Integration – Integration and Implementation Insights

Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) 3.0: An updated framework to foster expertise for tackling complex problems

April 30, 2024April 16, 2024

By Gabriele Bammer

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021 — Gabriele Bammer (biography)

How can researchers interested in tackling complex societal and environmental problems easily find and draw on what they need from inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science and a range of other ways of combining disciplinary and stakeholder perspectives in order to bring about improvements? How can the necessary expertise be fostered and supported in a systematic way?

These are the questions that I have been addressing for more than 20 years in considering whether a new discipline – Integration and Implementation Sciences or i2S – could provide a way forward. i2S 3.0 is the third conceptualization of this discipline and the current version is summarised in the figure below.

At this stage in its development, i2S is focused on providing a framework and conduit for sharing concepts, methods, processes and other tools that are currently fragmented across inter- and transdisciplinarity, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science and other approaches.

Eighth annual review

January 12, 2024December 12, 2023

By Gabriele Bammer

Which i2Insights contributions inspired you in 2023? What did you learn that was new and how did it help you in tackling the complex societal or environmental problems you focus on? What would you like to see in 2024 and beyond?

One of the delights of curating i2Insights is learning something from every blog post. Another is the personal interactions involved in broadening the global community of contributors, introducing fresh voices and fresh insights, alongside those who are more seasoned contributors.

In this last blog post for 2023, I survey three of the year’s many highlights and what they mean for the operation of i2Insights:

integration and synthesis as an emerging ‘hot’ topic
re-introducing “golden oldies,” ie. tried and tested tools
increasing the number of countries represented by contributors, with an accompanying focus on decolonisation.

Generating evidence using the Delphi method

November 14, 2023October 17, 2023

By Dmitry Khodyakov

What is Delphi? How has the Delphi method stood up over time? How can the best of Delphi be adapted to new circumstances and problems?

The Delphi method is a group-based process for eliciting and aggregating opinion on a topic with a goal of exploring the existence of consensus among a diverse group of handpicked experts. The Delphi method was developed at the RAND Corporation in the early 1950s to obtain a reliable expert consensus, which is often used as a substitute for empirical evidence when it does not exist.

The four key characteristics of the Delphi method are:

anonymity,
iterative data collection,
participant feedback, and
statistical determination of group response.

As a result, Delphi has become best practice for quantifying the results of group elicitation processes.

Co-producing knowledge: Phases, issues and the td-net toolbox

October 17, 2023October 10, 2023

By Sibylle Studer and Theres Paulsen

authors_sibylle-studer_theres-paulsen — 1. Sibylle Studer (biography)
2. Theres Paulsen (biography)

What are the steps involved in co-producing knowledge in transdisciplinary research? What tools are available to help knowledge co-production and for what purpose should they be used?

Based on our experiences with the td-net (Network for Transdisciplinary Research) toolbox, we discuss how knowledge co-production can be organized along an ideal type of a transdisciplinary research process.

Phases and key issues of co-production

In developing the td-net toolbox, we used the following four phases of knowledge co-production, which require an iterative, rather than linear, approach:

Towards a taxonomy of synthesizing

October 17, 2023September 19, 2023

By Howard Gardner

“Synthesis” seems to be in the atmosphere. The capacity to synthesize, the need for syntheses, and improvement of the quality of syntheses—these are seemingly of interest to many.

A preliminary working definition:

A synthesis is an attempt to bring together various ideas, strands, concepts, and materials. A good synthesis enhances one’s understanding of a question, puzzle, phenomenon (or multiples of these). Familiar examples are school term papers, doctoral dissertations, position papers, landscape analyses, executive summaries, and textbooks. But one can easily extend the list beyond the verbal—to chemical syntheses, equations in physics or mathematics, works of art (poems, paintings, dioramas)—indeed any creation or invention that brings together disparate elements in a satisfying and illuminating way.

Of course, it’s important to avoid the situation where just about everything qualifies as a synthesis.

Making the Nominal Group Technique more accessible

September 5, 2023

By Jason Olsen

Looking to gain real insights from those with lived experience about a specific topic? Interested in a low-cost method that fosters equal participation and discussion over participant domination in a research focus group? Want to know about modifications to make pan-disability (ie., working with participants with different impairments) research focus groups more inclusive?

The Nominal Group Technique developed by Ven and Delbecq (1972) has been used for more than 50 years. Key to its success is the posing of a single unambiguous and unbiased question about a problem that can generate a wide range of answers. The process structures the meeting to enable critical dimensions of the question to be identified, ranked and rated in a way that:

limits the influence of the researcher leading the project, as well as the influence of attendees,
allows participants to clarify the question’s dimensions and gaps,
increases the likelihood of equal participation for all group members,
affords equal influence to different, and potentially conflicting, values and ideas.

Interdisciplinary teamwork: Expert and non-expert at the same time

September 19, 2023August 22, 2023

By Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

authors_annemarie-horn_eduardo-urias — 1. Annemarie Horn (biography)
2. Eduardo Urias (biography)

How do teams engage in interdisciplinary knowledge integration and how can they be supported in doing so? Why does simple sharing and questioning of knowledge not necessarily lead to interdisciplinary knowledge integration? And what does it mean to act as both an expert and a non-expert in interdisciplinary teamwork, and why is it hard?

In a five month course, we supervised a team of eight master students in the integration of insights and concepts from their individual, discipline-based projects into a joint work about circular economy. Based on our earlier research, described in our i2Insights contribution on four typical behaviours in interdisciplinary knowledge integration, we expected that if we helped the students to share their own knowledge and to engage with each other’s knowledge, that integration would emerge. We therefore had students prepare and give presentations about their individual projects, background, and conceptual underpinnings to share their knowledge.

Towards a theory of change to institutionalise integration experts and expertise

December 11, 2023June 6, 2023

By The Aeschiried Integrators

authors_the-aeschiried-integrators — Author biographies

Integration experts and expertise are crucial for realising the full potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research. However, the expertise of those who lead integration is poorly recognized in the current academic system and these academics often experience a range of impediments to their careers. What can be done to recognise integration experts and expertise and to support the careers of such experts?

We define integration experts as specialists “who lead, administer, manage, monitor, assess, accompany, and/or advise others on integration” in order to achieve the full potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research (Hoffmann et al. 2022).

This i2Insights contribution presents the results of a pilot workshop held in Aeschiried, a mountain village in Switzerland, in February 2023 to develop a theory of change focused on Germany and Switzerland to achieve the following:

An analytical framework for knowledge co-production

September 5, 2023May 30, 2023

By Marianne Penker

How can students and academics starting out in transdisciplinary research begin to come to grips with knowledge co-production?

Colleagues and I developed a useful analytical framework comprising the following four elements:

typology of actor roles (who?)
research phases (when?)
objectives and forms of actor integration (why?)
types of knowledge (what?).

These four elements are illustrated in the figure below.

The development of the framework was based on the literature and our experiences in running a doctoral school on transdisciplinary sustainability research (see Enengel et al. 2012).

Improving facilitated modelling

May 23, 2023

By Vincent de Gooyert

Here I explore two outcomes of facilitated modelling – cognitive change and consensus forming – and ask: how can achieving those outcomes be improved?

But first, what is facilitated modelling?

Facilitated modelling is an approach where operational researchers act as facilitators to model an issue collaboratively with stakeholders, usually in a workshop. Operational research, also known as operations research, seeks to improve decision-making by developing and applying analytical methods.

Two central aims of facilitated modelling are to achieve cognitive change and to form consensus.

Cognitive change is the idea that participants of facilitated modelling workshops come in with a certain worldview, and that the intervention leads them to learn about the issue and accordingly change their minds.

Integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research: how can the leadership challenges be addressed?

February 21, 2023February 14, 2023

By Lisa Deutsch and Sabine Hoffmann

authors_lisa-deutsch_sabine-hoffmann — 1. Lisa Deutsch (biography)
2. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)

How can the integration required in large inter- and transdisciplinary programs be effectively led? What challenges do leaders of integration in such programs face and how can they address them? What are the particular challenges in using a theory of change as an integrative tool?

We describe five key challenges that we encountered when leading the integration for a large 10-year inter- and transdisciplinary research program, which explored novel non-grid water and sanitation systems that can function as comparable alternatives to conventional large network-based systems. We experienced these challenges when applying the tool Theory of Change to facilitate communication, collaboration and integration among the team members (for more on theory of change see the i2Insights contribution by Heléne Clark). We also share the strategies we employed to address these challenges. The lessons we developed are likely to be applicable to other inter- and transdisciplinary research programs.

Dealing with differences in interests through principled negotiation

November 15, 2022

By Gabriele Bammer

How can the interests of a diverse group of researchers and stakeholders tackling a complex societal problem be understood and managed?

Interests arise when a person has a stake in something and stands to gain or lose depending on what happens to that something:

researchers commonly have a stake in advancing their work and careers,
stakeholders affected by a societal problem generally have a stake in improving the problem, and
stakeholders in a position to do something about a problem generally have a stake in improving outcomes for the problem through their sphere of influence.

Interests relate not only to personal conditions or stakes (self-interest), but also to principles such as reducing inequities and promoting justice.