On the state of a political party of a regional municipality against the background of a crisis and exploring ways to develop new perspectives

This paper summarizes the results of the 2018 internal retreat on the then current organizational state of a local social democratic party at the municipal level in Austria. The aim of the survey was to gather personal experiences of party officials and the challenges of working together against the backdrop of an organizational crisis. An experimental research design was developed for the data collection, which used participatory methods of moderated public participation. The collected units of analysis in the form of Post-Its, author’s memos, and other methodological artifacts were interpreted, categorized, and summarized. Furthermore, items were additionally weighted by frequency for illustrative purposes. A clear organizational crisis was evident. Considerable knowledge deficits regarding contemporary organizational leadership and communication work can be suspected. The results should help to stimulate future research on organizational cooperation in predominantly volunteer-led and socio-demographically heterogeneous local parties against the background of contemporary communication practices.