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Working with the tensions of transdisciplinary research: a review and agenda for the future of knowledge co-production in the Anthropocene
- Frances Harris, Fergus Lyon, Giles B. Sioen, Krsitie L. Ebi
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- Journal:
- Global Sustainability / Volume 7 / 2024
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 February 2024, e13
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- Article
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- Open access
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Non-technical summary
Transdisciplinary approaches for sustainability brings natural and social science researchers together with non researchers to fill gaps in scientific knowledge and catalyze change. By connecting diverse academic fields and sectors, it addresses complex problems and enables learning for problem solving. However, institutional barriers, funding constraints, time limitations, and evaluation criteria hinder collaborative progress. Our review reveals tensions at institutional and individual levels. Our findings underscore the significance of soft skills in assembling effective transdisciplinary teams. Embracing transdisciplinary science, as suggested by our review, can enhance problem-solving, and foster transformations for sustainability and resilience.
Technical summarySustainability challenges in the age of the Anthropocene require researchers and practitioners to collaborate across multiple academic disciplines and multiple professions outside of universities. In this paper we draw on theories of institutional logics to explore how those involved in transdisciplinary environmental research and practice draw on particular sets of values and norms but encounter challenges to collaboration. These institutional logics include (among others) seeking societal/environmental impact, commercial objectives, and academic knowledge generation. In this paper we review the growing literature on the research experience of transdisciplinarity in sustainability; discuss the processes of managing such research; and present a framework that outlines the challenges and tensions at each stage of the innovation/research process. We set out an agenda for managing tension that calls for recognizing the challenges, learning how to work with tensions, and building capabilities for future careers involving transdisciplinary research. The paper shows a key competence or skill for transdisciplinarians is the ability to develop complex collaborative relationships for sustainability drawing together different institutional logics, approaches, methods, goals, and values.
Social media summaryTransdisciplinary science: bridging disciplines, solving challenges. Soft skills and collaboration key to success.
five - Spinning with substance? The creation of new third sector organisations from public services
- Edited by James Rees, The Open University, David Mullins, University of Birmingham
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- Book:
- The Third Sector Delivering Public Services
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 26 July 2016, pp 87-106
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Summary
Introduction
A key theme in this book has been the impact of the changing relationship between the third and public sectors and the consequences of greater reliance on public sector funding for some organisations. Inherent within many of these debates is the notion that third sector organisations begin as autonomous entities that have been developed through voluntary endeavours of individuals or communities. However, in recent policy in England there has been growing interest in spinning out of services from the public sector to situate them in new third sector organisations. On a national level, such moves have been most strikingly encouraged through the Right to Request and the mutuals programmes. Supporters see spin-outs as hybrid organisations in which the public sector workforce are freed from constricting bureaucracy, and allowed to use new business opportunities to innovate and grow to the benefit of their users, communities and staff. For the Labour government, such developments were clearly situated in their interest in social enterprise, whereas the Coalition places a greater emphasis on mutuality and staff ownership. In reality though, there is little to split these governmental visions of spin-outs, with much more evolution than revolution between the two policy periods. Detractors claim that such policies are nothing more than Trojan horses for privatisation, which aim to weaken the role of state rather than strengthen the role of the third sector, that there is no solid evidence that such new models will lead to the expected innovation and efficiency, and that they provide unwelcome competition for existing third sector organisations in a time of public sector austerity (for example, Lister, 2008; Leys and Player, 2011; Unison, 2011; Godden 2012).
Whatever one's perspective on the underlying motivation is, spin-outs raise important questions regarding the relationship between third and public sectors. In this chapter we draw upon the research by authors and colleagues in relation to spin-out policies. This includes the rollout and uptake of Right to Request within the NHS, the national evaluation of the Social Enterprise Investment Fund that fuelled the NHS spin-out process, and research studies on innovation within spinouts. Where relevant, we also draw upon work by other academics in relation to these and related policy developments.
10 - Evolving institutions of trust: personalized and institutional bases of trust in Nigerian and Ghanaian food trading
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- By Fergus Lyon, Middlesex University, Gina Porter, Durham University
- Edited by Mark N. K. Saunders, University of Surrey, Denise Skinner, Coventry University, Graham Dietz, University of Durham, Nicole Gillespie, University of Queensland, Roy J. Lewicki, Ohio State University
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- Book:
- Organizational Trust
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 June 2010, pp 255-278
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Summary
Summary
This chapter examines the processes of building cooperation in a context of sparse public-sector regulation. The Nigerian and Ghanaian food sectors are characterized by a highly dispersed and fragmented system of micro-entrepreneurs from diverse ethnic groups who both compete and cooperate in order to flourish. Drawing on ethnographic research, we consider the relationships and contracts that require an element of cross-cultural trust, how personal social relations and institutional forms are used to ensure trust and the role of cultural norms. Our empirical findings indicate that individuals draw on both personalized social relations and institutional forms of trust that are underpinned by culture-specific norms. Through personalized trust, traders have been able to operate across cultural boundaries, building common norms of behaviour over centuries, and shaping these into what are perceived essentially as professional, albeit personalized, codes of conduct and semi-formal institutional forms (such as associations) that function in parallel to the state.
Introduction
The Nigerian and Ghanaian food sectors are characterized by a highly dispersed and fragmented system of micro-entrepreneurs from a range of ethnic groups who both compete and cooperate in order to survive and grow. The fragmented nature of the sector necessitates a range of cooperative forms in order for the enterprises to gain access to information, finance, quality products and market spaces. The traders involved are found to have a number of different types of bilateral relations (joint ventures and informal reciprocal arrangements) both within cultural groups and crossing cultural boundaries.