Questioning the Normative Core of RI: The Challenges Posed to Stakeholder Engagement in a Corporate Setting

Noorman, Merel; Swierstra, Tsjalling; Zandbergen, Dorien

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-64834-7_13

Cited by 13 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Although these articles assume the centrality of deliberative engagement with stakeholders and society in their approach to RI in the business context, the question whether deliberative engagement is suitable for application in this context is never systematically addressed. Yet, as the next section shows, some authors have touched more explicitly on the tensions that deliberative engagement might create when applied within companies (Noorman, Swierstra, and Zandbergen 2017;Lubberink et al 2017a;Blok, Hoffmans, and Wubben 2015;Blok and Lemmens 2015).…”

Section: Ri and The Business Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsible innovation in business: a critical reflection on deliberative engagement as a central governance mechanism

Brand

Blok

2019

Journal of Responsible Innovation

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One of the main contentions of the framework for Responsible Innovation (RI) is that social and ethical aspects have to be addressed by deliberative engagement with stakeholders and the wider public throughout the innovation process. The aim of this article is to reflect on the question to what extent is deliberative engagement suitable for conducting RI in business. We discuss several tensions that arise when this framework is applied in the business context. Further, we analyse the place of deliberative engagement in several theories of business ethics. We conclude that there remains a tension between the ideal of RI and the way in which the competitive market operates. Hence, RI scholars should reflect more critically on changes that are required in the market in order to make RI possible, modify the ideal of deliberative engagement for RI in business, or attempt to strike a balance between these two responses.

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Section: Ri and The Business Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsible innovation in business: a critical reflection on deliberative engagement as a central governance mechanism

Brand

Blok

2019

Journal of Responsible Innovation

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“…They highlight that responsible innovation refers to taking care of the future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present [15]. On the other hand, Noorman, Swierstra, and Zandbergen emphasize that responsible innovation is a normative conception of technology development, which hopes to improve upon prevailing practices [56]. While considering the analyzed concept, several authors highlight that stakeholder engagement is the key characteristic of responsible innovation [56][57][58][59][60][61].…”

Section: Overlapping Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, Noorman, Swierstra, and Zandbergen emphasize that responsible innovation is a normative conception of technology development, which hopes to improve upon prevailing practices [56]. While considering the analyzed concept, several authors highlight that stakeholder engagement is the key characteristic of responsible innovation [56][57][58][59][60][61]. Stakeholders together with the members of the public are involved upstream in the innovation process and encouraged to deliberate on the features and uncertainties related to the innovation [14,18].…”

Section: Overlapping Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…for which they share responsibility [57]. This collective responsibility enables to control and direct innovation into ethically acceptable, societally desirable, and sustainable direction [9,56]. Blok and Lemmens [58] stress that, in the concept of responsible innovation, responsibility is perceived as the extension to 'regular innovation' pointing out stakeholder involvement particularly regarding ethical and societal aspects of innovation.…”

Section: Overlapping Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Research Profiling for Responsible and Sustainable Innovations

2019

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The issues of responsible and sustainable innovations have been attracting the growing attention of the ranks of scholars in recent years. However, this amassing productivity in the field has not been mapped and profiled thoroughly, yet. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to map the research output related to the concepts of responsible and sustainable innovations with the method of research profiling. The analysis consists of three components: general research profiling, subject area profiling and topic profiling conducted with the use of Scopus database. The research process is directed at answering three research questions: (1) who are the main contributors within the scholarly community? why? so what? (2) how is the research output distributed among subject areas? why? so what? (3) what are the central topics and issues discussed within the research field? why? so what? First of all, key contributing countries, research institutions, journals, and authors are identified in order to characterize the scholarly community working in the field. Secondly, research output is profiled through the prism of respective subject areas. This type of profiling aims at discovering varieties among key journals, authors and core references distributed across various subject areas. Thirdly, topic analysis is conducted in order to point out most crucial aspects studied in the body of literature in the field. The research sample consists of 1,083 publications indexed in Scopus database, including the phrases ‘responsible innovation’ or ‘sustainable innovation’ within their titles, keywords, and abstracts (topic search). The findings from the general research profiling confirm the growing interest of academia in exploring and investigating the issues of responsible and sustainable innovations. The leading contributors in the field are scholars and research institutions from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Dutch universities and research centers occupy three top three positions in regard to the number of publications. Among them, Delft University of Technology is the unquestionable leader. Journal of Cleaner Production and Journal of Responsible Innovation are found to be the most prolific and highly recognized source titles in the field. Subject area profiling shows a relatively high level of interrelatedness among the four leading subject areas i.e., Business, Management and Accounting, Engineering, Social Sciences, and Environmental Science in regard to authors, source titles and core references. Topic profiling indicates two leading thematic streams in the research field focused on the features and core aspects of responsible and sustainable innovations, and the relationships of the concept with people (human, humans), research, ethics, and technology. Discussion of research findings is focused around comparing and contrasting three overlapping concepts (i.e., responsible research and innovation, responsible innovation, and sustainable innovation), providing the critical assessment of the reasons for the scholarly research to have developed along with certain patterns and identifying unexplored aspects or possible future avenues of research.

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“…According to RRI such inclusion should go beyond the formulation of criteria and extend to the actual design choices that are being made when developing a new technology. There are of course many practical and institutional barriers to actually implement a wide variety of perspectives into the R&D phase of innovation, such as confidentiality issues, a balanced division of responsibility [47] and stakeholders who might not be willing to get involved [48] or are unable to get involved due to geographical or time-management reasons [49].…”

Section: Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%