Frameworks – Page 7 – Integration and Implementation Insights

Uncertainty in participatory modeling – What can we learn from management research?

August 24, 2022November 10, 2016

By Antonie Jetter

I frequently struggle to explain how participatory modeling deals with uncertainty. I found useful guidance in the management literature.

After all, participatory modeling projects and strategic business planning have one commonality – a group of stakeholders and decision-makers aims to understand and ultimately influence a complex system. They do so in the face of great uncertainty that frequently cannot be resolved – at least not within the required time frame. Businesses, for example, have precise data on customer behavior when their accountants report on annual sales. However, by this time, the very precise data is irrelevant because the opportunity to influence the system has passed.

From integration to interaction: A knowledge ecology framework

September 15, 2023October 4, 2016

By Zoë Sofoulis

Would a focus on ‘knowledge ecology’ provide a useful alternative to ‘knowledge integration’ in inter- and trans-disciplinary research?

My experience in bringing perspectives from the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) to projects led by researchers from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has led me to agree with Sharp and colleagues (2011) that ‘knowledge integration’ is essentially a positivist concept, dependent on the idealist model of a unified field of scientific knowledge to which every bit of science contributed.

Many partners and co-researchers from STEM backgrounds, it seems, cannot recognise other knowledge paradigms and can only ‘integrate’ knowledge in the form of quantitative data. HASS research is excluded or disqualified as merely ‘anecdotal’ or ‘subjective’. Like racial or cultural assimilation, knowledge integration seems to require non-dominant knowledges to disguise or erase their unique differentiating features in order to blend with the dominant positivist paradigm.

Five principles for achieving impact

September 15, 2023September 27, 2016

By Mark Reed

What key actions can help research have impact? Interviews with 32 researchers and stakeholders across 13 environmental management research projects lead to the five principles and key issues described below (Reed et al., 2014).

1. Design:

• Understand what everyone wants. This can help in managing expectations of different stakeholders and project members and identifying potential issues/problems early on.
• Understand the context of the project. Use local characteristics, traditions, norms and past experiences as a starting point for planning the project.
• Take your time. Knowledge exchange is time consuming if done properly.
• Design your knowledge exchange activities carefully. Spend time researching the context, the stakeholders, and possible approaches. Design for flexibility, get feedback, and adapt your plans to suit changing circumstances.

A governance compass

September 3, 2021September 20, 2016

By Tim Gieseke

How can we better understand governance when dealing with complex social and environmental issues? Here I describe a set of concepts that I have found useful — a governance compass. The aim is to provide guidance for organizations to align partnerships, accountability, equity, ownership and value at the ‘point of service’. The ‘point of service’ varies. For human health, it is the patient. In life-long learning, it is the professional. In agriculture sustainability, it is the landscape.

The governance compass identifies governance actors and their roles; governance styles and how they combine into a footprint; and finally how these combine with tasks into a governance framework. Although the compass has been developed for agricultural issues, it has broader relevance.

Participatory processes and participatory modelling: The sustainable procedure framework

August 24, 2022September 15, 2016

By Beatrice Hedelin

How can we resolve debates about participatory processes between proponents and skeptics? What role can participatory modelling play in improving participatory processes?

Proponents argue for the merits of participatory processes, which include learning; co-production of knowledge; development of shared understanding of a problem and shared goals; creation of trust; and local power and ownership of a problem.

Sceptics point to evidence of inefficient, time-consuming, participatory processes that escalate conflict and mistrust. They also highlight democratic problems; lack of transparency; and powerful actors that benefit in relation to weaker ones such as the unorganized, poor, and uneducated.

Integration – Part 2: The “how”

December 22, 2022September 6, 2016

By Julie Thompson Klein

The “how” of integration focuses on pragmatics of process, with emphasis on methods. Toward that end, following the part 1 blog post on the “what” of integration, this blog post presents insights from major resources, with emphasis on collaborative research by teams.

Some widely used methods are well-known theories, for example general systems. Others are practiced in particular domains, such as integrated environmental assessment. Some utilize technologies, for example computer synthesis of data. And others, such as dialogue methods, target communication processes.

Integration – Part 1: The “what”

April 15, 2020August 30, 2016

By Julie Thompson Klein

Integration lies at the heart of inter- and transdisciplinarity. Klein & Newell (1996) call it the “acid test” of interdisciplinarity, and Pohl, van Kerkhoff, Hirsch Hadorn, & Bammer (2008) consider it “the core methodology underpinning the transdisciplinary research process.”

What exactly, though, is integration?

This blog post answers that question while identifying key resources.

Two frameworks for scoping

December 1, 2022August 16, 2016

By Gabriele Bammer

How can all the possibilities for understanding and acting on a complex social or environmental problem be elucidated? How can a fuller appreciation of both the problem and the options for tackling it be developed, so that the best approach to dealing with it can be identified? In other words, how can a problem be scoped?

The point of scoping is to illuminate a range of options. It moves those dealing with the complex problem beyond their assumptions and existing knowledge to considering the problem and the possibilities for action more broadly.

Practicalities, however, dictate that everything cannot be included, so that scoping is inevitably followed by boundary setting.

A process model for teaching interdisciplinary research

September 11, 2023August 9, 2016

By Machiel Keestra

How can we effectively teach interdisciplinary research to undergraduate and masters students? What is needed to encompass research ranging from cultural analysis of an Etruscan religious symbol to the search for a sustainable solution for tomato farming in drying areas? Given that there is no predetermined set of theories, methods and insights, as is the case with disciplinary research, what would an interdisciplinary textbook cover? How can such a textbook accommodate the fact that interdisciplinary research usually requires students to collaborate with each other, for which they also need to be able to articulate their own cognitive processes? Understandably, a textbook for interdisciplinary research must focus in a rather general sense on the process implied in such research.

In teaching more than 15 cohorts of undergraduate and masters students at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS) at the University of Amsterdam, who are conducting research projects in interdisciplinary teams and with a strong emphasis on empirical research, we have developed an IIS model. This model is arranged in four research phases: orientation, preparation, data (collection and analysis) and finalization. The key tasks in each phase are summarised in the following figure.

The interplay between knowledge and power / La interacción entre el conocimiento y el poder

September 11, 2023July 14, 2016

By Cristina Zurbriggen

An English version of this post is available

La mayoría de los recientes enfoques para abordar problemas complejos no incluyen la dimensión política. Por otra parte, la ciencia política, así como los estudios de política pública y de gobierno contemporáneo han realizado escasas contribuciones al tratamiento de los procesos de toma de decisiones desde dinámicas complejas.

¿Cómo podemos desarrollar marcos innovadores que incorporen la dimensión política? ¿Cómo podemos articular la producción conocimiento considerando también la forma en que pensamos acerca de la política, la rendición de cuentas y la responsabilidad social? En concreto, ¿cuál es la dimensión política del proceso de co-creación de conocimiento y cuáles son las implicaciones de la participación política, la experimentación y el aprendizaje colectivo?

From fountain to firehose

January 3, 2022July 12, 2016

By David Feldon

As scholars working within disciplines, we ascribe to certain theories, assumptions, and tools that position us within an intellectual community. As scholars working within fields, we focus our inquiry on specific interactions between the natural world and elements of human endeavor.

Being situated within these two spheres – as translational ecologists and other translational scientists are – carries with it certain tensions that can be challenging to navigate: Ultimately, who constitutes our target audience? How do we balance contribution to discipline through the development of theory with contribution to the field through recommendations for practice? Perhaps most importantly, how do we maximize our impact?

Eight strategies for co-creation

August 24, 2022May 12, 2016

By Arnim Wiek

Co-creation aims at genuine and meaningful interaction among researchers, service providers, policy makers, consumers, and other key stakeholders. It is also known as co-production, co-design and co-construction. Co-creation is often a buzzword with fuzzy meanings of who collaborates with whom, when and how (processes) and to what end (outcomes) in addressing sustainability and other complex problems. Yet there is emerging evidence on best practices of co-creation. Although this evidence is mostly based on individual case studies or comparisons of small sets of cases, the following eight strategies provide valuable guidance for researchers and practitioners.