agency, structure and logic in social scientific knowledge exchange

8/13/2019 Agency, Structure and Logic in Social Scientific Knowledge Exchange

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/ LITERATURE REVIEW / 1

Agency, structure and logic in social scientific knowledge exchange

The relationship between knowledge and action has been of interest to scholars from

the ancient Greeks onwards (Rich 1979) and sociologists have been concerned with

the use of knowledge to improve society since the emergence of their profession inthe 19thcentury (Weiss 1995). Marx, a social philosopher whose academic career was

constrained by a political climate which made his prospects for obtaining a

university post remote (Rockmore 2008), worked to change society through political

activism (McLellan 2006). Durkheim effected change by reorganising academic

structures, founding sociology as a university discipline and establishing the journal

L'Anne sociologique through which he would influence academics working in

other disciplines and, through them and their students, society as a whole

(Thompson 2002).

Towards the end of the 20thcentury social scientists began to recognise that despite

their concern for the betterment of society, there was little evidence that their work

was influencing public policy directly (Albaek 1995). In part, this may be due to

empirical difficulties in measuring research use (Beyer & Trice 1982; Greenberg &

Mandell 1991; Sunesson & Nilsson 1988), particularly where the research is used

conceptually rather than instrumentally (Weiss 1979). In the traditional

'enlightenment' mode of knowledge production, the accumulation of knowledge is a

good in itself which will lead eventually to social improvement. The problem is thata considerable amount of time may elapse between the conduct of social research

and its use and "in the meantime the benefits to knowledge can be extremely

unequally distributed" (Calhoun 2006). Consequently, there have been calls for a

redefinition of scholarship and a reconsideration of academic priorities (Boyer 1990).

In order to understand the gap between the knowledge produced by social science

and the reality of public policy and professional practice, academics have produced

progressively more complex models of the research-to-action or 'knowledge

exchange' process (Nutley et al. 2007). Linear-rational stage models (Knott &Wildavsky 1980) have been succeeded by multi-dimensional characterisations of

knowledge producer and user communities (Caplan 1979) and relational and

interactive models (Lomas 2000). Revised modernist conceptions of research use

blend a social constructivist emphasis on local knowledges, contexts and

interpretations with traditional models of dissemination (Cousins & Simon 1996).

These approaches stress the importance of 'sustained interactivity' which results

from the development of mechanisms to link researchers and practitioners

(Huberman 1994).


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Formal linking mechanisms include client-driven 'problem-solving' research (Weiss

1979), government scrutiny processes (Centre for Public Scrutiny 2005) and

programme evaluation (Patton 1997). Less formal mechanisms which lead to the

development of positive relationships between academics and practitioners include

collaborative research projects in the form of engaged scholarship (Van de Ven &

Johnson 2006) or a more flexible, relational scholarship (Bartunek 2007). However,

many academics struggle with the diversity and diffusiveness of the many potential

partners with which they might collaborate (Pettigrew 2011) and policy-makers say

that they lack the time to engage with researchers (Sheldon & Chilvers 2001). Lists of

organisational barriers to and facilitators of knowledge transfer abound in the

literature (Crewe & Young 2002; Ferlie et al. 2012) but scholars have failed to find

knowledge exchange strategies which are independent of context (Contandriopoulos

et al. 2010), concluding that the best that can be hoped for at present is anidentification of which sets of factors apply in which types of context (Oh 1997).

A focus on process and context reflects the observation that human action is enabled

and constrained by social structure (Giddens 1984) but deemphasises the role of

individual agents in shaping their structure. Individuals express their agency and

influence social structure by making strategic choices; they gain power and increase

their influence by mobilising the support of others through purposive, reflexive

organising (Whittington 1992). Through the process of organising they may

construct new ways to influence social change; the social scientists engaged in the'organic public sociology' described by Burawoy do not think of potential partners

and publics as fixed, but as groups that can be created and transformed (Burawoy

2005). Organic public sociologists intervene where necessary -- where markets,

media or bureaucracy have eroded group identities -- to create new publics. Faced

with the scale and complexity of social problems and the unpredictable and context-

dependent outcomes of knowledge exchange interventions, organic public

sociologists co-construct a future with their publics.

A focus on the structuring potential of agency emphasises the importance of

understanding the organising behaviours of social scientists in an institutional

environment characterised by pressure to conform to an imperative of

disinterestedness (Merton 1979), weak incentives for external engagement and

institutionalised bureaucracy (Lam 2000). Weber observed that scholarly life requires

different qualities than do political or practical pursuits (Turner 2007) and the

behaviours required for success within the academy may not be the same as those

required to build partnerships in an external environment characterised by diversity

and unpredictability. Although the relative autonomy afforded to scholars and thelegitimacy conferred by domain expertise supports efforts to work across


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organisations and sectors (Williams 2002), scholars may fail to attain sufficient

power within their institution to acquire sufficient autonomy, or having devoted

their career to meeting the expectations of their peers they may consequently fail to

develop an approach which helps them to succeed in the unbounded and

unpredictable world outside the university setting.

A logic which supports co-construction activity within an unpredictable context has

been identified by Sarasvathy, who studied the heuristics used by successful

entrepreneurs to structure their environments (Sarasvathy 2008). Where outcomes

are difficult or impossible to predict but actors retain some degree of local control, an

'effectual' (as opposed to causal) logic involves the transformation of local resources

into co-created goals by working with others who share a desire to build a possible

future (Wiltbank et al. 2006). It is derived from an implicitly constructionist view of a

malleable social world, with opportunities for change being made rather than

discovered. When confronted with unpredictable situations, Sarasvathy found that

entrepreneurs operate with a set of flexible heuristics: (i) they start with means

rather than ends; (ii) they work on a basis of affordable loss rather than expected

return; (iii) they view initial customers as partners, and vice versa; (iv) they ignore

competition and stress partnerships; (v) they fabricate rather than find markets; (vi)

they accept unanticipated ends rather than requiring a preselected goal (Sarasvathy

2001).

An effectual logic based on the premise: "To the extent we can control the future, we

do not need to predict it" (Sarasvathy 2001) may be problematic for scientists who

are concerned with understanding the social world in order that the results of social

interventions may be predicted. A future research strategy could seek to identify

whether such a logic is in use by social scientists working within the organic public

sociology model. In addition to understanding the context of 'hybrid' research

groups such as ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London and the Conflict,

Security and Development Group at King's College London, which view the forging

of multilateral partnerships with policy-makers and practitioners as a central part of

their function, an understanding of the logics utilised by their founders may

illuminate the role of agency in building knowledge transfer structures. The action of

individuals to establish of research groups within universities is a relatively

understudied, and potentially informative, phenomenon.

Albaek, E., 1995. Between knowledge and power: Utilization of social science in


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Centre for Public Scrutiny, 2005. The scrutiny map: charting the range and reach ofscrutiny bodies across the public sector, Centre for Public Scrutiny.

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