Taking Knowledge CoProduction Seriously

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Taking Knowledge Co-Production Seriously

• Jacky Swan, IKON Research Centre, University of
  Warwick

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Outline

• Why co-production?
• A story
• Co-production as an institutional logic
• Implications

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Why co-production?

• Coalescing influences
• Knowledge Society ( availability of information
  Service Economy)
• Translational gap between research and practice
• Risk Society
• Ostrom (1970s) co-production to explain rising
  crime in Chicago
• Policy/Academic rhetoric initiatives
• e.g. Inst Public Policy Research, Kings Fund
  (Coote. 1980s) Time Banks Cahn (1990s)
• KTPs, Networks, IKCs Patient Public
  Involvement
• Mode1 Mode 2 (Gibbons et al, 1994),
  Engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2006)

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A example of co-production policy meets practice
Swan et al 2009

• UK Genetic Knowledge Parks
• To bring together multi-disciplinary groups of
  academic scientists (including social scientists
  with an interest in genetics), clinicians and
  health care providers, private companies, patient
  groups, and ethical/legal experts to engage in
  open, effective collaboration and to foster
  practical improvements in health care from
  breakthroughs in genetics and genomics research
  (DH 2001)
• 15 million (DH DTI), 6 GKPs

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Launch and Bidding Stage (July 2000-Jan 2002)

• Drivers knowledge risk
• Policy coproduction/Mode 2 rhetoric
  pragmatic approach to funding
• But last minute with hardly any consultation
• it appeared very late in the drafting of the NHS
  plan just a throw away sentence that took
  everyone by surprise and when Alan Millburn was
  questioned what is it? he said you tell me.
  We then had to develop some themes
• Long, ambiguous tender document with sections
  bolted on by DH, DTI, Government (not
  co-production)
• Science community ambivalent response
• Embraced the ideology (also needed for scientific
  practice)
• Groups recast research as Mode 2 - wider
  inclusion notional
• The original call for bids did say something
  about ethics, X knew me and said get involved
  but I did not know why (Health Economist).
• Problems of regional basing

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Pre-Review Stage (Feb 2002-Nov 2004)

• GKPs
• Major challenge in getting approvals for
  non-traditional science
• Some co-production in local projects
• Cross-disciplinary tensions (reconciled by novel
  project mgmt)
• GKPs all work differently
• Policy
• Govt White Paper reinforced Mode 2 rhetoric
• Multi-stakeholder AGGR to oversee initiative
  (outwardly Mode 2)
• But unclear brief little actual power
• if at any point the government decides that they
  want something done that might be questioned in
  public they will just bypass us
• AGGR attempts to secure legitimacy by expanding
  its role to performance assessor
• demands on reporting increase and generate
  significant tensions

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Post Review Stage (Dec 2004- Dec 2006)

• Policy
• GKPs comply and give AGGR vast amounts of report
  data
• Inability of AGGR to assess data give feedback
  further undermines their legitimacy
• AGGR demands that GKPs act as a network
  (reinvigorating calls for Mode 2)
• GKPs
• Hard to re-establish relationships that had been
  severely bruised by the competitive procedure.
  (GKP Manager)
• Develop a tickboxing strategy for AGGR
  reporting
• Quality control remains domain of traditional
  science
• October 2005 DH shock announcement of no
  further funding

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Co-production as institutional logic

• Institutional logics
• patterns of action and taken-for-granted ways of
  living that are considered rational across
  particular communities and so guide decision
  making (Friedland Alford, 1991 Lounsbury 2007
  Smith-Doerr, 2005 Colyvas Powell, 2006
  Lounsbury, 2007)

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Institutional change Dialectical Perspective
Seo Creed 2002
Mode 1 Science
Translational gap Risk
????
Mobilization of Coproduction/ Mode 2 logic
political action embedded in a historical system
of interconnected, yet incompatible
institutional arrangements
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Conclusions

• Understand co-production efforts as praxis
• multiple competing logics (Mode 1/Mode 2)
  played out through complex, political struggle
  amongst social constituencies with unequal power
  (Lounsbury, 2007)
• Not a replacement of one mode of knowledge
  production with another
• Logics comingle within (not just across)
  constituent groups (cf. Smith-Doerr, 2005)
• Socio-political legitimacy (e.g. Mode 2 policy
  rhetoric) taken-for-granted practices (e.g.
  production of tender document) loosely linked
• Mobilization of one logic can reinforce the other

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Implications

• Institutional co-production (as per Nowotny et
  al, 2001 Cahn, 1992) most problematic (Boyle et
  al 2006)
• Co-production paradoxes
• knowledge boundaries are not only a critical
  challenge, but also a necessity because much of
  what organizations produce has a foundation in
  the specialization of different kinds of
  knowledge (Carlile, 2002)
• co-production projects can help break down
  institutional barriersbut also require barriers
  to be blurred to have any chance of success
  (Boyle et al, 006) 
• Wholesale co-production argument not necessarily
  helpful
• Need creative approaches to handle inevitable
  contradictions
• E.g. closer consideration of where co-production
  is needed
• Different view of risk/ambiguity
• Performance assessment not based on target
  delivery

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Alternate modes of knowledge production