The LSE Behavioural Public Policy Knowledge Exchange Group (hereafter the Group) was formed to bring together behavioural specialists across the public and private sectors, the international agencies and academia. The purpose of the Group was for its members to discuss the role that behavioural science ought to play in informing decisions that affect individuals and society. The hope was that, by having a Group of the various stakeholders in behavioural public policy meet regularly over an extended period, a shared understanding of the appropriate objectives of this subfield of public policy might be agreed upon. At the very first meeting of the Group, an attempt was thus made to identify some behavioural public policy principles that all members of the Group could accept. At that meeting, there was common consensus in supporting the use of behavioural public policy to strengthen individual agency in the decisions that people take that affect their own lives, to target externality concerns, and to protect and nurture the social instincts.

Over the past years, the concept of open research data (ORD) has gained traction as part of broader Open Science initiatives. The benefits of ORD, such as increased cost-effectiveness, transparency, and visibility, are well documented. However, researchers face barriers, which may be perceived rather than real, hindering the adoption of ORD practices. To address this challenge, we propose using ORD support services as sustainable enablers to stimulate cultural change around ORD. We engaged stakeholders across the University of Zurich and the Swiss ORD community, differentiating between researchers and ORD experts, to identify which services would best serve as sustainable enablers. After defining ORD support services and categorizing them into six key areas, we conducted surveys and interviews to gather insights on service preferences and barriers to ORD adoption. Among researchers, we identified a trend toward simpler and lower-resource services, highlighting the need for user-friendly and easily accessible support. ORD experts emphasized the importance of professional data stewardship, robust research data management (RDM) practices, and customized support to address discipline-specific needs. By combining survey and interview results, we provide a detailed overview of stakeholders’ ideas and suggestions for each proposed support area. Our study results in recommendations for academic institutions aiming to stimulate a cultural shift toward ORD. By focusing on findable, accessible, and user-friendly services, equipping researchers with fundamental RDM skills, and professionalizing data stewardship to provide customized support, institutions can foster the adoption of ORD practices. Ultimately, these measures can enhance the impact and reproducibility of scientific research.

CONTEXTperts (Context and Topic Experts) bring real-world experience in the context of the study topic and setting to enhance research team expertise, capacity, and creativity. They complement but do not replace authentic patient and community engagement, professional consultants, or formal advisory boards. Individual CONTEXTpert consultations or group meetings can help improve research questions, study designs, implementation plans, dissemination, and application of findings. They have added value to a variety of projects with varied research methods and study designs, including research with and without patient or community involvement. CONTEXTperts can bring vision, challenge, and reality checks to a variety of research teams with a practical, affordable model.

This study addresses a major challenge the nonprofit sector is facing: low organizational commitment from employees. In response to the call to take into consideration contextual and institutional factors, it draws from the stakeholder theory and the organizational support theory to investigate how internal and external organizational processes could influence organizational commitment. The quantitative data collected from over 200 nonprofit employees revealed that organizational commitment was positively related to engaged leadership, community engagement effort, degree of formalization in daily operations, and perceived intangible support for employees. Further analysis showed that tangible support measured as perceived fair pay has an indirect effect, which is contingent upon how well the nonprofits engage with internal and external stakeholders. Findings suggest that nonprofit employees’ personal tangible gains may come second when assessing their commitment to the organization; instead, how well their employer manages stakeholder relationships in a larger community plays a more significant role.

This study explored Chinese NGOs’ behavior on domestic social media platforms. By observing 155 rural education NGOs on one of China’s most popular social media sites, Sina-Weibo for 6 months, we found that despite Internet censorship and the unique government-NGO relationship in China, the Chinese NGOs are active on Weibo. Like their Western counterparts, the Chinese NGOs use social media to share information, build community, and mobilize resources. Because the Chinese NGOs face some unique legitimacy problems, aside from using social media to attract followers, they also use social media’s powerful broadcasting function to improve organizational legitimacy. To fit into the Weibo community, the organizations use a large amount of slang and emoji, and publish a significant number of posts which cover popular topics, but are not related to their work.

Environmental modeling is a powerful tool for facilitating discussions among stakeholders involved in decision-making for environmental planning. This article explores how models can be used to structure stakeholder discussions by visualizing the opportunity space – the range of interventions that are deemed to be technically and physically feasible – and how it overlaps (or does not) with the decision space – the set of interventions considered acceptable or desirable by stakeholders. Using the case study of the Aa of Weerijs catchment in the Netherlands and Belgium, we demonstrate how different model contributions (sensitivity analysis, impact assessment and scenario evaluations at catchment and local levels) can aid these discussions by providing structured insights into potential interventions, both within the opportunity and decision spaces. The findings highlight how models can bridge gaps between stakeholders and technical experts by facilitating more effective discussions and better-informed decision-making processes in environmental planning.

As social media continues to grow, understanding the impact of storytelling on stakeholder engagement becomes increasingly important for policymakers and organizations who wish to influence policymaking. While prior research has explored narrative strategies in advertising and branding, researchers have paid scant attention to the specific influence of stories on social media stakeholder engagement. This study addresses this gap by employing Narrative Transportation Theory (NTT) and leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the intricate textual data generated by social media platforms. The analysis of 85,075 Facebook publications from leading Canadian manufacturing companies, using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, underscores that individual storytelling components—character, sequence of events, and setting—along with the composite narrative structure significantly enhance stakeholder engagement. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of storytelling dynamics in social media, emphasizing the importance of crafting compelling stories to drive meaningful stakeholder engagement in the digital realm. The results of our research can prove useful for those who wish to influence policymakers or for policymakers who want to promote new policies.

This study investigates practicing clinician and staff perspectives on potential protocol modifications for the “Nasal Irrigation, Oral Antibiotics, and Subgroup Targeting for Effective Management of Acute Sinusitis” (NOSES) study, a pragmatic randomized controlled trial aiming at improving acute rhinosinusitis management. Focus groups with clinicians and staff at the pretrial stage recommended expanding participant age inclusion criteria, incorporating patients with COVID-19, and shortening the supportive care phase. Participants also discussed patient engagement and recruitment strategies. These practical insights contribute to optimizing the NOSES trial design and underscore the value of qualitative inquiries and healthcare stakeholder engagement in informing clinical trial design.