Situating knowledge intermediation: Insights from science shops and knowledge brokers

Schlierf, Katharina; Meyer, Morgan

doi:10.1093/scipol/sct034

Cited by 42 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Using existing, trusted intermediaries, or Bknowledge brokers^, within boundary organisations may assist in implementing these strategies to help overcome the barriers that prevent better mutual understanding and interactions (Turnhout et al 2013;Schlierf and Meyer 2013;Lemos et al 2014). Boundary organisations such as Adaptation Scotland 1 , along with similar organisations in other regions and other countries, hold the potential to play a key role in this process of knowledge brokering, as trusted intermediaries with strong links to both knowledge providers and decision-makers (Turnhout et al 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To what extent are land resource managers preparing for high-end climate change in Scotland?

Dunn

Rounsevell

Carlsen³

et al. 2017

Climatic Change

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We explore the individual and institutional conditions and the climate information used to underpin decision-making for adaptation to high-end climate change (HECC) scenarios in a land resource management context. HECC refers to extreme projections with global annual temperature increases of over 4°C. We analyse whether HECC scenarios are used in the adaptation decision-making of stakeholders who will tackle the potential problem. We also explore whether the adaptation actions being considered are pertinent only to future climate change or whether other drivers and information types are used in decision-making (including Climatic Change (2017) Adaptation Scotland/SNIFFER, Edinburgh, Scotland non-climate drivers). We also address the role of knowledge uncertainty in adaptation decision-making. Decision-makers perceive HECC as having a low probability of occurrence and so they do not directly account for HECC within existing actions to address climate change. Such actions focus on incremental rather than transformative solutions in which non-climate drivers are at least as important, and in many cases more important, than climate change alone. This reflects the need to accommodate multiple concerns and low risk options (i.e. incremental change). Uncertainty in climate change information is not a significant barrier to decision-making and stakeholders indicated little need for more climate information in support of adaptation decision-making. There is, however, an identified need for more information about the implications of particular sectoral and cross-sectoral impacts under HECC scenarios. The outcomes of this study provide evidence to assist in contextualising climate change information by creating usable, cross-sectoral, decision-centred information.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To what extent are land resource managers preparing for high-end climate change in Scotland?

Dunn

Rounsevell

Carlsen³

et al. 2017

Climatic Change

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“…Another scholar stream, less focused on agency, brings about the discussion about knowledge mediation started by Latour [51] and intermediation [52][53][54]. Innovation intermediation literature adds conceptual richness to the understanding of forms of knowledge circulation, scaling out and scaling up and its relation to institutions.…”

Section: Exploring What It Takes To Bring Change Aboutmentioning

confidence: 99%

What It Takes to Lead Sustainability Transitions from the Bottom-Up: Strategic Interactions of Grassroots Ecopreneurs

Rámos-Mejía

Balanzó

2018

Sustainability

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This paper studies features of grassroots ecopreneurs' leadership in their attempt to ignite transformations in production-consumption systems from the bottom up. It builds on a comprehensive approach of change agency based on institutional work, innovation, and learning intermediation literature. The paper describes grassroots ecopreneurs' interaction strategies to resource business models for sustainability. Empirical data comes from an action research project that consisted of implementing a sustainability experiment in Sur de Bolívar (Colombia). The experiment shows grassroots ecopreneurs' arrays of activities around making sense, shaping, securing support, nurturing, expanding, and scaling the value proposition, the business infrastructure, the customer interface and the financial model of their ventures. Our findings suggest that leading businesses transition into a more sustainable field requires grassroots ecopreneurs acting as change agents by performing a diverse array of boundary, practice, and knowledge circulation strategies, aiming at securing the societal and environmental impact of their ventures. Change agency manifests in the ways ecopreneurs maneuver to bring about transformations and strive to sustain it. The study contributes to a better understanding of processes of socio-technical change for sustainability in highly diverse institutional contexts, such as (but not exclusively) the developing world. An agency-based approach is proposed as an alternative to a managerial approach.

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“…Considering their institutional backgrounds, the reviewed literature tends to describe knowledge brokers as academics [16,23,24], although there are also references to policy makers [21] and to private sector individuals [10,17] acting as knowledge brokers. In terms of their goals and strategies, knowledge brokers are expected to "expand the scope of choice available to decision-makers" [16] (p. 17), facilitate interactions, and supply, translate, and link knowledge to and between different contexts [19,24,39,40]. Additionally, Cash et al [26] argue that knowledge brokers should enable the production and use of knowledge that is (perceived to be) credible, legitimate, and salient.…”

Section: Knowledge Brokers As Boundary Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moss et al, for example, describe the 'hidden role' of knowledge brokers, by distinguishing three dimensions: (1) the opening up of relationships, or mediating, between production, consumption, and regulation; (2) working between different scales, or levels, of action, e.g., challenging existing hierarchical forms of governance to bring local agendas into the policy realm; and (3) working between technologies and social contexts, e.g., presenting technologies in such a manner (translated) that it speaks to all parties involved [39] (pp. [24][25]. However, these dimensions still shed no light on how knowledge brokers go about these actions.…”

Section: Knowledge Brokers As Boundary Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper will discuss individuals who engage in boundary work [16][17][18][19], and the ways in which they aim to overcome problems in science-policy interactions. The literature predominantly conceptualises these individuals, who focus on processes to improve the use and production of scientific knowledge in policy and decision-making, as 'knowledge brokers' [17,[19][20][21][22][23][24]. However, even though the scholarly literature on boundary work and these individual mediators discusses goals and strategies [21,22,25,26], little empirical research appears to have been done on how these knowledge brokers address issues and processes concerning the interactions between science and policy in practice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Working at the Boundary: An Empirical Study into the Goals and Strategies of Knowledge Brokers in the Field of Environmental Governance in the Netherlands

2017

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Abstract:There is a broad range of literature on individuals who mediate at the boundaries between science and policy. However, there seems to be little empirical evidence on the goals and strategies of knowledge brokers, even though they appear to be becoming increasingly important in the field of environmental science and policy. This paper aims to improve the understanding of why and how knowledge brokers operate through an analysis of 27 in-depth interviews. It demonstrates that they see themselves as (strategically) sensitive to all stakes and stakeholders involved, possess a large network, and act without interests. They appear to act strategically in two different settings: on stage, where the collaboration of all stakeholders is needed, and backstage, where the knowledge broker steers the process on his/her own. Furthermore, our research suggests that the (perceived) credibility and legitimacy of the knowledge broker is more important to the process than the degree of credibility and legitimacy of the knowledge used in the decision-making process, and that it would be advisable to deploy knowledge brokers proactively, instead of reactively, which could lead to 'incident politics'.

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Situating knowledge intermediation: Insights from science shops and knowledge brokers

Cited by 42 publications

References 26 publications

To what extent are land resource managers preparing for high-end climate change in Scotland?

To what extent are land resource managers preparing for high-end climate change in Scotland?

What It Takes to Lead Sustainability Transitions from the Bottom-Up: Strategic Interactions of Grassroots Ecopreneurs

Working at the Boundary: An Empirical Study into the Goals and Strategies of Knowledge Brokers in the Field of Environmental Governance in the Netherlands

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