Knowledge Broker Stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy

This is not so much a story as a reflection on some of the things I have learned about knowledge mobilization.  Let me start with an example - the issue of staying in school.

We have volumes of research that show the benefits of graduating high school and getting at least some post secondary education, yet we continue to have higher than desired drop out rates.

How do we address this issue?

We don’t address it by engaging in yet another research project, we address it by identifying a specific audience and developing knowledge mobilization strategies to impact that audience and then determine what is the right information (which may or may not require additional research), right format, and right timing.

If you want to influence the teenager directly then you develop tools to reach them - visual graphics, e-games, peer role model programs, etc. and deliver them at a time when they are likely to be influenced.  If your intended audience is parents you use different strategies.  If your audience is provincial policy makers you use yet other strategies.  In all cases, involving representatives of the audience (building relationships) as early as possible in the process will help ensure successful results.

Influencing decision making requires both the research and KMb to be audience driven - not knowledge product driven. They must both be demand (user need) driven, not supply (research or researcher desire) driven.  I often hear a researcher say “well, I wrote this very important paper about issue X and yet things have not changed”, to which I reply “who asked you to write a paper about issue X?” and you can guess the answer I receive more often than not. Before engaging in a research project it is important to have a clear understanding of who your intended audience(s) is and what their needs are.

For a researcher, demand driven clearly means answering a question someone has asked.  But what does it mean to be demand driven or audience driven KMb?  It means adopting KM  strategies and processes that will successfully influence the intended decision makers... and that is why getting the four “rights” in the above definition right, becomes critical.

Now if anyone says defining an audience as the driver for research is subverting the research process or that the research process is by nature curiosity driven, not driven by an audience, I would counter, all research, even basic science, is audience driven.  It is simply that for basic science the audience is often so fundamentally understood, it is simply part of the research culture and thus often not even articulated.  With a purpose of influencing intellectual discourse (adding new knowledge to the field), basic research has a clearly defined primary audience: the academy, either other researchers or students.  The best way to influence these decision makers is either peer reviewed journal publications or academic conferences. In other words, an effective KMb process for an academic audience is traditional dissemination!

My Key Lessons:

¥The research process should be viewed as a whole, not segmented into “production” and “dissemination”.

¥Research and KMb should be audience driven. That is research design, implementation and knowledge sharing or uptake, to be successful, must have a clearly defined audience at its centre.

¥If we accept that research is intended to influence decision making then it follows that the KMb process is as critical as the research process and should be undertaken with the same rigour.

¥Just as quality research production requires an expert researcher, quality KMb requires expertise as well. Researchers should not be expected to carry the burden.

¥Partnerships are important. Establishing a partnership of relevant stakeholders up front, as you are defining the issue to be addressed, will dictate to a large extent, the type of research questions to ask, the most relevant research methods, KMb methods and KMb experts.

¥A project work plan and budget should include all aspects of the project , not simply the production component. (one of the most frequent frustrations I hear when I speak to researchers is that funders expect more comprehensive KMb processes than simply publishing and yet are often unwilling to provide either the financial resources or the time to deliver effective KMb. That said I also believe there is a fair degree of lip service paid to the aspect of KMb by many researchers applying for funding - they see it as another trend in funders and often cut and paste a generic KMb paragraph in their proposals without the true desire or expertise to carry it through. Ultimately both of these issues will have to be addressed before KMb is truly institutionalized across Canada.)

¥Just as there are multiple audiences, there needs to be multiple forms of KMb (there is no “one size fits all”). Influencing policy makers requires a different strategy than influencing practitioners or individuals.

As a society or as agencies interested in influencing public policy, if we are serious about our desire to improve the role of research in decision making we have to focus on more than simply excellence in research, we must also emphasize excellence in KMb.  In my experience,  once the question “who do we want to influence?” is answered, the issue of what type of research methodology, KMb strategy (ies) and stakeholders to be involved will become clear.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format

Rock, Daryl, "Knowledge broker stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 16, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/696X1C

APA format

Rock, D. Knowledge broker stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/696X1C]

Knowledge Broker Stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer

In the first story of this series I outlined how in 2003 that in my role as Director of the Ontario Occupational Health Services Network I brokered a transfer of knowledge from occupational medicine specialists to primary care teams.  I facilitated a feedback loop that helped modify a work history taking tool for ease and relevance of use in a busy primary care practice.  What of the workers for whom this tool was designed to make a difference?  What role should they play?  Did they have something to add to the process?  As we pondered these questions, subsequent knowledge collaboration began to take shape.

The Toronto Workers’ Health and Safety Legal Clinic disseminates a Worker’s Guide on the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act.  The Guide is a straightforward booklet that conveys in plain language what workers need to know about health and safety law.  I began conversations with the Legal Clinic about how the Work History Taking Tool was meant to support workers in very parallel and complementary ways to the Worker’s Guide.  The shared theme between the two initiatives was providing knowledge that would help workers prevent injuries on the job.

Into these conversations we invited the LAMP Occupational Health Centre, which provides health advocacy to workers, especially with respect to prevention and worker’s compensation.  We also invited St. Michaels’ Hospital Occupational Health Clinic, which by this time had posted the revised Work History Taking Tool on their website. 

With this additional focus on the worker’s perspective, we devised some additions to the Worker’s Guide.  We added a copy of the Work History Taking Tool to the Guide, accompanied with questions such as: “Did you know that your work and health are connected?” and “When was the last time you talked to your doctor/nurse about your work exposures at the workplace?”  These and a few other prompts then led the reader of the Guide to either ask their primary care provider to talk about work health risks or be more prepared and understanding when the topic arose.   

I am sure many of us could think of additional examples of involving consumers in the knowledge exchange process meant to make a difference in their lives.  Another example in my experience is work I did in the late 1990s as Coordinator of the Ontario Diabetes Complications Prevention Network.  In that initiative we assembled 8 regional networks that met every 6 weeks over a two year period.  Each network included specialists (endocrinologists), family physicians, diabetes educators and persons with diabetes.  The results of these network meetings helped inform the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care on its future policy directions.  The most significant follow-through from these joint provider/consumer meetings was the subsequent expansion of community-based diabetes education, mostly attached to community health centres in Ontario, which have a very strong consumer advocacy orientation.

Knowledge transfer in health and social services is becoming more integral to the design of service systems.  These two brief examples in occupational health and diabetes illustrate that consumers can be involved in stimulating the process of enquiry or advising on the design of service systems.   As knowledge brokers, I think we will need to think about many more ways to put the consumer at the centre of the process.  After all, it really is all about them.

Hal De Lair

To cite:

MLA format

De Lair, Hal, "Knowledge broker stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 16, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6AggSE

APA format

De Lair, H. Knowledge broker stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6AggSE]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system

Knowledge brokers are an important component of the knowledge value chain.  If one needs justification for knowledge brokers, consider what the U.S. non-profit sector looked like at the beginning of the decade: 1.6 million Organizations; 10.9 million Workers; $29 billion in funding; and 57,000 funding sources. 

Many of these 1.6 million organizations had the same target populations: policy makers, researchers, families and children.  The obvious question is, how can individuals, practitioners or policy-makers realistically assess, filter and apply information coming from 1 million plus organizations?  How can we go on creating knowledge when studies show that less than one third of research ever makes it to an application/implementation stage?

That is where we come in.

My story is probably like some of yours.  I spend the better part of my week fashioning existing knowledge into consumable formats.  I enjoy innovation and look at brokering as an opportunity for process, market and technical innovation (as opposed to traditional product and service innovation).

To me, the brokering process is founded on various fields of study (marketing, sociology, knowledge management, change management, evaluation) as well as personal values (utilitarianism, equality, service, and advocacy).  I draw on a tool belt of skills that are forever being sharpened or traded out for emerging market requirements.  Right now, I would say the skills and values I draw on most are: passion, listening, humor, objectivity, patience, an outcomes orientation, flexibility and adaptability.

It’s the latter two skills that motivated me to write this post.  Not too many years ago, under the mentorship of some wonderful future-thinkers, I spent quite a bit of time working on the front lines of developing intelligent systems.  In these systems the literature often speaks of various types of “intelligent agents” (e.g., watcher/monitor, learner, shopping/buying, search, helper/personal, change, reflex, goal-based, utility-based, interface, mobile and data/information agents).  Moreover, intelligent systems are fashioned to support decision-making; especially founded on just-in-time (J.I.T.) information.

A pitfall of decision systems is - they are often configured to answer questions/scenarios they think will occur.  The reality is: everything changes.

Consider the evolution of knowledge systems. 

Decision Support Systems (DSS): “Get me the third quarter numbers”;

Executive Information Systems (EIS), “Get me projections of fourth quarter numbers based on this scenario.”;

Intelligent System, “Can we sell Twinkies to China?”. 

DSS and EIS are not adaptive and flexible, and it’s only been through the process of trying to automate Intelligent Systems that we have discovered the limitations of automation.

Years back, to build intelligent systems and better value chains, people began writing about the value of “knowledge workers”.  Now we are beginning to better delineate what “knowledge workers” do (e.g., “brokering”).

Back to me.  I won some accolades here and there this decade for co-creating knowledge communities and collaborative portals.  Most recently, I’ve been developing a knowledge community in an entire new field of study for me that is showing promise.  But, for fidelity-sake, if you asked me how this is done, I could not spell it out completely.  Again, it’s an adaptive process, drawing on an ever-shifting set of skills.  However, there are tactics worth sharing.

Things that fascinate me include writings about goal-oriented design, personas, and a concept that Gerry McGovern coined called “carewords”. 

Simply put, using “carewords” is the process (via content analysis or survey) of determining the language information consumers (readers) like to use and then using that language to communicate back to them.  It sounds like common sense, but once we operationalized this, our readership and information use went up 200-300%!  Also, thanks to the concept of “push/pull/link/exchange” shared by friends in Canada, I spend much more time planning out networking and exchange activity in the knowledge communities I facilitate.  I am a continual trend-spotter, but monitor with ROI in mind. I spend the better part of my days trying to get people to walk in information consumer shoes; talking to persons about extending engagement with information consumers beyond seagull events, while monitoring the decline of traditional dissemination…charting detours around fading knowledge practices.

Right now we can all say, “Remember typewriters”.  One of these days we are going to look back and say, “Remember Twitter”.  I think it’s this potential for continuous innovation, resulting in increased knowledge utilization that drives my passion for brokering.

Jonathan Green

To cite:

MLA format

Green, Jonathan, "Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 15, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6UYlPy

APA format

Green, J. Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6UYlPy]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective

In 2001, when I became director of Strategic Programs at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) I was asked to provide colleagues with a clear definition of KMb.  Already widely used in academic circles, the term KMb was nevertheless still not very well understood.  And it was even less well understood by decision makers outside of the ivory tower. 

After reviewing various definitions and finding none of them to be as clear as I would need in addressing the various audiences with whom I interacted, I created my own definition.  My driving criteria was to create a definition that would be readily understood both within and outside of academe, remembered, and useful in helping to integrate research into mainstream decision making processes. The definition I created was:

Knowledge mobilization is getting the right information to the right people at the right time in the right format so as to influence decision making.

This easy to remember definition has become widely known and used by academics, policy makers and practitioners around the world. As you read it you realize that KMb is not an “end of the research process” activity but rather is integral to the entire process, from initial question design, through implementation to outcomes.  With this definition I was attempting to explain, in common language, a process that is often complex, time consuming and iterative.  Having presented this over the years to countless groups I continue to have people come up to me and say “I get it now!”

The core phrase is “to influence decision making”.  I chose the word “influence” consciously.  Some ask why not the word “inform”?  The one implies action while the other is more passive and as I will outline below, successful KMb is about action.  Clearly this reflects a personal bias but in fairness I think it a valid one.  That is “funded research is intended to influence decision making by someone, not simply to add new knowledge to the world at large.”

“To influence decision making” requires an understanding of who’s decision you are trying to influence - who is the intended audience of this evidence and why?  Understanding the intended audience is the core to successful KMb and that understanding will only come through an established relationship.  It is not that you cannot share information with an audience you do not understand, this happens all of the time.  But to truly influence that audience you must “get inside their heads” and the best way to do that is by involving them in your process, establish a relationship, get to know them.  (As an aside, marketing experts know this and can be quite effective at influencing behaviour, even without evidence!)

You will note there are four “rights” in this definition and as logic logic dictates “for every right there is a wrong!”  The more wrongs you have, the less likely you are to achieve your goal: “to influence decision making” about a certain issue.  Once you have a clearly identified audience, the “what”, “when”, “where” and “how” become easier to answer.  So often we develop what we consider to be the “right” information only to present it in the wrong format or at the wrong time or to the wrong audience.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format

Daryl, Rock, "Knowledge broker stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 7, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6TntBs

APA format

Rock, D. Knowledge broker stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6TntBs]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships

My interest in better connections between research and practice is long-standing and deeply rooted in the various kinds of work I have done in education.  As a young, elected member of a school board in Manitoba in the 1970s I was struck by how little of our policy seemed to be based on sound evidence.  Later in the 1970s I was the director of a small non-profit organization in Manitoba that worked on bringing evidence to bear on policy and practice.  That is when I did my first real KM work – writing various short summaries of research findings for educators. 

Since that time my career has gone back and forth between academia and government.  I also served for a couple of years as Chief Research Officer for the Peel School District in Ontario.  I’ve been a professor and researcher at The University of Manitoba and now hold a Canada Research Chair at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education).  I’ve also held senior civil service positions in education in Manitoba and Ontario, including serving as deputy minister in each province. 

In all these roles I’ve worked to bring research into the policy process more strongly and effectively.  Much of this work was intuitive – for example, producing summaries of research for educators, which is something I have done in four or five different organizations.  In government I’ve helped to create, in both Manitoba and Ontario, stronger practices around knowledge mobilization not only in making policy, but as part of the work of both ministries. 

In my current role as a research chair, my primary research focus is on knowledge mobilization; I have a team of graduate students and external partners with whom we work.  Our program of research and KM can be found on our website – www.oise.utoronto.ca/rspe.

This is an exciting time to be working on KM issues.  There is a worldwide explosion of interest in the field, not only in education but in other sectors as well.  Many initiatives are underway, but just as importantly, more research is being done so that knowledge mobilization can itself become guided by stronger knowledge, so that less effort is wasted on well-intentioned but ineffective practices.  For example, a great deal of effort goes into creating organizational websites, yet many sites get very few visitors.  Moreover, according to the analysis our team is doing, many sites do not use principles of effective communication.  Similarly, much effort goes into creating research products of various kinds but often these products are poorly designed in relation to what we know about effective communication.  Even more, we know that the key to mobilizing knowledge is creating lasting interpersonal relationships that carry over into daily work, yet a great deal of KM work is still in the old world  - rather like my message here – of trying to convince people through writing.  So there is much room for improvement and greater impact, even within existing resources and efforts.

Ben Levin

To cite:

MLA format
Levin, Ben, "Knowledge broker stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships" Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 4, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/5Uy46s

APA format
Levin, B. Knowledge broker stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/5Uy46s]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb!

My story is not much different from other people working as knowledge brokers.  No one aspires to do this work at an early age.  As a child, my mother said I wanted to clean streetlights.  Well, a healthy respect (OK, fear) of heights has all but squashed that dream, but I do feel in all honesty that I may have the best job at York University, that of knowledge broker.

First, I feel a little background is in order.  My career before beginning at York was in adult education, more specifically, Aboriginal literacy, where for 15 years I worked as a practitioner, project manager, trainer, consultant and as a researcher.  My interests in research and my abilities to respect and liaise between the unique environments of research, program delivery and policy analysis gave me the confidence to walk into a completely new role at York University in February 2006.  With no clear blueprint on how to develop an institutional knowledge mobilization unit, I was led by values of honesty and respect to develop the relationships – both within and outside of the university – necessary to support this work.  These values were reinforced to me early in my career as critical for building credible and trusting relationships with people across sectors.

My brokering responsibilities have me working with enthusiastic graduate students, brilliant academic researchers (across multiple disciplines and departments), innovative community leaders and dedicated policy professionals.  My challenges are in creating a clear and common understanding to the opportunity, the constraints from all parties and the needs for resources and ongoing support.  It has been exciting to see ideas shared over a coffee emerge into a large-scale collaborative project! 

I enjoy the learning opportunities that come with working with an emerging community of knowledge brokers across Canada.  These learning opportunities come through my interactions with colleagues across Canada, here at York, and in all aspects of my life, because my teachers extend beyond 9-5 (or 7-3 in my case)!  I like the fact that the values I bring to my work help make me a better worker. 

I have reflected on my role at York and honestly feel that there is no better place for me within the university.  I no longer aspire to clean streetlights, but I do feel like I am living the dream!

Michael Johnny, MA

Manager, Knowledge Mobilization

York Research Tower, 2nd Floor

4700 Keele Street

Toronto, ON  M3J 1P3

416-736-2100 ext. 88876

mjohnny@yorku.ca

www.researchimpact.ca

To cite:

MLA format

Johnny, Michael, "Knowledge broker stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb!" Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 24, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/8iYgYy

APA format

Johnny, M. Knowledge broker stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb! Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/8iYgYy]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Knowledge Broker Through Partnership Working

In the summer of 2009 I presented my Inaugural lecture to mark being made Professor of Child, Family and Community Health at the University of Brighton. Often an Inaugural traces the intellectual roots of professorial achievement and is aimed at a university audience. But for me it provided a unique opportunity to talk about working with the community on issues that are important to them. The title of my talk? ‘What makes us resilient?’ Determined that this presentation should be fully accessible to the public, I worked hard to make it part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. Astonishingly my talk was so oversubscribed that I’ve now had to deliver it several times in different locations. My kids are getting very bored of turning up for it, and soon I’ll have to bribe them to come. My inaugural tells the story of how, from a background of poverty and disadvantage, I ended up doing a doctorate at the University of Oxford, adopting three children with special needs from the care system, training to be a practitioner working directly with disadvantaged children and families myself, and researching practical approaches to resilience.


I’ve always tried to live by the now famous slogan ‘the personal is political’, and intellectually understand my career narrative to be embedded in this term. Throughout my life I’ve worked closely with those whose lives are barely – or perhaps invisibly – touched by the concerns of the university. Moving on from a research investigation into what was wanted by parents and carers in the way of fostering and adoption support services, I began working as a psychotherapist in the child and adolescent mental health services, becoming increasingly interested in practical ways to work with children with complex needs. And, with the emphasis on practice, my research work relates the findings of hard research to practical interventions, feeding back into the research process knowledge of the needs, the practicalities, and the effectiveness of resilience work. I am working through several ‘Resilient Therapy Communities of Practice’ (RT CoPs) set up on the south coast of England. Communities of practices are groups of people who join together with a passion for a shared interest. Ours is helping children with complex needs to bounce back through applying the resilience evidence base to practice and to family life. The term RT CoPs is a bit of a mouthful, but what we do is very practical. These RT CoPs are composed of parents, carers, students, health and social care practitioners and researchers. We meet together once a month in a facilitated space to apply RT to our different settings and co-create books, training materials, etc. to support the development of RT. CoPs are a template for other social concern groups, not just to be a sounding board, but to be active investigators in their own right.


Luckily, the University of Brighton has always been supportive of a ‘partnership’ approach to my research, and over the last few years the University’s Community-University Partnership Programme (Cupp) has been able to expand its own work substantially, along with an overall shift in emphasis at the Corporate level towards partnership and collaborative working http://www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp/. In an ambitious collaboration, 40 community members and academics produced a ‘warts-and-all’ book on our collective experiences in community-university partnership development.


As Academic Director of the Community University Partnership Programme, I have learnt a great deal about developing mutually beneficial partnerships with communities and their organisations, and about incentivising other academics to become involved in this type of scholarship. Over the past year, I have been invited to Canada, Sweden, Germany and Australia to talk about, and to talk to, those involved in the practice of exchanging ideas. I never lose an opportunity to stress how important it is to draw strength and knowledge from the local community, and how community partners need to lead developments too, otherwise we academics are in danger of finding ourselves talking only to each other. I stress that partnership working is a two-way process that can, and should, transform not just what work is selected for investigation, but the manner in which it is undertaken, and the processes by which it is made available more widely.

All of this quite a lot to juggle, but at the same time, is immensely rewarding. If there is one sticking point to pick out, it is not the common narrative about recognition of my work in tenure and promotion etc. Rather, it is a disappointment that I do not always succeed in persuading academics and university establishments to put the kind of hard work necessary into including community members and their organisations in ‘meta-level’ conversations and decisions about community-university partnerships (for example at conferences, seminars and working groups). Time and time again community university partnership conferences take place with but a smattering of community participants present. I know from my own experience, that capacity building in this area is very complicated and time-consuming. Simply inviting people to attend events isn’t enough. It involves meticulous, long-term relational work, the imagination to recognise the barriers to community participation (funds, time, inaccessibility of academic discourse, perceived strategic relevance etc.), and the determination to overcome them. Hard work and a tall order on top of everything else I know. Yet, if those of us with leadership roles in universities don’t put the work in here, we risk community members and their organisations forever being peripheral players, rather than co-producers of knowledge. All this strongly reminds me of the mental health service user slogan ‘Nothing about us without us.’ Would that this were true in the world of community-university partnerships.


As my colleagues and collaborators would be the first to point out, these kinds of partnerships are not easy – power dynamics are rife as the literature in this area discusses at length. Also, I have enough self-knowledge from years of lying on a couch whilst training to be a psychotherapist to realise that I can be a right pain to work with at times. But at least life is never dull in our world of community university partnerships, and there are always spaces to be found in which we genuinely deliver on mutually beneficial work. I firmly believe that when we get it right, working together produces better practice and better scholarship. Putting people in touch with one another for mutual benefit is a privilege, as is listening to the stories people tell us about their concerns. Making my own, albeit it sometimes bungled attempts to develop a career within this paradigm, is a clear priority for me. Equally valuable is the opportunity this kind of knowledge brokering presents to evidence that universities can and do offer their services to others, for the greater benefit of all, not just for those lucky enough to be ‘ivory tower’ educated.


Resources referred to:

Aumann, K., and Hart, A. 2009 Helping children with complex needs bounce back: Resilient Therapy for parents and professionals. Jessica Kingsley: London ISBN 978-1-84310-948-8


Hart, A., Maddison, E., and Wolff, D.(eds) 2007 Community-university partnerships in practice. Niace:Leicester ISBN 978-1-86201-317-9


Hart, A. and Blincow, D. with Thomas, H. 2007 Resilient Therapy with children and families. Brunner Routledge: London ISBN 978-0-415-40384-9


Personal profile: http://www.brighton.ac.uk/snm/contact/details.php?uid=ah111

Angie Hart

To cite:


MLA format

Hart, Angie, "Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Broker through partnership working." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 10, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/33ZW1t

APA format

Hart, A. Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Broker through partnership working. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/33ZW1t]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core

Knowledge Mobilization is a big part of my work.  I don’t think of it however, as a separate piece.  Since 2001, I have served as the Executive Director of an applied research centre – the Centre for Families, Work & Well-being at the University of Guelph (www.worklifecanada.ca).  We do most of our work in collaboration with organizations with identified research needs.  Knowledge brokering, exchange and translation are simply essential to my job.

Our focus has a deep resonance with people’s lived experience.  We have the opportunity to talk about practical problems that occur in all of our lives but that show up in a myriad of ways for each of us.  The popular press uses “work-family balance” as a handle for some of this, but I would ask that we shift to thinking about caring and working in webs and networks.  This often leads to contradictions in relationships  - as they occur in different contexts rather than as a simple set of scales to be tipped.

My starting point in working with community organizations or individuals is not to produce documents that follow social marketing guidelines.  We don’t start from the concept of getting messages across in the right way to the right audience and developing that sort of logical framework to rationalize all the work –although, there are lots of good folks doing that kind of work, many resources available and it is great to have people doing those things as part of our broader team.  My work is to bring together “those audiences” as players in the research process at the beginning rather than only as end users.  This is a deliberate attempt to confuse the distinction between evidence based practice and practice based evidence. We just don’t deliver but also respond when some of those “audiences” approach the university.

For me, the “broker” role is both being an architect and a facilitator.  Following a route of devising and supporting large complex research partnerships like the Father Involvement Research Alliance or the Rural Women Making Change Alliance  I tend to think of the structure of the problem and then weave in the content.  I try to support careful thinking about who from the academy or community should be invited and what role we will all play at a table responding to community research needs. 

These considerations change not only the research questions, the way those questions will be “operationalised”, and the “sensibility” or ideological foundation demonstrated through the assumptions of the research (no objectivity claims from me), but also the way that new knowledge will be generated and will flow across systems.

Having policy makers, community people and university researchers eat at the same table means that whether you like it or not, word will get out.  Part of the discovery process is how to harness the flow that is already there.  This is a thinking process that is much different than deciding which evidence based practice will be delivered to those waiting for it.  We focus instead on sharing ideas, coming to agreements and principles of working together, and have excellent conversations to both support the work as well as produce good outcomes.

Facilitation is critical – at the beginning, the middle and the end – managing the tensions that arise and structuring or restructuring so that people can do the good work they want to do.  Conceptualizing, carrying out and moving research results to practice is an art when done in collaboration.  The closer you are to how the research itself is (or was) conceptualized (the more you expand your brain to understand the research or practice area if not your own) the better the mobilization efforts will be.  From this you will be able to recognize that those unexpected challenging moments are really opportunities to push the work forward.  To summarize, my best work includes constant learning, good conversations, and occasionally failing but always with really good food.

Linda Hawkins

To cite:

MLA format
Hawkins, Linda, "Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 9, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/3ZxixJ

APA format
Hawkins, L. Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/3ZxixJ]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate

Editor’s Note: Today, I posted a link to the National Post article by MP Steven Fletcher's thoughtful piece on Bill C-384 on legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada http://bit.ly/3fu6th This is Knowledge Mobilization Works Senior Fellow, Daryl Rock’s response.

I do have my own thoughts on euthanasia…based on my education, understanding of human nature and my own personal experience. Like Steven, before my injury I was young, athletic, had the world by the tail. And then I broke my neck! And like Steven, had 2 collapsed lungs, a broken neck, and could not move a muscle for a long time after my injury… and that is where our similarity of experience and also thoughts on this issue diverge (although interestingly, not completely) and so I want to be very clear that I value Steven’s points and more important, commend him for expressing them in such a public forum.

For me, the problem with the current debate on euthanasia, in the USA and Canada is it is always framed in dealing with a very small portion of the population: terminal illness, ongoing pain or severe disability... and it paints people in these circumstances as having such poor quality of life that the "were I in their shoes" mentality that exists in these situations would lead many folk to say, “I'd want to kill myself, so surely these folk want to as well”. In short their perceptions of the quality of life of someone in these circumstances leads them an those around them, to think, and act, in a manner they consider “humane” when in fact it is more likely their fear or lack of understanding of the unknown that motivates them.

But what happens when we change the focus of debate? Let’s move away from “euthanasia for a select portion of our society…the poor hopeless ones” and frame the debate more broadly and in so doing, more objectively – about the merit and value of euthanasia, as an option for anyone! Many people who attempt to commit suicide do it poorly because of fear, nervousness, lack of skill, whatever, shouldn’t these people be allowed access to professional quality life ending techniques? In short, don't make it about disability or illness, that just paints disabled and ill people in the traditional "poor them" light. Rather, if you are going to have a debate about euthanasia - have a real one...like abortion why not open euthanasia clinics around the country so that anyone, disabled, ill, bored, angry, unemployed, broke, etc...has the choice of whether or not to kill themselves with help. Keep the same criteria as is in the current proposed legislation: sound mind, 2 interviews, whatever, (but exclude the requirement to be terminally ill or severely disabled) … then, if “joe blow” wants to pop off, let him! I think we all know how short this debate would be!

Focusing the debate of euthanasia only on the terminally ill, severely disabled and those with chronic pain passes a quality of life judgement and in fact cheapens the life of a person living with these conditions. More important, it skews the debate into a more “politically correct” area…after all we are talking about those who can’t help themselves. As I said above, I suspect that if the debate was simply about the general idea of euthanasia for anyone, there would be a huge backlash and the debate would be quickly snuffed out because as a society of evolved human beings, we value life, or at least the life of healthy, well adjusted individuals…

Even worse, by focusing it on the ill, disabled or those in chronic pain, we are simply reinforcing the negative stereotypes of people living with these conditions and continues to create a dual class society where disabled and ill are seen as at best pity objects and at worst, burdens to be done away with...

In my view Steven missed an opportunity to put the issue in its proper light. From what I read the current debate really isn’t about right to live or die with dignity, it is about peoples perceptions of the value of those living with conditions they cannot imagine how to cope with... as I will explain below (and where I do agree with Steven), if a person, any person be they physically disabled or emotionally disabled, is given hope and a reason to live, only those with fundamental mental health conditions will chose the death option…

I do not believe the current debate is doing justice to either the issue of euthanasia or to the value of dignity for all…specifically the value we place on human contribution to society or, and here I again agree with Steven, the debate about effective supports to ensure hope and something to live for options are available to everyone...

So, if we have to focus on discussing euthanasia for only this small segment of society (which I find distasteful and therefore hesitate to do), what are my thoughts? Not surprisingly I believe the debate has to fully include the second element of Steven’s article, that is to say the provision of hope and more important – a reason for living. I believe that, when a person has no hope they will often consider death (as he might have when he first injured himself). But when a person, no matter how ill, or in pain, or disabled has hope (and respect, and the ability to live in some sort of dignified way, and a purpose) then the issue of choosing to die becomes less of a one sided option. Further, research shows that if you constantly bombard someone with an image of themselves, either positive or negative, it only takes a very short while (a couple hours in the case of the research on young students – the blue eye vs. brown eye “smart kids” experiment of the 1950s) before they begin to take that opinion as fact… thus the doom and gloom of those around a person will often and quickly lead to their feeling doom and gloom.

We also know that life experiences, culture and background will play a significant role in how each of us reacts to this type of situation. In many cases not only will someone severely disabled, or terminally ill, or in chronic pain want to kill themselves, but there are likely many "professionals" and "loved ones" around them who would support this decision because if they were in the similar situation, they’d want to too! Although I do not know for sure, I believe it highly likely that, had there been supported suicide when Steven was immediately injured and when he had no hope, then we'd have one less MP. And yet today, with hope, and the proper supports, Steven is a hugely contributing member of our society.

I have many friends without disabilities who do not or can not or will not see the distinction between euthanasia for all and euthanasia for the disabled and dying as an artificial one. This inability to see the difference reflects to me, an inability to fully appreciate the potential quality of life someone living with one of these conditions can have, and as important, their potential contribution to their family and to society…

At the end of the day, where do I stand (metaphorically)? I believe people should fundamentally have the right to choose, thus I fully support euthanasia, provided people are given valid choices and only IF we decide through public discourse, that euthanasia is an acceptable service that should be available to all of society. In that way people living with these conditions are not marginalized and can access the service just as readily and as anyone else…that, to me, is treating all people fairly, providing full access and equal opportunity to all citizens.

In closing I have to say this is not an easy issue to deal with and there are probably many more opinions than there are options. And to be clear I am glad I do not have to make the very tough decision now in front of the House… whatever the outcome, continued, thoughtful, honest debate, eschewed of the cloak of political correctness, is a healthy way to continue this dialogue.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format
Rock, Daryl, "Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 2, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/4GceHA

APA format
Rock, D. Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/4GceHA]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent

I’m a knowledge mobilization manager. Not your everyday run-of-the-mill job. My mother never understands what “I do”. It’s not like she can tell her friends I paint, build houses, or pave highways. “So what does your son do?” (Cough). “Well…he mobilizes knowledge….(cough)” (Pause.) (Awkward Moment of Silence.) “He does what to knowledge!!!”

What does it say about our society when no one understands what you do? What does it say about you?

Its kind-of a funny job title but I get it. I finally get what it means. After 4 years mobilizing knowledge I finally understand what it means to share academic knowledge for the betterment of society. It really has a beautiful underpinning doesn’t it? To share knowledge for the betterment of society. For a better society. To better society. God knows, there are enough problems out there to fix! Homelessness, poverty, violence against women, clean drinking water, HIV, cancer, name your poison. I believe academia is aptly placed to fix those problems. The brightest minds. The Aristotelian children.  The onions in the caramelized onion soup (?!). I believe we need knowledge mobilization managers to take that knowledge and put it to work.

For four years I have been working to bring the knowledge of Memorial University of Newfoundland to the people of this great province, and back from the people to the experts. The two-way flow of knowledge, in a reflective circle, to build new and better knowledge. To do what we talk about in theory – creating processes to position academic knowledge to have impact. Putting Memorial’s knowledge to work. At The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development where I work, we stand on the shoulder of a giant…Dr. Leslie Harris, who stood for all that was good. Dr. Harris was a dazzling writer, blessed with exquisite penmanship. He also had a heart for Newfoundland and Labrador, and as former President of Memorial University, did everything in his power to make the University a change agent. Of all the great things the Harris Centre has done (and we have done tons of great things, informing policy, helping rural communities, changing attitudes, building research programs – come see more at www.mun.ca/harriscentre), we are at our best when we subtly (but effectively) challenge the paradigm. When we force the populous to think in different ways. In fact, as Aristotle said, we all have an obligation to contribute to the state (our chosen society). I believe the Harris Centre is leading a modern day knowledge renaissance, awakening people’s conscience to reflect on the state, and their place in it. To understand what it is to be a citizen in a weird democracy, that often cares more about power than dialogue. To unlock citizenship. (I love the words change agent – there rests the punch in KMb)
.  
So now in its fifth year, the Harris Centre reaches two roads diverged in a yellow wood. On one road is the blazed path of great things we have accomplished (look no further than www.yaffle.ca - a one of a kind research search engine), on the other is the wild, unbeaten trail ahead. There is so much left to do. So much knowledge to position. I best leave this blog in the hands of Dr. Harris who programs our GPS for the unbeaten path:

“Our history shows us that we are survivors. But, as we think of creating the New Jerusalem for our children, and our children’s children, we must be clear that mere physical survival is not enough…what is more to the point, as we take command of our own economic and social destiny, we must also ensure the survival of civility and of strong cultural traditions that inform a distinct identity; the survival of neighbourliness and of a caring and sharing society; the survival of shared community values of hardihood, and honesty, and independence and hard work; and, the survival of what is a very special Newfoundland characteristic, the ability, even in the hardest of times, to see the funny side of life, and to be ever ready to take up the arms of humour against a sea of troubles…”

There lies the greatest insight of all! Knowledge mobilization (solving all the worlds problems) is serious business. But, relationships between academics and community leaders are not only built on knowledge, they are built on the subtleties of laughter! “But of all the elements that contribute to the warm atmosphere of a good relationship, there is one that seldom gets translated into advice or even therapy, yet is something that everyone desires and most people would like more of: Laughter.” (Marano, 2003).


David Yetman

Photo was taken at UBC by Phillip Jeffrey @NCIE

To cite:

MLA format
Yetman, David, "Knowledge broker stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 30, 2009. Accessed (enter date).
http://bit.ly/4zXoEi

APA format
Yetman, D. Knowledge broker stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/4zXoEi]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years

I first told my story (at least my story to date) in a presentation for KMbW in February 2009. I graduated with my PhD in 1991 coming off a Medical Research Council doctoral scholarship at $15,000 per year (I have no idea how I managed to buy the beer I did – probably thanks to Mom). I identified and isolated a protein derived from insect blood that killed bacteria and (presumably) helped the bugs get better after they get a bacterial infection.

Meandered through a post-doctoral fellowship working in HIV/AIDS, and finally left the lab to join technology transfer, where I was brokering relationships between university researchers and industry around intellectual property (kind of but not quite like knowledge mobilization.

Continuing in this line of business, I worked at the Canadian Arthritis Network, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research increasingly engaged in brokering relationships in and around academic research. I landed at York University as Director of the Office of Research Services (now Research Services & Knowledge Exchange) running the grants and contracts for the university which included a small but active technology transfer operation.

It was at York that we implemented knowledge mobilization as a service to faculty. We conceived it first as non-monetary technology transfer for the social sciences and humanities but quickly realized that the unilateral “university push” of technology transfer was only part of the knowledge mobilization story. We developed methods of “user pull”, knowledge exchange and - what I feel is most important - the co-production of knowledge between researchers and decision makers. These activities are all built upon the knowledge broker who is the heart of the knowledge mobilization unit.

I’ve worked with many knowledge brokers and still don’t know one when I see one. I’m an immunologist – does that make me a good broker? I’ve seen nurses, epidemiologists, librarians, psychologists, literacy practitioners, physicists, evaluators, journalists, poets, political scientists, social workers and anthropologists acting as knowledge brokers. I’ve even seen a flight attendant (formerly trained as a priest) learn the principles of knowledge mobilization. What links all these knowledge brokers?

Maybe we’re all wired for empathy – seeing both sides of a question or a situation. Maybe we’re all just smart enough to learn to talk less and listen more.

We stand between two worlds: the world of research and action; the world of science and politics. We become boundary objects spanning boundaries and mediating relationships that enable research and knowledge to matter.

Some might accuse us of multiple personalities, but that’s a different interpretation!

We have some theory to back up our practice and we have a growing number of tools as our different knowledge broker practices link up in networks like the KTE Community of Practice or ResearchImpact - which now welcomes knowledge brokers from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Saskatchewan and University of Victoria. I travel across Canada presenting our work. We have begun to publish and are active in social media with an active blog and a twitter feed and videos posted on our website. We are part of a profession beginning to grow.

What have I learned on this journey from “broke to broker”?

[1] What we’re doing isn’t new, but we have refined and networked a practice that has happened ad hoc and haphazardly

[2] There are lots of us, but we are isolated in our own disciplines – we need some transdisciplinary space so that brokers in environmental policy can speak to those working in health services, education, immigration & settlement…

[3] Many different paths can lead to practice, but a little study along the way doesn’t hurt

[4] Be open to new people, new ideas and new ways of knowing and doing. You can’t own or control it – share your slice of the knowledge mobilization pie.

Visit David and ResearchImpact at:

dphipps@yorku.ca
www.researchimpact.ca
www.researchimpact.wordpress.com
www.twitter.com/researchimpact

To cite:

MLA format
Phipps, David, "Knowledge broker stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 24, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/1VQpLs

APA format
Phipps, D. Knowledge broker stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/1VQpLs]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Research Tool KIts

This update comes from Community Campus Partnerships for Health.  At first glance, this appears to be an important source of tools and resources. Although it is written for work in health, many of the components look like they could be adapted to other areas of work:

Group Health Research Institute and its partners - the University of Washington, Institute of Translational Health Sciences, Duke Translational Medicine Institute, and Wayne State University - have developed a new website to help researchers create and sustain successful multisite research collaborations, including those involving community-academic partnerships.  The project team created the site, www.researchtoolkit.org, to enhance the efficiency of research from start to finish, including developing research networks, launching and managing projects, and sharing study results or other products such as data sets, tools, and training resources.

The website was developed as part of a project known as PRIMER, or Partnership-driven Resources to IMprove and Enhance Research. PRIMER was awarded to the Institute for Translational Health Sciences (ITHS) at the University of Washington by the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health.  Read the complete press release at:
http://www.grouphealthresearch.org/newsroom/newsrel/2009/091015.html

Knowledge Broker Stories: Work history taking tool by Hal De Lair

My story begins in 2003, when I took on a new and innovative role at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) as Director of the Ontario Occupational Health Services Network (OOHSN).  The central aim of the Network was to link occupational medicine expertise to the front line of health care, particularly primary care delivery.   With access to that expertise, it was believed that front line physicians and nurses would be supported in more effective treatment of occupational injury and illness.

Through a collaboration in 2002 between occupational medicine specialists at the WSIB and the Ministry of Labour, a work history-taking tool was created for use by primary care physicians.  It consisted of a 4-page document covering various exposures and risks the working individual might encounter.   The intent was for this information to be collected historically and stored in a patient's file.  When that patient presented with symptoms that might be work related, this information would help inform treatment and secondary prevention options.

The problem was a very limited uptake of the work history-taking tool by physicians in Ontario.  They did not have time to fill out a long form, especially one that only provided a potential to enhance treatment.  Our approach to this problem was to create a pilot project in a primary care group practice for the purpose of understanding what might be possible and relevant to front line practitioners.  That project was undertaken in a group practice of physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and social workers.  As the knowledge broker, we supplied a student nurse practitioner with a background in occupational health nursing.  She spent 2 days a week for a couple of months on site at the group practice.  She also had the back-up and support of occupational medicine specialists through he Network.

The pilot was structured as a continuous improvement project, beginning with a file review to determine current practice in ascertaining work related health information.  That process analysis, which is usually the first step in any continuous improvement model, led to a clear identification that occupational information was generally missing and that patient care could be compromised as a result.  The problem however still remained that routinely filling out that work history form on thousands of patients was way beyond the capacity of the clinic.

The solution crafted by the pilot was to reduce the history taking down to 5 essential questions that could routinely be asked of every patient and entered into the electronic medical record.  Those questions then became the basis for the current, universally available Work Health Exposure Screening Tool which you can find at http://www.stmichaelshospital.com/pdf/programs/occupationalhealth_work_exposure_screening.pdf This tool, or some variation of it, would go on to be applied in numerous, additional group practices in Community Health Centres and Family Health Teams in Ontario.

In subsequent years this approach of piloting new knowledge through local, continuous improvement projects, would extend to many areas. OOHSN conducted pilots in noise induced hearing loss and occupational asthma and dermatitis.

I'm sure this brief story will resonate with a lot of people involved in knowledge dissemination. It promotes the mechanism of continuous improvement projects to refine knowledge components, especially tools, to make them relevant and useful.  This would mean that any KT strategy should include resources to engage target audiences in test pilots on uptake and outcomes.

Hal De Lair

To cite:

MLA format
De Lair, Hal, "Knowledge broker stories: Work history-taking tool." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 19, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/2eDwGX

APA format
De Lair, H. Knowledge broker stories: Work history-taking tool. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/2eDwGX]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

The long road of Deliberative Processes

I received the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP)’s newsletter this week.  To my pleasant surprise, it contained some interesting pieces about deliberative processes.  After downloading and reviewing the documents, (Deliberative Processes - Fact Sheet & Deliberative Processes - Inventory of Resources) I was further surprised that among the resources consulted was the work of Michel Callon and the Loka Institute.

What really surprises me however, is how cautious the Canadian government and its agencies are with broadly implementing and maintaining good deliberative practices.  It already has good examples that can be scaled up.

In 1998, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) launched the Community University Research Alliance (CURA) program - based on deliberative processes found in Science Shops in Europe, Consensus Conferences in Denmark, Services aux Collectivites of Quebec universities, and a history of social enterprise dating back to the 1920s.  It is a successful and standardized program in a portfolio of programs. 

It influenced the Community Alliances for Health Research (CAHR) program at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in 1999.  This program was considered transitional, was abandoned, and there is nothing of the type currently funded at CIHR.  It also influenced the creation of the PICRI - Partenariat Institutions Citoyens pour la Recherche et pour l’Innovation initiated by the government of Ile de France. The PICRI program goes beyond where the CURA program initiated by bringing together a broader assortment of actors and interests in the deliberative processes associated with science and technology.

With regard to health and healthcare, the Community-Campus for Health Partnerships (CCPH) was founded in 1996. This growing “network of over 1,800 communities and campuses across North America and increasingly the world that are collaborating to promote health through service-learning, community-based participatory research, broad-based coalitions and other partnership strategies. These partnerships are powerful tools for improving higher education, civic engagement and the overall health of communities” has been led by Dr. Sarena Seifer and has been instrumental in bringing diverse people together to work through how to work together.

These are only a few of the examples of work that has been mobilizing community knowledge via deliberative process mechanisms for over the past decade plus.

I applaud the NCCHPP for producing these reports. I hope and desire that it promotes the methods described.  It is long past due and as Ralph Klein, former Premier of Alberta, once said - “the role of a politician is to find the parade and get in front”.  The parade of deliberation relating to health and healthcare is decades long.  People of Canada, we need to tell our politicians that deliberative processes are not just good for democratic governance - they are the basis of democratic government.  So who wants to get in front?

http://bit.ly/11u0xJ

To cite:

MLA format
Levesque, Peter, "The long road of deliberative processes." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 18, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/11u0xJ

APA format
Levesque, P. The long road of deliberative processes. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net (http://bit.ly/11u0xJ)

Monieson Centre Seminars: Dr. Waymond Rodgers

The Monieson Centre (http://business.queensu.ca/moniesoncentre) is pleased to invite you to two seminars by Dr. Waymond Rodgers, University of California in Riverside, USA.

Date: October 21, 2009
Room: 403 Goodes Hall

SEMINAR ONE: WEDNESDAY, 12 NOON - 1PM

A MODEL OF THE TACIT KNOWLEDGE LIFECYCLE FOR DECISION-MAKING: FROM CREATION TO UTILIZATION
Abstract:
An important issue for firms is to make strategic decisions on the basis of organizational resources. Many of the criticisms directed towards traditional methods of capturing performance, productivity, and profitability are due to inadequate ways of identifying, measuring and valuing knowledge assets. This paper presents a comprehensive “knowledge process model” incorporating the resource-based literature from economics and knowledge-based literature from organization theory that provides a possible course of action for individuals/organizations to understand and explain knowledge flows' contributions to an organization.

SEMINAR TWO: WEDNESDAY, 1.30 - 2.30PM
MODELING THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE WITH A THROUGHPUT MODEL
Abstract:
Companies are becoming difficult to value reliably and accurately due to the economy becoming increasingly intangible. Many of the criticisms of traditional methods result from the inability to value knowledge assets (KA). Innovation and technology are influencing the complexity of production processes and products. Stock market valuations are frequently several times higher than book values. This gap is viewed as evidence that the effects of innovation and technology on KA are very important to corporate wealth. This paper incorporates the resource-based literature from economics and knowledge-based literature from organization theory, creating a comprehensive “knowledge process model” that constructs a possible course of action for information system designers and users of innovation and technology.


FURTHER INFORMATION:
Dr. Rodgers is travelling to Kingston from the University of California and we are holding these seminars back-to-back so that individuals have the opportunity to attend both seminars conveniently. Dr. Rodgers will also be pleased to meet with individual faculty, students, staff and visitors before and after the seminars. If you wish to set up an appointment, please mention this when you RSVP.

Biography:

Dr. Waymond Rodgers is a professor in the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California in Riverside. He has a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Southern California and a cognitive psychology postdoctorate from the University of Michigan. He is a Certified Public Accountant in California and Michigan. Dr. Rodgers’ accounting, banking and management expertise derives from his employment as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young. Also, he was a commercial loan officer for Union Bank and his portfolio included Fortune 500 companies. His primary research areas are auditing, commercial lending decisions, decision modeling, ethics, trust issues, intellectual capital, and knowledge management. Professor Rodgers has published in Management Science, Communications of the ACM, European Accounting Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Economic Psychology, and the Journal of the Association of Information Systems, among other journals. Finally, he is the recipient of major research grants from the Brazilian Research Foundation, Canada Research Foundation, Citibank, Ford Foundation, National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center and others.

Lunch will be provided. If you plan to attend one or both of these events, please RSVP to monieson@business.queensu.ca by Friday, 16th October.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Monieson Centre
Queen's School of Business, Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
monieson@business.queensu.ca
www.business.queensu.ca/knowledge