Power – Integration and Implementation Insights

Understanding diversity primer: 4. Power

June 23, 2022May 12, 2022

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_4

How can an understanding of diversity in power improve research on complex societal and environmental problems? What are the different ways in which diversity in power plays out?

Simply put, there are currently two common ways in which power is taken into account in research on complex societal and environmental problems:

those working with marginalised stakeholders, or otherwise committed to giving everyone involved in the research an equal voice, often seek to eliminate differences in power
those who seek to use their research to change policy or practice generally attempt to find ways to influence those with the power to make those changes.

Stakeholder engagement primer: 10. Advanced skills

January 7, 2022December 16, 2021

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_stakeholder-engagement_10

Once researchers understand the basics of stakeholder engagement, what else is it useful for them to know? What additional concepts, methods and processes are helpful additions to their skill set so that they can engage more effectively?

Two areas for building additional skills are considered here:

Understanding and managing power and control
Working effectively with multiple stakeholders.

These areas are ripe for consolidation of existing knowledge and experience, as well as of useful tools. Here only some considerations are sketched out, drawing predominantly on key contributions to the i2Insights blog.

Understanding and managing power and control

Leadership and the hidden politics of co-produced research

December 21, 2021December 7, 2021

By Catherine Durose, Beth Perry, Liz Richardson and Rikki Dean

authors_catherine-durose_beth-perry_liz-richardson_rikki-dean — 1. Catherine Durose (biography)
2. Beth Perry (biography)
3. Liz Richardson (biography)
4. Rikki Dean (biography)

What are the hidden politics of seeking to co-produce research with stakeholders? What kinds of leadership are common in co-produced research? What trade-offs does each kind of leadership make in addressing issues such as being directive, inclusive, innovative, accountable, open to what emerges and sharing power?

The hidden politics of co-production in research

The hidden politics of co-production in research involves tensions and debates about:

1. The purposes of scientific work.
Co-production brings together people, not only with different expertise, but also with different purposes for being involved, which can range from achieving more effective policy and practice outcomes to delivering social justice and empowering those experiencing disadvantage.

Stakeholder engagement primer: 3. Selecting stakeholders

December 21, 2021October 28, 2021

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_stakeholder-engagement_3

Given that most research projects will not have the funding or time to involve all stakeholders who have been identified as potential contributors, what criteria are useful for selecting those to be invited to participate? How can those identified be assessed against the criteria?

Four criteria for selecting stakeholders are:

their legitimacy
their real and potential power
the urgency they assign to the problem
practical considerations.

Legitimacy

Legitimacy can usefully be examined along the following four dimensions:

Three ways research perpetuates injustices

April 13, 2021April 6, 2021

By Barış Bayram

author_barıs-bayram — Barış Bayram (biography)

Why is it hard to recognise the full value of a new idea, research finding or other innovation? Why do people fail to properly appreciate other people or things most of the time? Can this help explain why injustices persist?

There is no “invisible hand” that allocates rewards according to capabilities or performance, including ensuring that academic research or social interactions are recognised in terms of scientific or ethical merits.

There are three main patterns causing what I call “unjust appreciation”:

lack of intellectual development to determine values, merits and deserts (ie., just rewards)
cognitive biases and social biases, especially related to status and groups
tribalism, along with power and conflict considerations that rely on cost-benefit analysis.

Fifteen characteristics of complex social systems

May 31, 2021March 17, 2020

By Hamilton Carvalho

Author - Hamilton Carvalho — Hamilton Carvalho (biography)

What is it about complex social systems that keeps reproducing old problems, as well as adding new ones? How can public policy move away from what I call the Mencken Syndrome (in reference to a quotation from American journalist Henry Mencken) – that is, continually proposing clear and simple solutions to complex social problems – that are also wrong!

With this goal in mind, I have compiled a list of fifteen major characteristics of complex social systems based on the system dynamics and complexity sciences literatures, as well as my own research.

Negotiations and ‘normative’ or ‘ethical’ power

January 3, 2022June 26, 2018

By Lena Partzsch

What can we learn from international relations about how ‘normative’ or ‘ethical’ power can be used in successful negotiations, for example, for pathways to sustainability? Here I build on Ian Manners’ (2002) concept of “Normative Power Europe”. He argues that the European Union’s specific history “pre‐disposes it to act in a normative way” (Manners 2002: 242) based on norms such as democracy, rule of law, social justice and respect for human rights. I explore the broader ramifications of the normative power concept for empirical studies and for practical negotiation and collaboration more generally.

First, the concept of normative power implies that the spread of particular norms is perceived as a principal policy goal, whether that relates to foreign policy, environmental policy or other kinds of policy.

Structure matters: Real-world laboratories as a new type of large-scale research infrastructure

August 24, 2021June 12, 2018

By Franziska Stelzer, Uwe Schneidewind, Karoline Augenstein and Matthias Wanner

What are real-world laboratories? How can we best grasp their transformative potential and their relationship to transdisciplinary projects and processes? Real-world laboratories are about more than knowledge integration and temporary interventions. They establish spaces for transformation and reflexive learning and are therefore best thought of as large-scale research infrastructure. How can we best get a handle on the structural dimensions of real-word laboratories?

What are real-world laboratories?

Real-world laboratories are a targeted set-up of a research “infrastructure“ or a “space“ in which scientific actors and actors from civil society cooperate in the joint production of knowledge in order to support a more sustainable development of society.

Although such a laboratory establishes a structure, most discussions about real-world laboratories focus on processes of co-design, co-production and co-evaluation of knowledge, as shown in the figure below. Surprisingly, the structural dimension has received little attention in the growing field of literature.

Overcoming structure as the blind spot

We want to raise awareness of the importance of the structural dimension of real-world laboratories, including physical infrastructure as well as interpretative schemes or social norms, as also shown in the figure below. A real-world laboratory can be understood as a structure for nurturing niche development, or a space for experimentation that interacts (and aims at changing) structural conditions at the regime level.

Apart from this theoretical perspective, we want to add a concrete “infrastructural” perspective, as well as a reflexive note on the role of science and researchers. Giddens’ use of the term ‘structure’ helps to emphasize that scientific activity is always based on rules (eg., rules of proper research and use of methods in different disciplines) and resources (eg., funding, laboratories, libraries).

The two key challenges of real-world laboratories are that:

both scientists and civil society actors are involved in the process of knowledge production; and,
knowledge production takes place in real-world environments instead of scientific laboratories.

Three schools of transformation thinking

June 9, 2021September 5, 2017

By Uwe Schneidewind and Karoline Augenstein

authors_uwe-schneidewind_karoline-augenstein — 1. Uwe Schneidewind (biography)
2. Karoline Augenstein (biography)

‘Transformation’ has become a buzzword in debates about sustainable development. But while the term has become very popular, it is often unclear what is meant exactly by ‘transformation’.

The fuzziness of the concept can be seen as a strength, giving it metaphoric power and facilitating inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation. However, this fuzziness means there is also a danger of the transformation debate being co-opted by powerful actors and used strategically to impede societal change towards more sustainable pathways.

Keys to transformation: Interactions of values, rules and knowledge

April 15, 2022June 20, 2017

By Russell Gorddard, Matthew Colloff, Russell Wise and Michael Dunlop

Adapting to climate change can require profound alterations in environmental management and policy. However the social context of a decision process limits options and resists change, often dooming attempts to adapt to climate change even before they begin. How can decision makers in policy and management more effectively see the institutional and social water they swim in, in order to better drive change?

Values, rules and knowledge (vrk) provide a useful heuristic to help decision makers analyze how the social system shapes their decision context. Put simply, decisions require:

knowledge of options and their implications
values to assess the options
rules that enable implementation.

gorddard_values-rules-knowledge — Figure adapted from original in Gordardd *et al*. (2016)

Viewing the decision context as an interconnected system of values, rules and knowledge can reveal limits to adaptation and suggest strategies for addressing them (Gorddard et al. 2016).

Values are the set of ethical precepts that determine the way people select actions and evaluate events.

Rules are both rules-in-use (norms, practices, habits, heuristics) and rules-in-form (regulations, laws, directives).

Knowledge is both evidence-based (scientific and technical) knowledge and experiential knowledge.

Decision context is the subset of interacting subsystems that are at play in a particular decision process. One core idea is that the decision context may exclude relevant values, knowledge or rules from being considered in decisions. Adaptation may therefore involve change in the decision context.

russell-gorddard — Russell Gorddard (biography)

matt-colloff — Matthew Colloff (biography)

michael-dunlop — Michael Dunlop (biography)

Three theories to help overcome change resistance in service design implementation

May 12, 2021March 23, 2017

By Ricardo Martins

How can service designers improve implementation of their projects and overcome resistance to change?

According to the Service Design Network, “Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers. The purpose of service design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant.”

Although service designers have hundreds of methods to map the current state of a service, to elicit requirements from stakeholders and to propose new processes for services, they often spend little effort on implementing the ideas they generate.

Five principles for achieving impact

January 6, 2022September 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).