policy learning and knowledge perceptions
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Policy learning and knowledge perceptions
Per Koch, Director for Analysis and Strategy Development, the Research Council of Norway
Seminar arranged by the EU FP Project “Understanding the Relationship between Knowledge and Competitiveness in the Enlarging European Union” and the Research Council of Norway February 1 2008.
Understanding the Relationship between Knowledge and Competitiveness in the Enlarging European Union Workpackage on policy learning and knowledge
policies for science/industry relations
Understanding how different concepts of knowledge and different understandings of how knowledge works lead to different policies
GoodNIPGood Practices in Nordic Innovation Policies
STEP Centre for Innovation Research (NIFU STEP)www.step.no/goodnip
Part of the Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration on "Improving the human research potential and the socio-economic knowledge base,1998-2002" under the EU
5th Framework Programme
Supported by the Norwegian Ministry for Education and Research
Innovation in the Public Sector
www.step.no/publin
What is knowledge, really?
Information (a message containing structured data)
Knowledge (information absorbed and given meaning)
Competence (knowledge put into practice)
Wisdom (knowledge honed by experience, empathy and the ability to transcend simplistic dichotomies)
Typologies of knowledge
Know how: the ability to do something (competence)
Know what: knowledge about facts
Know why: knowledge about principles and laws
Know who: knowledge about who knows what
(Johnson and Lundvall 2001)
Tacit knowledge
Knowledge rooted in practice and experience (competences) that is hard to articulate or communicate in codified form.
Embodied in human beings and transmitted by apprenticeship and training.
Tacit knowledge
Learning
You learn if, through the process of information, your range of potential behaviors is changed.
(Huber 1991)
Institutions learn from their experiences through accumulating historical experiences
Operating procedures
Professional rules
Rules of thumb
The development of a common framework of reference (belief systems)
Expanding life worlds
Learning is not about adding facts to an internal knowledge bank.
Learning is a complex process that expands your internal repository of knowledge and changes your understanding of nature or culture.
This expansion makes new learning possible.
Innovation is change of behavior with a specific objective in mind
Innovation is a social entity’s implementation and performance of a new specific form or repertoire of social action that is implemented deliberately by the entity in the context of the objectives and functionalities of the entity’s activities
Johan Hauknes
A deliberate change of behavior at the level of institutions that includes a new or improved service, process, technology or administrative tool.
Publin
“innovation is not merely synonymous with change. Ongoing change is a feature of most… organizations. For example the recruitment of new workers constitutes change but is an innovative step only where such workers are introduced in order to import new knowledge or carry out novel tasks”.
Green, Howells and Miles
The role of belief systems
A belief system is a historically conditioned common understanding of how reality is constructed.
Related concepts: rationality, mentality, mental model, life world, reality matrix, cognitive model
Belief systems makes it possible to think
Pre-judices are necessary in order to learn.
A common language and common life experiences are needed in order to communicate and reach a common understanding.
Still: to innovate you need a fresh perspective. When belief systems collide, innovation may occur.
Policy learning
Policy learning: A relatively enduring alteration of thought or behavioral intentions that are concerned with the attainment (or revision) of a policy belief system. (Sabatier)
Publin: Resistance to change
The systemic impact of innovation and change is often viewed as an unwelcome perturbation to the overall functioning of the organization.
A tendency to adopt the “not invented here” attitude with an unwillingness to accept novel ideas from outside the immediate organizational peer group.
Turf wars, struggles for power and money
Tendency to recruit likeminded people
Those that think outside the box feel unappreciated and leave
The role of belief systems in research and innovation policy development (GoodNIP)
The macroeconomic rationality
The science base rationality
The entrepreneurship rationality
The planning rationality
The systemic rationality
The macroeconomic rationality Neoclassical economics
Focus on public finance, interest rates and monetary policies
Market failure arguments
Innovation takes place ”outside” the economy (”Black Box”)
Ministries of Finance
The planning rationality
An active state
Corporative
Weakened by globalization and a lack of faith in human understanding
Ministries of Agriculture
The Entrepreneurship Rationality
SMEs
Focus on individuals (entrepreneurs or ”gründer”)
Focus on regional development
Ministries of Regional Development
Ministries of Industry
The science based rationality Focus on universities
Science push
Tendency towards linear thinking
R&D as a measure of innovation
University ideology
Ministries of Education and Research
“Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past. Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will lead to the prevention or cure of diseases, will promote conservation of our limited national resources, and will assure means of defense against aggression. But to achieve these objectives - to secure a high level of employment, to maintain a position of world leadership - the flow of new scientific knowledge must be both continuous and substantial. “ Vannevar Bush: The Endless Frontier 1945
The systemic rationality Interaction in the national innovation
system
Focus on the company
Evolutionary (Lamarckian)
A broad portfolio of policy instruments
Focus on several types of innovation (R&D, design, marketing, learning)
Ministries of Industry and Economics
Ministries of Regional Development
Do these different belief systems hinder or foster policy learning and innovation?
They make communication easier within the belief system
They make communication harder across the borders of some of these belief systems, especially if fundamental principles differ.
Interest groups have a tendency of adopting belief systems that give conclusions that further their interests.
Policy makers may make use of rhetoric developed in other belief systems in order to strengthen their case
Barrier to innovation: Heritage and legacy
Publin: The size and complexity leads to the development of internal barriers and, in the worst case scenario, the development of “silo mentalities” wherein parallel systems maintain their own organisational norms, beliefs and practices with little communication with each other.
Public sector organisations are frequently prone to entrenched belief systems, practices and procedures – that which has worked in the past is seen as good practice.
The knowledgebase for research and innovation policy – traditional model
Research and statistics
Policy-analysis and policy develop-ment
Funding and regulations
Indepen-dent and objective researcher
Bureacraut Politiican
Oppdrag
The ideal model ignores three factors:
The researcher, the bureaucrat and the politician do not necessarily share
the same understanding of reality
the same interests
the same belief systems
the same priorities
The world of policy and politics
The discourse of the social scientists is to give a critical appraisal of the existing social reality.
The policy maker must also take other factors into consideration.
The struggle within and between policy-organisation for power, funding and language
Political dynamics
Bureaucracy is changing
From bureaucrats to civil servants
From bureaucracy to political secretariats
Higher level of competences (research experience, Masters,
Civil servants have become experts and analysts within their own field of expertise.
Publin on combating institutional lock-in
Develop quality leadership that creates the right climate for change, "walk the talk" and institute "cultural change".
Combat silo mentalities and turf wars
Encourage staff mobility between institutions in order to avoid the tendency of hiring “clones”
Discuss overall objectives for welfare and the quality of life and the effects of changes in one part in the public sector for another
It is also beneficial to co-opt staff members and create “agents of change” to overcome potential resistance from the (professional) staff
On the policy level: Reach for a good balance between “competent bureaucrats” and “creative policy entrepreneurs”.
Shake the system. Yes, sometimes a reorganisation is exactly what the doctor orders against lock-in and stagnant waters
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