Policy Learning And Knowledge Perceptions

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