alfes et al., 2016; Plaisance, 2023). Prior research has examined how HR practices shape volunteers' attitudes and behaviour in NPOs (Alfes et al., 2016). Less is known about how employees and volunteers engage with one another as internal stakeholders, and how tensions in this engagement are organised in practice (Wellens and Jegers, 2014; Plaisance, 2023; la Cour et al., 2023).

Building on this focus on internal stakeholder engagement, we acknowledge that such engagement is tension-laden. The intertwined yet potentially divergent roles, expectations, and forms of commitment of employees and volunteers create conditions in which collaboration is negotiated. Thus, engagement does not only sustain organisational activities but also gives visibility to tensions that shape how these activities are experienced and organised in practice.

Einarsdóttir and Osia (2020) show how tensions are embedded in work practices and distinctions between employees and volunteers. Hedegaard (2023) conceptualises tensions as interwoven, highlighting how efforts to manage a contradiction easily activate others, sustaining their simultaneous coexistence. Together, these studies show that tensions in volunteer-based organising are not only structural role differences, but enacted in work practices, managerial responses and ongoing attempts to coordinate volunteer and professional commitments. Extending this work, we approach tensions between employees and volunteers as produced through ongoing engagement in which tensions can be conceptualised either as dilemmas to be resolved, as normal features of organisational life, or as paradoxes to be sustained to keep the organisation viable (Putnam et al., 2016; Schad et al., 2016). Thus, instead of framing tensions in NPOs as disturbances, they are approached as productive or even necessary.

Putnam et al. (2016) highlight how organisations exist through communicative processes that make tensions observable and consequential. Talk, texts, and artefacts not only reflect interdependent opposites but also perform them by framing and reworking them. In other words, through communication and discourse, organisational actors bring tensions into being as they talk about unclear or competing expectations and situate these in relation to their work. Through these communicative engagements, tensions related to expectations become visible as part of existing and emerging organisational arrangements, while also enabling alignments that hold activities together. In this process, communication both exposes and manages tensions.

In our study, we draw on this communicative perspective to sensitise our analysis to how such tensions become visible and are articulated. The communicative grounding shifts the analytical focus from tensions as static conditions to tensions as ongoing accomplishments: they emerge, transform, and stabilise through ongoing communicative and material practices (Putnam et al., 2016; Manca, 2022). The concept of paradox clarifies how internal stakeholders may inhabit tension dynamics. Paradox arises when contradictory elements are recognised as interdependent and necessary (Schad et al., 2016). Engaging with paradox requires communicative reflexivity within the organisation, understood as the capacity to acknowledge difference without resolving it (Putnam et al., 2016). From this perspective, attention turns to how organisations recognise, interpret, and respond to tensions.

Importantly, the communicative processes are intertwined with the material conditions of organising. In this study, workspaces are approached as settings in which tensions are experienced and responded to. Shared workspaces can be understood as material and communicatively constituted arrangements through which internal stakeholders engage. This aligns with a processual understanding of workspaces as continuously under construction, emphasising their ongoing formation through continuous enactment (Beyes and Holt, 2020). In addition to communication that keeps interdependent opposites in motion in organisations, tensions are also animated through material and spatially mediated forms of organising (Manca, 2022), as in workspaces that are tension-laden and continuously reconfigured (Sivunen and Putnam, 2020; Hasbi and van Marrewijk, 2024). This means that workspace tensions may not disappear through design or technology but instead persist and are reworked in ongoing organising practices.

Sivunen and Putnam (2020) demonstrate how work in a physical workspace produces persistent tensions such as presence versus absence and connection versus disconnection, as employees navigate multiple spatial and communicative expectations. Similar tensions have been identified in hybrid (Hasbi and van Marrewijk, 2024) and virtual workspaces (Leonardi et al., 2010). Hasbi and van Marrewijk (2024) further demonstrate how participatory design ideals and flexibility narratives coexist with selective decision-making, spatial hierarchies, and unequal access to hybrid arrangements. For instance, they identify a central tension of inclusion versus exclusion and argue that managerial attempts to neutralise or ignore it risk reinforcing exclusion. Furthermore, they call for recognising tensions as constitutive of the ongoing enactment of workspaces and as potential resources for reflexive organisational change. This theoretical framing directs our analysis towards how nonprofit employees and volunteers experience tensions when engaging with an evolving shared workspace, and how the organisation responds to these tensions over time.

This study focuses on a faith-based NPO, the Helsinki Parish Union, the largest parish union in Finland with the most extensive yearly budget and the greatest number of parishes within one city. The strategic focus of the Helsinki parishes is on understanding the needs of Helsinki residents and finding those who are most in need of support. Because of the changing operational environment, particularly the decline in church membership in Finland, including within the Helsinki Parish Union, the union rapidly lost a significant part of its income. Most of its funding comes from citizen memberships, which are collected by the government through taxation of church members. The decline in membership was one of the reasons why strengthening stakeholder engagement was important.

The study focuses on two groups of internal stakeholders who were invited to participate in a professionally facilitated co-development process concerning organisational strategy. Our analytical focus is on the engagement of employees and volunteers in the shared workspace. The internal stakeholders were employees of the parishes and the parish union, which provides administrative, financial and citywide parish services, and elected officials, that is, volunteer citizens appointed to positions of trust. These groups do not commonly have overlapping roles or tasks in the organisation and they rarely know each other. While employees focus on operative work, volunteers deal with strategic issues.

Engagement between internal stakeholders was planned to be initiated through a shared workspace called the Situation Room. The name did not refer to a war room or an emergency situation room, used in other contexts. The workspace was designed to enable new ways of bringing people together to discuss and develop strategic issues concerning the Helsinki parishes. Its main purpose was to enable engagement among stakeholders who had diverse motivations for cooperation and were interested in different aspects of the organisation's purpose, mission and goals. The workspace has been in use since late 2019, first as a pilot physical space and then virtually on Microsoft Teams and Howspace. A strategic project called Bravely Together took place during 2020–2022, focussing on strengthening cooperation and ensuring the NPO's ability to respond to a rapidly changing environment. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the engagement we study mostly unfolded online. A total of approximately 1,500 employees were added to the workspace within two days of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in Finland in mid-March 2020.

In this inductive case study (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015), the first author, the Chief Developer of the NPO, collaborated with two academic researchers (the second and third authors) throughout the research process. The qualitative research design was initially developed to capture internal stakeholders' experiences of engagement in the shared workspace. The main findings provide insights into internal stakeholders' experiences up until May–June 2021, when they were interviewed. To address how the organisation responded to the tensions between 2022 and 2025, we complemented the interview analysis with an autoethnographic reflection written by the first author, the Chief Developer, between October 2025 and March 2026. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method in which researchers use their own insights as data to explore organisational and social phenomena (Adams et al., 2021), including wider meanings connected with reflexivity (Eriksson et al., 2012), treating this perspective as both analytically valuable and a legitimate source of knowledge. The autoethnographic reflection enabled us to analyse how the organisation addressed the tensions in internal stakeholder engagement between 2022 and 2025 and the consequences of these responses for the NPO.

An important question in the research design was the dual role and the situatedness of the Chief Developer (Gioia et al., 2013). Her task, together with her team, was to develop the workspace and facilitate strategy-related discussions in it. Because of her double role as a researcher-practitioner, careful attention was paid to research ethics throughout the study. In particular, the aspect of “going native” was discussed throughout the research process, i.e. concerning the possibility of adopting the organisation's and the study participants' perspectives in such a way as to lose the higher-level perspective needed in academic research (Gioia et al., 2013, p. 19). As a result, the core ideas of the article were iterated and revised several times during the research process, reflecting both the practical realities of the organisational setting and the requirements of scholarly analysis.

Several positive aspects of being a member of the community studied were also identified, such as understanding the data and the context of this research better. For instance, the research collaboration between the Chief Developer as an insider and two outsider academic researchers made it useful to use autoethnographic reflections to complement the interview data. Insider/outsider team research was used throughout the research process, including determining what was studied, developing methods of carrying out the study, collecting and analysing data, and then telling the story (Bartunek, 2008). Whereas the first author was an insider, and knowledgeable about the NPO in its context, the second and third authors challenged and complemented her interpretations through outsider views and targeted questions, also providing friendly critique. In this way, the study progressed in dialogue with both practitioner-researcher and insider-outsider perspectives.

The first author conducted eight ethnographic interviews (Rinaldo and Guhin, 2019) with the study participants in May–June 2021 (Table 1). The interviews were conducted in a conversational, open-ended manner and focused on internal stakeholders' experiences participating in strategy work within the shared workspace. The interviewees had different backgrounds and work roles in the NPO, and they were selected on the basis of having no prior work or other relationship with the Chief Developer. For instance, they had not been involved in the development of the workspace. Instead, they had experiences as invited stakeholders in the early phases of using the workspace concept. To protect the anonymity of the interviewees through pseudonyms, we do not disclose their socio-demographic details. The audio-recorded interviews, approximately one hour each, were transcribed verbatim into text.

The autoethnographic materials used by the Chief Developer to reflect on organisational responses to the tensions between 2022 and 2025 were collected as part of her daily work (Table 1). These included personal notes from discussions with the development team, informal conversations with stakeholders involved in workspace activities, as well as feedback surveys and feedback discussions related to these activities, such as those collected from stakeholders and workshop facilitators in co-development processes.

The data-driven, systematically documented qualitative content analysis (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015, pp. 119–126) was conducted using Atlas.ti software. The analysis of the interview data was iterative and involved returning to the data repeatedly. The process consisted of all three authors first becoming familiar with the data, then coding, theming, and refining the aggregate conceptual dimensions several times. After several rounds of analysis and reflective discussions, three aggregate conceptual dimensions (Gioia et al., 2013) were agreed upon among the authors: (1) confusion versus clarity, (2) inclusion versus exclusion, and (3) fragmented versus shared goals. Each of the conceptual dimensions outlines a specific tension which unfolded as the stakeholders engaged with one another through the workspace. The Chief Developer wrote her autoethnographic reflections on organisational responses to the tensions through feedback loops and iterative sparring with the two other authors.

In this section, we provide insights into how internal stakeholders experienced tensions when engaging with each other and enacting the evolving workspace between late 2019 and May–June 2021. The autoethnographic reflection by the Chief Developer then demonstrates how the organisation responded to these tensions during 2022–2025, after the interview findings were known (Table 2). The reflections were written retrospectively between October 2025 and March 2026.

The starting point for joint work in the shared workspace was challenging because the NPO had not previously invited employees and volunteers to engage with each other. As one of the interviewees, Lee, pointed out: Unfortunately, it is so in the church that we are still very much solo players. Both employees and volunteers experienced uncertainty and confusion when first hearing about the possibility to participate in strategy making through the workspace. They found the purpose of the workspace in connection with strategy-related discussions and their own role in this context difficult to understand. To start with, more questions than answers were raised concerning the name of the workspace. As one interviewee, Beta, put it: What is the “room” and what do they [participants] do in there and what is “the situation” that is being followed? For some of the internal stakeholders, the term Situation Room evoked vivid metaphorical images, as Lee described: It makes me think about crisis operations when one makes up strategies and moves needles on maps.

After working with the workspace for a while, internal stakeholders found it easier to grasp its purpose and the value of their own participation in strategy-related work. The interviewees also noticed that by getting used to the specific features of the workspace, they began to describe it as a useful way of interacting and communicating with each other, as expressed by Drew: A platform where terribly much takes place and there is something for everyone. After gaining more clarity of the purpose of their participation, some stakeholders even strongly embraced the workspace, as River praised: The best that there has been. However, despite providing positive feedback, the interviewees felt that some uncertainty remained regarding the benefits and value of the workspace and the more precise nature of the strategy work in it, as Blake described positively but hesitantly: A bit unclear, but at the end it does not, well, it can be as well …

Looking back on the period between 2022 and 2025, I recall how the organisation responded to the uncertainty surrounding the purpose of the workspace. Sharing the findings from the interviews with my development team was uneasy yet defining; we all recognised the tensions. The first tension emerged from uncertainty about the workspace's purpose. Employees and volunteers were not sure whether they were invited to a decision-making session, a preparatory meeting, or a strategy seminar. In one workshop, a participant asked whether the Situation Room dealt with a particular situation and what that situation was. The question captured the thoughts of many employees and volunteers. Reviewing our invitations and notes, we saw the problem. Expressions we used as developers, such as facilitating interaction and reflecting on the division of labour, made sense to us but sounded alien to employees and volunteers we invited to participate in the workspace. We decided to shift the focus of our communication from what the workspace was to why it existed, replacing technical terms with more accessible wording. For instance, our expression Take part in shaping our shared future replaced Welcome to a Situation Room workshop, which began to reorient how the workspace was enacted. Yet complete clarity never arrived. Attempts to explain created more questions and continuously kept the workspace open-ended. We began to see that it was not problematic that questions were asked. Instead, the questions and the differing interpretations kept the dialogue going, supporting continued engagement and the articulation of emerging new ideas. For example, participants continued the dialogue in subsequent workshops, where discussions began to focus on recurring topics and emerging ideas were gradually translated into shared strategic goals, which gave the workspace a more recognisable direction while remaining open to multiple interpretations.

From the moment they received an invitation by email to participate in strategy discussions, employees and volunteers were unsure who could or should participate and why. Kim, for instance, considered themselves part of the group that was targeted in the invitations: I think that when it is for everyone it includes also me. Others, such as Alvi, participated precisely because they had received an invitation: If you have received an invitation, then well yes, I do at least go. For some, however, the experience was that professional developers themselves were the primary target group for all workspace activities. As Blake noted: It is in some way for those whose main task is now to develop things.

A key barrier for internal stakeholders was the development-oriented language used by the professional developers facilitating strategy-related discussions. Blake noted that participation required a specific level of prior understanding: One would almost need a dictionary. The complexity of the language and terminology used by the facilitators, such as the word co-development, made it difficult for some internal stakeholders to participate. This was vividly described by Kim: Monster of a word … long and bureaucratic-like … it is not like common sense, it didn't occur to me what one might mean by the word. The complex language was experienced as a barrier by those stakeholders in particular who lacked the time or resources to familiarise themselves with it, making them feel they lacked the verbal competence needed to engage. Educational disparities were further highlighted as a key reason for experiencing exclusion. Kim pointed out the differences in the educational backgrounds of some internal stakeholders: It shines through that I do not have as high a level of education as others.

The educational gap between employees and volunteers was significant in relation to strategy-related issues, where those with higher education were seen to have a clear advantage over others. River summarised this situation in the following way: People with higher education, they understand what strategy is and they have tools to think about how it affects one's work. Inclusion in the NPO strategy making was planned to be wide, but not everyone had confidence in the ability of the engagement arrangements to overcome hierarchy-based differences, as Kim explained: There are these higher-level people, but my kind are nowhere to be seen. This demonstrated how the lower-tier employees did not consider church strategy as a central task in their work, which generated experiences of exclusion. As Kim continued, more effort and communication would be needed to effectively encourage all invited to engage: One could advertise it more that it also concerns the lower tier. On the other hand, the importance of attending workshops to assert one's presence was emphasised by Kim: I take part in all kinds of things currently, so that we exist there as well.

Looking back on the period between 2022 and 2025, I recall how the organisation sought to address experiences of inclusion and exclusion. The second tension of inclusion versus exclusion proved more complex for us to respond to. We created the shared workspace to promote engagement and collaboration, but the workspace did not immediately enable broad participation. Invitation was not enough. Despite the open invitations, many participants did not feel welcome. Having various digital platforms to master in the workshops did not help. We decided to actively involve the participants in planning and execution, focussing on conditions within our reach: timing, language, platforms, facilitation, and access to results. This meant planning, testing and listening. We approached inclusion iteratively: rewriting invitations, testing pre-materials, and simplifying the digital setup. Instead of switching between multiple digital tools, we used only one platform (Howspace), which participants started to associate with Situation Room activities and with which they became familiar. We ensured that each workshop left a visible trace that participants could return to: a slide, a short video, or a message on the intranet. Slowly, the ways people participated began to evolve as the workspace became more accessible and predictable. Facilitators learnt to slow the tempo and rephrase terms, connecting the comments to the broader purpose of the work. Participation became less hesitant, with more participants contributing and responding through the workspace. The best feedback came when employees and volunteers asked to continue the conversation on the one, familiar digital platform between meetings. However, we also noticed how fragile the inclusiveness remained. Each new project risked reinstating who felt welcome and who did not. Inclusion depended on continuous attention to how participation was experienced.

While the active role of employees and volunteers was more and more encouraged in the NPO, fragmentation of perspectives and goals, along with a lack of knowledge, made tensions visible. The starting point was challenging because the church had not previously enabled internal stakeholder engagement in this way. The previous lack of joint discussions was also highlighted by River: They have not truly discussed issues with each other. When they began to engage, the internal stakeholders noticed they had little prior knowledge about each other's roles and tasks. One employee admitted to not knowing who the volunteers were. One volunteer said that, although they were aware of the parish union's existence, they had only a vague understanding of what it was, and what its employees did. Another employee noted that past negative experiences with volunteers influenced how relationships with them were experienced in the present.

The lack of knowledge of each other's roles and tasks unearthed tensions but did not prevent continuous engagement. Although stakeholders did not know each other initially, both groups' tasks and responsibilities became more familiar over time, as Beta explained: Employees are like the expert viewpoint and the everyday work viewpoint and then the elected officials [volunteers] bring in the wider angle. In other words, volunteers are elected to make strategic choices for the parishes and their broader perspective is needed, and employees are concerned with daily activities of the NPO.

The different perspectives among the employee groups within the church were also seen to hinder engagement more broadly in the NPO. As River noted: The secretaries and the caretakers and the people with higher education, ministers, deacons and others and the vicars, they have different views on many things. In general, competition between employee groups was described as negative, which occasionally exacerbated problems in engagement, as Lee noted: There is this so to say suspicion and this kind of competition.

Tensions related to prior experiences in the NPO were also noted between employees and organisational leaders. For the employees, the ideal outcome of participation in strategy discussions would have been stakeholder cooperation driven by employees' own bottom-up enthusiasm, as suggested by Drew: So that it would start from the employees' own will and enthusiasm and this kind of motivation. Thus, the push for engagement should not be provided top-down by the parish union leaders, as noted by Lee: The most dangerous thing is if the information is seen as coming from above. Such a situation would decrease employees' motivation, as Lee continues: If the parish union's leaders say something, it sinks like a stone. In other words, in a situation like this, the work may get done, but a spirit of mutiny rises.

Looking back on the period between 2022 and 2025, I recall how the organisation responded to fragmented understandings of goals and purpose. The third tension was perhaps the most challenging for the organisation. Differences appeared both between employee and volunteer groups and among employees, shaped by hierarchy and professional background. In the workshops, we noticed the difficulty of moving from a personal to a shared point of view. Focussing on workshop practicalities helped make dialogue more continuous and connected through the workspace. Practical measures, such as meeting informally before workshops and allowing time for discussion, helped. Another approach was to make the overall process visible, allowing the workspace to connect the various collaborations into a more coherent whole. We ensured that concrete activities took place before, in and after each workshop and that everyone knew what those activities were. Slowly, we started to see more discussions where shared ground gradually began to take shape. We understood that shared purpose cannot be declared in advance. For example, discussions continued across workshops and within the workspace between them, and through these repeated engagements, participants gradually began to identify common ground. It emerged through the effort of sustained dialogue as the workspace enabled connections across differences. We organised future workshops around this principle, inviting participants to co-facilitate and define questions. These practices did not erase differences, but they made them discussable. In the process, we learnt to make dialogue a method in strategy work, supported by how the workspace brought participants and their perspectives into relation.

Looking back at how the workspace was enacted by the stakeholders over time, I see that tensions did not disappear but changed in how they were experienced and how we worked with them in the organisation. What began as confusion, exclusion, and fragmentation gradually became more articulated, negotiated, and, at times, shared. In responding to these tensions, we focused on what we could address directly, such as invitations, pre-materials, timing, and facilitation. At the same time, we left structural issues, such as employees' roles in strategy work, hierarchy, and power relations, largely untouched. We addressed what was within our reach, knowing that the tensions would persist, and came to see them as signals of what mattered in the organisation.

Over time, we recognised signs of emerging common ground. As one participant described in the interviews I held in 2021, the workspace offered internal stakeholders an opportunity to speak, pursue their opinions, listen to others' opinions and together to come to new thoughts. Another reflected that now, there is more of that feeling that we do shared work. These accounts did not indicate that differences disappeared, but that participants increasingly related their perspectives to one another through engagement with the workspace as it continued to take shape. As another interviewee noted, we need to see the situation, and we need to see how to proceed, capturing how the workspace allowed participants to orient their contributions toward shared concerns.

Confusion did not resolve into full clarity but remained part of how stakeholders were experiencing the workspace, which we addressed by adjusting invitations, language, and facilitation. Experiences of exclusion did not vanish, yet participation widened as the workspace became more accessible and familiar, for example, when participants continued their exchanges on platforms already used in their everyday work. Fragmented perspectives did not converge into a single view but became increasingly connected as stakeholders returned to similar topics across workshops and recognised how their contributions related to one another, with the workspace enabling these connections without resolving underlying differences.

When the organisation's attention shifted to other projects, the insights developed through the workspace did not disappear. The practices we had developed remained, as reflected in interviewees' descriptions of continued engagement and shared work: planned participation, exchanges in strategy work, and co-facilitation. They became part of how the organisation now works, as the workspace continued to bring participants and their perspectives into relation. In this process, the workspace evolved from an uncertain and loosely defined initiative into a more recognisable structure.

This study examined how employees and volunteers experienced their involvement in professionally facilitated strategy making in a new, shared workspace. The analysis identified three key tensions: (1) confusion versus clarity, (2) inclusion versus exclusion, and (3) fragmented versus shared goals. Over time, the organisation continued stakeholder engagement and made incremental adjustments to participation. Together, these findings offer a central contribution by foregrounding the shared workspace as an agentic, ongoing accomplishment (Beyes and Holt, 2020) through which stakeholder engagement and tensions take shape. The study shows how tensions are worked with through iterative adjustments in the enactment of the workspace, and how, through this process, internal stakeholders become co-creators within the organisation.

The first part of the discussion addresses how employees and volunteers experienced tensions, while the subsequent sections focus on how the organisation responded to and worked with these tensions over time. The findings support a constitutive view of tensions as interdependent oppositions enacted through communication and material practice (Putnam et al., 2016; Manca, 2022). In our case, the tensions became visible in how the workspace was enacted in practice, including its name, invitation texts, facilitation language, digital platforms, and the organisation of engagement before, during, and after strategy workshops. This aligns with earlier research showing that workspaces are not neutral solutions but ongoing accomplishments through which organisational tensions unfold (Sivunen and Putnam, 2020; Hasbi and van Marrewijk, 2024). By foregrounding the workspace in this way, the study shows how paradoxical tensions are constituted and worked with.

The findings contribute to research on nonprofit stakeholder engagement by showing how employees and volunteers, two underexplored internal stakeholder groups (Plaisance, 2023), do not simply provide operational resources but can actively contribute to strategic direction when appropriate support is provided. This adds empirical nuance to the conceptualisation of NPOs as stakeholder organisations in which organisational activities and stakeholder relations are closely intertwined (Heikkinen et al., 2019; Wellens and Jegers, 2014). At the same time, the study demonstrates that inclusivity cannot be assumed. Educational differences, professional language, and implicit hierarchies shaped how stakeholders experienced the workspace and who felt able to participate meaningfully.

The workspace brought stakeholders who had little prior experience of working together into engagement, but it also amplified existing distinctions. Early confusion regarding the purpose of the workspace highlights a recurring challenge in stakeholder engagement: participation requires clarity about roles and the value stakeholders are invited to co-create (Parmar et al., 2010; Freeman et al., 2018; Fu et al., 2024). In our case, confusion emerged through communicative artefacts such as the name of the workspace and development-oriented terminology used in invitations and workshops. Similar dynamics have been observed in studies of digital and multi-channel engagement that can complicate how stakeholders connect and interact with NPOs (Mato-Santiso et al., 2021). Instead of abandoning the workspace, the NPO studied adjusted how it was introduced and how stakeholders were invited to work with it. Simplifying language, reframing invitations around purpose, and offering repeated opportunities for engagement were central responses. These findings reinforce earlier research emphasising that stakeholder capacity and trust develop through sustained and adaptive engagement (Balser and McClusky, 2005; Wellens and Jegers, 2014).

Viewing tensions as inherent features of organising helps explain their persistence in stakeholder relations. The tensions identified were embedded in how the workspace was enacted and reconfigured in practice, including facilitation routines and language use. They emerged through continuous engagement with the workspace (Putnam et al., 2016; Manca, 2022; Sivunen and Putnam, 2020). The findings show that adjustment occurred through concrete changes, such as clarifying workshop purposes, slowing the facilitation tempo, rephrasing expert terminology, and making discussion outcomes visible through shared artefacts. These adjustments did not remove tensions but enabled stakeholders' continued engagement despite confusion, exclusion and fragmentation. In this sense, the workspace enabled tensions to be worked with iteratively. The Chief Developer's reflection illustrates how organisational responses focused on aspects of the workspace and facilitation that were within the development team's reach. More structural issues related to hierarchy and formal roles remained largely unchanged. This highlights the bounded nature of organisational responses and underscores that tensions linked to workspaces tend to persist and evolve. The findings show that tensions can remain productive without being resolved.

The tension between inclusion and exclusion was closely connected to how the workspace was enacted by internal stakeholders. Less-educated employees, in particular, experienced exclusion through expert language and development-oriented terminology in strategy discussions. These findings resonate with studies on unequal voice and internal silos in NPOs (Rimes et al., 2017) and with research on soft power, which shows how subtle communication practices can shape engagement (Aromaa et al., 2020). Consistent with research on hybrid workspace design, the findings demonstrate that openness does not automatically translate into inclusion (Hasbi and van Marrewijk, 2024). Although participation was formally open, engagement depended on how accessible the workspace felt in everyday practice. Organisational efforts to adjust these features supported broader participation, yet inclusiveness remained fragile and required continuous attention.

Beyond highlighting tensions and organisational responses, the findings show how continued enactment of the workspace enabled internal stakeholders to become co-creators of both strategy content and engagement processes. Amid these tensions, ongoing engagement enabled employees and volunteers to connect fragmented perspectives. Initially, limited knowledge of each other's roles constrained collaboration, but repeated opportunities for engagement supported greater mutual understanding and a gradual shift towards shared strategic concerns. Over time, stakeholders increasingly recognised how their different perspectives were acknowledged by the organisation.

The findings also suggest a move towards shared ownership of strategy making through the workspace. While early engagement was strongly facilitated by professional developers, later developments encouraged participants to shape discussions and continue their engagement between workshops. This supports research emphasising listening-oriented engagement as central to nonprofit viability (Passetti et al., 2019; Fu et al., 2024). In our case, employees and volunteers became co-creators of both strategic content and the processes through which strategy work was conducted. The organisational context intensified this engagement. In a context of declining membership and financial pressure, the workspace became a key arrangement through which stakeholder engagement was organised (Helmig et al., 2014; Liket and Maas, 2015). Tensions were not resolved, but the continued enactment of the workspace contributed to new practices, such as planned participation, dialogue-based strategy making, and co-facilitation, that endured beyond individual workshops. This matters because empirical attention to employees and volunteers as contributors to strategy-related renewal in NPOs remains limited (Alfes et al., 2016; Plaisance, 2023).

This study contributes to research on stakeholder engagement, workspaces, and organisational tensions by focussing on employees and volunteers as internal stakeholders whose engagement remains underexplored and by examining how engagement, tensions, and workspace are intertwined over time. The single case design and specific institutional context limit generalisability, while the extended time frame enables a more processual understanding of how stakeholder engagement, tensions, and workspace evolve. For practitioners, the findings highlight that introducing a workspace for stakeholder engagement is unlikely to be straightforward. Experiences such as confusion, exclusion, and fragmentation are likely to accompany increased engagement. Instead of treating these as failures, organisations may benefit from recognising tensions as inherent to the ongoing enactment of the workspace and from working with them through iterative adjustments. Investing in clear purpose articulation, accessible language, careful facilitation, and repeated opportunities for engagement can support sustained participation. In contexts of uncertainty or decline, attention to how workspaces are enacted in practice may support coordination, learning, and shared purpose among internal stakeholders, thereby contributing to organisational viability.