Accountability

How science thought leadership enhances knowledge exchange

By Stefan Kaufman and Anthony Boxshall

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1. Stefan Kaufman (biography)
2. Anthony Boxshall (biography)

What is science thought leadership? What characterises science thought leadership and leaders? How does science thought leadership offer opportunities for researchers to participate in knowledge exchange?

Most examinations of knowledge exchange focus on the researchers and/or the decision makers, while the role of experts and intermediaries who are internal to the decision making process, but not the decision makers themselves, has largely been ignored. It is these internal experts and intermediaries that we refer to as science thought leaders.

Specifically, for us “science thought leadership” is “when people using, brokering or providing evidence are (simultaneously): influential, credible and valued in supporting decision making in their organization and its context” (Kaufman and Boxshall, 2023).

We found that science thought leadership has the following 11 characteristics, grouped into four categories:

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How measuring impact gets in the way of real world change

By Toby Lowe

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Toby Lowe (biography)

Why is the idea that we can measure our impact to understand how well we are performing fundamentally flawed? Why is it impossible to “demonstrate your impact” in complex environments?

Although the idea of measuring impact is seductive, almost all useful social change is achieved as part of a complex system. In other words, your work is a small part of a much larger web of entangled and interdependent activity and social forces.

The systems map of the outcome of obesity, shown in the figure below, illustrates this perfectly – it shows all the factors contributing to people being obese (or not), and all the relationships between those factors.

This is the reality of trying to make impact in the world – your actions are part of a web of relationships – most of which are beyond your control, many of which are beyond your influence, quite a few of which will be completely invisible to you.

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Multidisciplinary perspectives on unknown unknowns

By Gabriele Bammer

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Gabriele Bammer (biography)

This is part of a series of occasional “synthesis blog posts” drawing together perspectives on related topics across i2Insights contributions.

How can different disciplines and practitioners enhance the ability to understand and manage unknown unknowns, also referred to as deep uncertainty?

Seventeen blog posts have addressed these issues, covering:

  • how unknown unknowns can be understood
  • exploiting unknown unknowns
  • accepting unknown unknowns
  • reducing unknown unknowns.

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Five insights on achieving research impact

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1. Niki Ellis (biography)
2, Anne-Maree Dowd (biography)
3. Tamika Heiden (biography)
4, Gabriele Bammer (biography)

By Niki Ellis, Anne-Maree Dowd, Tamika Heiden and Gabriele Bammer

What does it take for research to be impactful? How should research impact be assessed? How much responsibility for impact should rest with researchers and how much with government, business and/or community partners?

We present five key insights based on our experience in achieving research impact in Australia:

  1. Planning for impact is essential
  2. Quality relationships trump all other factors
  3. Assessment of research contributions should be tailored to the type of research and based on team, not individual, performance
  4. Researchers alone cannot be responsible for achieving impact
  5. Be open to continual learning.

1. Planning for impact is essential

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Accountability and adapting to surprises

By Patricia Hirl Longstaff

Image of Patricia Hirl Longstaff
Patricia Hirl Longstaff (biography)

We have all been there: something bad happens and somebody (maybe an innocent somebody) has their career ruined in order to prove that the problem has been fixed. When is blame appropriate? When is the blame game not only the wrong response, but damaging for long-term decision making?

In a complex and adapting world, errors and failure are not avoidable. The challenges decision-makers and organizations face are sometimes predictable but sometimes brand new. Adapting to surprises requires more flexibility, fewer unbreakable rules, more improvisation and deductive tinkering, and a lot more information about what’s going right and going wrong. But getting there is not easy because this challenges some very closely held assumptions about how the world works and our desire to control things.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Sometimes people do really dumb things that they should be blamed for. What we need is to be more discriminating about when finding blame and accountability is appropriate.

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How to support research consortia

By Bruce Currie-Alder and Georgina Cundill Kemp

authors_bruce-currie-alder_georgina-cundill-kemp
1. Bruce Currie-Alder (biography)
2. Georgina Cundill Kemp (biography)

A research consortium is a model of collaboration that brings together multiple institutions that are otherwise independent from one another to address a common set of questions using a defined structure and governance model. Increasingly consortia are also being joined in cross-consortia networks. How can connections be made across the institutions in individual consortia, as well as in cross-consortia networks, to ensure that such collaborations are more than the sum of their parts?

During 2014–2018 we were involved in the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), which supported four transdisciplinary research consortia involving more than 40 institutions across 15 countries. CARIAA’s aim was to generate new knowledge and inform efforts that build resilience among vulnerable people living in hotspots of climate change.

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Trust and empowerment inventory for community groups

By Craig Dalton

Author - Craig Dalton
Craig Dalton (biography)

Community groups are often consulted by researchers, government agencies and industry. The issues may be contentious and the relationship vexed by distrust and poor communication. Could an inventory capture the fundamental sources of community frustration and highlight scope for improvement in respect, transparency, fairness, co-learning, and meeting effectiveness from a community perspective?

The trust and empowerment inventory presented below is based on the main sources of community frustration that I have witnessed over two decades as a public health physician and researcher liaising with communities about environmental health risks and it is likely to have broader relevance.

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Designing applied research for impact

By Andrew Campbell

andrew-campbell
Andrew Campbell (biography)

How can we get the three critical groups in transdisciplinary research—researchers, end users of research, and funders of research—to work together in designing applied research for impact? As Roux and colleagues (2010) pointed out:

“A key characteristic of transdisciplinary research is that the domains of science, management, planning, policy and practice are interactively involved in issue framing, knowledge production and knowledge application.”

A critical challenge is that each of the three groups is likely to have different perspectives on the goals of a given research project or program and how to achieve them, and therefore likely to define success differently.

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