Research contexts and policy knowledge: Linking social science research and environmental policy

Science and Public Policy

Volumn 24, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 214-222

  Shove, Elizabeth ^a   Simmons, Peter ^a  

^a LANCASTER UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY; GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; RESEARCH POLICY;

UK;

EID: 0031420010     PISSN: 03023427     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/spp/24.4.214     Document Type: Article

References (9)

1. H Newby, "One world, two cultures: sociology and the environment", Network. 50, May 1991.
2. While it would be interesting to evaluate the impact of the GEC programme on the social science research community, and to consider policy-makers' responses to this initiative, both tasks lie beyond the scope of this discussion.
3. We spoke with 19 researchers working on 12 different projects, and also had discussions with staff at a socio-environmental research centre. Two of the projects were based in non-academic institutions, the remainder in universities. They ranged from lone researchers to multidisciplinary, multi-institutional teams. Interviews were followed by a one-day workshop, attended by most of those interviewed, together with a representative of the GEC programme and two consultants retained by the programme to advise on relationships with research users in the business and policy communities.
4. This judgement was made on the basis of reading the research proposal for each project.
5. Office of Science and Technology, Realising Our Potential: A Strategy for Science and Technology (Cmd 2250, HMSO, London, 1993)
6. This bears out research on the utilisation process which suggests that direct personal contact between researchers and policy actors is perhaps the most effective channel of communication (for a review, see J M Beyer and H M Trice, The utilization process: A conceptual framework and synthesis of empirical findings", Administrative Science Quarterly, 27, 1982, pages 591-622).
7. The empirical literature reviewed frequently emphasises the importance of 'linking' and 'boundary spanning' roles, but treats these and other roles as distinct (see for example Beyer and Trice, note 24). What the literature does not identify are the multiple roles that may be occupied by researchers even in the same arena and the hybrid identity that is thereby constructed.
8. The implications of these diverse commitments and responsibilities for both the individual researcher and for the research process, and the ways in which resulting tensions are managed, are not something that we are able to address here but they raise questions which call for further investigation.
9. Clearly, there are instances where multidisciplinary networks of researchers (particularly those operating outside the disciplinary constraints of the academic sector) and policy actors may establish more stable "communities" around distinct problem areas (W C Mathisen, The problem-solving community: a valuable alternative to disciplinary communities?". Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization, 11(4), 1990, pages 410-427). However, although he identifies similar tensions and ambivalences to those outlined in this paper, Mathisen's attempt to promote the Norwegian Work Research Institute as a model tends to overlook the specificities of the institutional and knowledge cultures which support such configurations at both a national and a sectoral level. Although there are clear benefits to the existence of stable, problem-centred communities of this sort, the constant formation, reconfiguration and dissolution of networks can have its own advantages, as mobility of actors between networks can itself be a valuable mechanism for the generation and transfer of knowledge.