History anticipates a link between religion and innovation, and religious aspects could be expected to impact also current innovation activities, positive or negative. This paper describes and discusses the relations between innovation and religion by means of a systematic literature review. The review points to six different causal claims between religion and innovation: (i) the Church as a platform for innovation and entrepreneurship; (ii) religion enabling or inhibiting innovation adaptation and diffusion; (iii) spirituality and ethics, and their relation to innovation, organisational development and human relation management; (iv) creation and utilisation of innovations in religious settings; (v) doctrinal innovation; and (vi) religion as scientific underpinning. This evokes an initiative for further studies on religion and innovation, and contributes to current understanding through providing a first-of-its kind literature review.
Knowledge production is increasingly made in broader Mode 2 (Gibbons, 1994) network of stakeholders and contributing actors, e.g. in the form of participatory, interactive and action research. Historically this has always been an important part of scientific and academic activity, particularly important in certain scientific fields of research, e.g. engineering, business administration, organization and working life research, pedagogics and social work studies, as well in methodological traditions like action research and participatory research (Reason & Bradbury, 2008). When roles in knowledge production are more interconnected traditional research ethics focused on ethical treatments of research objects when they also are subjects (e.g. information, consent, and confidentiality) need to be significantly supplemented. When knowledge is seen as co-produced in interaction between equal parties with different contribution to the process and knowledge interest, this creates the need for recognition and guidance of special norms and ethical codes as prerequisites for excellent practice. This paper is aiming to explore and discuss norms of excellence and ethical concerns in co-production between academia and enterprises and how collaboration could be organized to increase both validity and utility of the knowledge created in such settings. All parties in such collaborative setting have the responsibility to generate practical agreements as to form the ground for a beneficial co-production, however this includes rules for securing non-violation of rights, like confidentiality and intellectual property. The parties share responsibility in review and control of quality of processes and results in relation to these agreements, although it differs in what matters considered important to address in academic traditions and enterprises cultures. The purpose of this paper is to develop an extended set of norms and ethical principles for co-production oriented research. The main focus is relational dimension between involved parties instead of how one party (the researcher) treats other affected parties. We have therefore developed a list of norms with clarification and argument as basis for their use. Examples are: acknowledgement and respect should be given to different forms of knowledge, theoretical and practical, explicit and formal as well as implicit and tacit; care should be taken to provide space for expression of different perspectives of involved parties in order to secure validation and useful results, open discussion on equal terms; democratic dialogue, is a core medium for good co-productive relations, different knowledge needs and interests of involved and concerned parties, practical as well as scientific; to the co-production should be considered in the aims and procedures, and that the parties have a mutual responsibility to develop sufficient understanding of the needs and interests of others. The proposed norms developed in this paper can be considered as a tool or a guideline for the development of ethical and excellence co-produced research.
If digitalization projects aim to effectively create value for a company, one precondition is having a shared view among company staff and project members of what the "desirable" value is. However, it has been shown that few companies fully understand the value that digitalization projects can create for them, while many companies still launch digitalization projects without this understanding. This contributes to the current "alarmingly" low success rate for digitalization projects. Development of effective methods to specify the desired values of digitalization projects is thus important. One step in developing improved specification methods is to ask what the possible barriers are to improving current value specification practices. The purpose of the current study is to address this. We analyzed several digitalization projects regarding how specifications of desired project value were carried out, finding that very limited resources are spent on specifying desired values in digitalization projects, and that this limits project success. Likewise, there are several barriers to increasing resources for specifying desired values. Our findings contribute to understanding the development of value specification methods that aim to overcome these barriers and thus could help improve the success rate of digitalization projects.
Having project goals that are shared among project members are preconditions for resource efficient as well effective projects and operations. However, specifying and communicating project goals require an ability to identify goals that are indeed commonly shared. Rapid technological developments may require digitalization projects that lead to large portions of existing company staff being redundant, making it possible to assume that the quest of finding a commonly shared view of what is ‘resource-efficient’ will be increasingly challenging. Development of methods to specify project goals that are incentivizing for all project members and staff can hence be assumed to be important. One step in developing improved specification methods is to ask how the process to specify desired value from digitalization projects handles possible disagreements of what is ‘desired value’. The purpose of this study was to answer this question. We analyzed several digitalization projects, and how specifications of desired project results impacted project outcomes. We found that potential disagreements regarding desirable project outcomes generally are avoided by avoiding specification of what a desirable resource efficiency outcome is, and how actual project outcomes should be measured. However, we also found that this practice also led to unsatisfying project outcomes regarding resource-efficiency improvements, and that improved methods to specify desired value from digitalization projects should be developed. Our findings support earlier findings that the general failure rate of digitalization projects is high, often due to insufficient specification of desired projects outcomes before the projects are initiated. Our findings contribute to the understanding that despite this, there are also perceived benefits of spending limited resources on specification of desired outcomes. If attempts to improve the success rate of digitalization projects by improving specifications of desired project outcomes is to succeed, these perceived benefits must be considered
Economic actors and entrepreneurs are the central agents of change in the process of transformation needed to solve environmental challenges. The growing recognition of environmental issues has provided entrepreneurs with new opportunities, resulting in the emergence of ecopreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the character of ecopreneurship in the environmental technology sector, with focus on environmental responsibility and environmental leadership at both the company and sector level. The survey of companies and representatives of branch organisations in four environmental technology subsectors: Waste Management & Recycling, Bioenergy Fuels, Wind Energy Technology and Solar Energy Technology is based on telephone and personal interviews as well as on environmentally related information and statements on the websites. The literature review shows that there are different approaches to categorizing ecopreneurs and sustainability entrepreneurs. A key dimension is the value and motives of entrepreneurs, with dichotomy between opportunistic ecopreneurs, and those driven more by nonprofit value. Environmental technology and cleantech are commonly accepted as being green businesses as these sectors deliver environmental preferable products and services. According to the results there is a strong awareness about this environmental friendly profile within subsectors of environmental technology industry, both within branch organizations and within companies. However, this awareness does not always lead to a broader, green-green view of the environmental leadership. In many cases the branch organizations and the companies within environmental technology sector represent a more opportunistic approach towards environmental issues. Only one of branch organizations addresses environmental impacts of members.
This chapter argues that American pragmatism can inspire and support an important shift in prevailing social science discourses on power towards non-coercive, collaborative understandings of power consistent with a participatory democratic politics and way of life. It draws out an understanding of non-coercive, collaborative power from the works of Dewey and Follett, and illustrates its relevance for the analysis of power in the domain of action research. Collaborative power is here understood as power in the making’. Its chief merit is ensuring, first and foremost, cooperation between parties. The significance of collaborative power is more broadly applicable than the local communities in which the concept was originally developed. The concepts of circular response and integration of interest are useful in analysing collaborative power at the micro, meso and macro levels of society. Powerful people are, by virtue of their proprietary rights, able to change and reduce the effects of collaborative power.
In this article a distinction between a pragmatic and a critical orientation of action research is made. These orientations can be considered, implicitly or explicitly, to be the main alternatives in AR today. What are the assumptions behind, and practical implications for, AR projects with different orientations? A number of themes are introduced where a tension between the two are identified and illustrated in the form of a dialogue and friendly quarrel between proponents from each side. It is argued that the two orientations suit different research contexts and cannot easily be combined. The pragmatic orientation is well suited for contexts where concerted and immediate action is needed, whereas the critical is preferable where transformative action needs to be preceded by critical thinking and reflection. In the former, power to act is a desired outcome, and in the latter, unequal and invisible power relations need to be unveiled before they can be transformed. The responsibility of the researcher, as well as the form of knowledge developed, differs between the two orientations.
There are today trends towards democratizing innovation (von Hippel, 2005) in line with the vision of creative democracy earlier recognized by thinkers like Dewey (1939) and Follett (1998). User involvement and the internet as a medium for interaction is broadening the participation in innovation processes. What is lacking in innovation research is conceptual and theoretical understanding of democratizing dimensions of innovation management grounded in theories of participatory democracy. The purpose of the paper is to contribute with understanding of the character of democratic innovation management based on four variants of theory of participatory democracy. The study is performed through synthesis of liberal, communitarian, discursive and interactive theories of participatory democracy, and investigating how these theories contribute with understanding of participation and the mobilization of creative capacities of people as well as how to integrate them freely into collaborative, innovative and efficient innovation processes.
Stronger global completion provides an impetus for servitization in global industrial companies, that is, to shift from selling products to selling integrated products and services. To increase efficiency in service innovation there is a need to reorganize innovation system and build suitable capabilities, something which require significant organizational transformation. The purpose of the paper is to describe a Scandinavian effort to develop a Total Innovation Management (TIM) approach to service innovation. Firstly, a theoretical framework for innovation system for service is developed. Secondly, through a case illustration it is shown that servitization in practice imply complex dynamics of many factors, forces and agency which both works towards and restricts servitization. To deal with this dynamic there is a need for a TIM approach.
A core impetus of participatory and action research is making science relevant and useful for solving pressing problems and improving social conditions, and enabling stakeholders to participate in research and development processes. There are claims in the community of participatory and action research of the potential for heightened scientific excellence, but at the same time, there are critiques in the mainstream community that more engaged, even activist, stances threaten scientific norms or that position these type of research approaches outside the field of science, for example, as issues of application. In the search of clarification of the scientific identity and the specific qualities of participatory and action research, scholars have been moving away from and sometimes have rejected traditional conceptions of quality. This leads to confusion about how to relate to the discourse on research quality and scientific excellence in mainstream science. Integration in this discourse is important in order to attain academic legitimation in prevailing institutions of science, for example, in applications for funding, in seeking to publish research, and in the acceptance of dissertations based on participatory and action research. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this integration by reconstructing the way traditional quality concepts - validity, reliability, and objectivity - can be fruitfully used in expanded frameworks for quality where scientific excellence of participatory and action approaches are visible and where mainstream science approaches also can be harboured. In this conceptual article, reconstruction of understanding of scientific inquiry is first made based on a praxis-oriented epistemology inspired by pragmatism. Through rethinking truth as trustworthiness, new proposals for the conceptualization and frames for research quality and scientific excellence are introduced. Second, a framework for understanding purpose in science and its basis in validity, reliability, and the core characteristics of participatory and action research is developed. Third, the turn to action, practice, and participation enables plural ways of knowing and ways that knowledge claims can be validated and made trustworthy. The article concludes that participatory and action research offers a broader landscape of purpose and validation than more traditional approaches to science. In a subsequent article, reliability and objectivity, and their use in participatory and action research, will be clarified.
The purpose of this article is to deal with the following question: Can the concepts of reliability and objectivity be reconceptualized and reappropriated to enable understanding of scientific excellence in participatory and action research? The article shows that it is fruitful to consider the "subjective" and active role of researchers as vital in enabling scientific objectivity and reliability. As an expansion from a replication logic, reliability can be conceptualized as adaptive, goal-seeking, dynamically regulated processes enabled by effective organization of interactive and participatory learning processes where all participants can contribute to learning and correction in inquiry. Instead of erasing subjectivity, objectivity can be enabled by critical subjectivity, intersubjectivity, practical wisdom, impartial norms of inquiry, and open democratic dialogue. Reliability and objectivity in this understanding can be enabled by participatory and action research through skilful performance of research practices such as reflective conversations between parties, dialogue conferences, experimentation, and experiential learning as part of action-research cycles, etc., which are common in participatory and action research initiatives and projects. By rethinking validity, reliability, and objectivity, recognizing the substantially more active and participatory stances enables scientific excellence, it can expand the repertoire of strategies for promoting research quality, and it helps to mainstream this type of approach in the scientific community.
Systemic innovation as a concept and theory is still undeveloped fo runderstanding and managing innovation. By a focus on processes where actors innovate systemically, where systems are seen as something constructed byinnovators rather than given in reality, systemic innovation adds to leading approaches to managing innovation, like open innovation, triple helix, as wellas innovation system and ecosystem, with potentials to be developed into a new paradigm in innovation studies and innovation management. Through conceptual development, literature review and empirical study at three industrial innovation centers focused on industry transformation, a model for systemic innovation is developed. The model aims to contribute to theory of systemic innovation as well as be potential guide for practitioners in innovating systemically
One common feature of different variants of Action Research and Interactive Research is the rejection of technocratic, undemocratic streaks in science and inquiry, particularly those emanating from different aspects of the still quite strong positivist and contemplative academic heritage (Toulmin 2001). Action Research was, from the Lewinian start, already seen as a form of research to further the democratic process. A basic impetus in Participatory Action Research and Interactive Research is bringing practitioners into the scientific research process (Fals-Borda & Rahman 1991; Nielsen & Svensson 2006). This chapter will focus on the explicit or implicit democratising ambitions and tendencies in many of these types of approaches. I believe most of us value democracy and would see science as in service to it. The point here is to take the argument a step further in line with a position of a leading researcher in the field of Acton Research, who wrote, “Democracy does not only function as ‘something that is good’, but also as a theory of science point of departure-as the system of thought underlying the construction of the concept and-at a later stage-the survey of ‘facts’ and shaping of praxis” (Gustavsen 1990, p. 98). Democratising science raises the question of whether science will become more or less scientific? How can participatory democracy contribute to the scientific quality of inquiry? Or does it stifle it? Will the democratising researcher lose scientific perspective and become a political activist or a consultant-be it of a managerial or emancipatory kind? How can the academic researcher be engaged, useful and democratic-as well as scientific-at the same time? The purpose of the chapter is to develop a number of different arguments for taking participatory democracy not only as an extra-scientific value that, however commendable, should not disturb the scientific process, but as a comparatively advantageous philosophy of science orientation for Action and Interactive Research (see, e.g. Novotny, Scott & Gibbons 2001; Toulmin & Gustavsen 1996). I develop five types of arguments-empirical, epistemological, moral, institutional and political-which commend participatory democracy as a philosophy of science point of departure.