Integration and implementation sciences (i2S) – Page 3 – Integration and Implementation Insights

The knowledge practice paradox

March 3, 2026March 22, 2016

By Robert Duiveman

Both researchers and politicians frequently claim that the interactions between science and public policy need reform and improvement: an agenda actualized by people all over the world by engaging in new collaborative knowledge practices. But a closer relationship doesn’t necessarily equal a better one; it depends on the design of the collaboration as well as the choices made along the way.

Given the societal and scientific importance attached to new knowledge practices, there is a striking lack of insight into what is actually done within them. There seems to be what I label a knowledge practice paradox. In order to ensure that an experimental collaborative knowledge practice gets its results accepted and implemented ‘in real world circumstances’ it needs to be presented as scientifically sound, politically adroit and deliberatively legitimized.

Yet – as those involved know – research methods and design alone are usually insufficient to get there. It’s the practical wisdom (phronèsis) applied along the way that is key to real success.

Do we need to discipline interdisciplinarity?

September 19, 2024March 2, 2016

By Gabriele Bammer

Imagine a team of researchers tackling global health inequalities, with a focus on sanitation. The team comprises epidemiologists and biostatisticians interested both in measuring the extent of the problem and designing intervention trials, engineers investigating a range of sanitation options, anthropologists examining the cultural aspects of sanitation, economists and political scientists documenting the economic benefits and looking for policy levers to assist in making change happen.

The team is working at national policy levels and with a range of target communities seeking to engender small business interest in promoting new sanitation options, as well as individual and community behaviour change. There is collaboration with major international donors and non-government organisations. The team has a talented and charismatic leader.

What the team does not have is access to the full array of theory and methods for synthesising the input of the different disciplines, along with all the relevant stakeholder knowledge. Nor does it have the ability to bring to bear all the different ways of teasing out and taking into account the knowledge gaps – the unknowns. Finally the team cannot tap into the wealth of information about how to provide effective integrated research support for policy and practice change.

Why set up a blog site before you want to use it? First we need to find each other…

September 5, 2024May 11, 2015

By Gabriele Bammer

The aim of this site is to host a global conversation about… well one of the challenges is that we don’t yet have an agreed name for our topic.

This is a conversation for you if your research does some of the following:

Gets people from different disciplines working together
Builds models of complex social and environmental problems
Helps policy makers use research evidence
Figures out ways to manage value conflicts
Finds ways to identify unknown unknowns
Maps interconnections between problem elements
Works with business to build better products
Involves community groups in defining the problem
Worries about adverse unintended consequences
Realises that context matters.

I think about these practices as integration and implementation sciences. You might call them systems thinking, action research, interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity, implementation science, post-normal science, mode 2 research, project management, complex systems science or a host of other terms.