Grounding Actions and Institutional Change in ResBios
The ResBios project focuses on the implementation of different types of actions to ground RRI within the organisations that are part of the consortium as “beginners”. These actions are called, for this reason, “Grounding Actions” (GAs). Implementing RRI-inspired initiatives within ResBios is just the first step of a process aimed at making the openness to society a permanent characteristic of the research organisations involved.
RRI has been defined by the European Commission (EC) as:
“An approach that anticipates and assesses potential implications and societal expectations with regard to research and innovation, with the aim to foster the design of inclusive and sustainable research and innovation.
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) implies that societal actors (researchers, citizens, policy makers, business, third sector organisations, etc.) work together during the whole research and innovation process in order to better align both the process and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society”.
One of the key issues to address is how to transform this general approach into hands-on actions capable to trigger lasting institutional changes in our research organizations. An overview of approaches and experiences in this field, some supporting documents and Guidelines on how triggering the institutional change process for embedding RRI have been recently made by K&I, within the framework of the H2020 GRACE and FIT4RRI projects.
As a starting point, we should acknowledge that RRI is not something completely extraneous to research organizations, including our own. Due to the strong “de-facto” connection between science and society, an increasing part of the working life of — at least some — (bio)scientists is already devoted to dealing with the social relationships implied by the implementation of scientific research. As it was stressed in the Guidelines produced in the framework of another European project on RRI in Biosciences organizations (STARBIOS2), (bio)scientists “rarely play [this role] systematically, and oftentimes without a full awareness and in unfavourable organisational settings”.
There is, indeed, a “tension” between this orientation to be open to society and the current scientific work. Scientific activities are carried out by “peers” that form disciplinary communities based on the sharing of very specialized pieces of knowledge. Furthermore, scientific organizations — especially universities — have to transmit the specific scientific ethos that is based on this intense communication within such communities. A certain tendency to being separated is, if not explicitly promoted, at least a normal consequence of this situation. However, changes are occurring anyhow. Therefore, it could be useful to start by identifying where, in our organisations, the interaction with external actors (schools, stakeholders, local authorities, NGOs or citizens) or the attention towards societal issues is already intensifying and evolving.
Moreover, making science more open to society is a challenge that has to be accepted by scientific communities and the organizations in which they operate and, in other words, an issue which should be actively promoted and discussed within research organisations as well as with external stakeholders. The relation between science and society is not “one-way”. Society, on the one hand, has to acknowledge the centrality of science and technology and, therefore, be able and willing to accept the practices that are intrinsic and necessary to science (including a certain degree of separateness). It should be able to accept the results being produced, even if it is not that simple. On the other hand, scientific communities have to carry out their typical functions keeping strong relations with society. It is not by chance that, in the literature, the term “social contract” is sometimes used for talking of science-society relations.
ResBios’ Grounding Actions (GAs) deal with this challenge. They are aimed at creating institutional changes — i.e. of the norms and rules that inform the life of research organizations — that make such an openness possible and a usual practice within these organizations. More in particular, in the framework of ResBios, this means creating spaces in which the interaction with society becomes possible.
Such spaces are of a very different type. First of all, they are physical or virtual trans-actional space, i.e. recurrent and official activities aimed at opening permanent occasions for interactions with society. They could be blogs, surveys and other two-way feedback collection mechanisms, conferences, workshops, training courses, etc. Various GAs are being implemented with this aim. IFNUL, for example, is developing workshops on pharmaceutical and house chemicals for schools. Similar activities of citizens engagement through the organizations of seminars with school is being developed by DUTH. ICM-CSIC is promoting citizen’s empowerment for ocean responsibility, through a dedicated platform and specific initiatives with the public (day of ocean). UNIZG_FAZ is promoting lifelong learning program on fisheries, apiculture, wildlife management and zoology.
A second type of space is based on social networks, that is characterised by the establishment of long-term relationship among different actors (establishment of partnerships, medium- and long-term collaborations) or by the establishment of specific offices in charge of networking and cooperation activities. This is what is doing, for example, ICM-CSIC through the establishment of a network of marine schools and twinning initiative with similar networks. Network creation is being pursued by ICM-CSIC also on gender issues. All the other “beginners”, both for designing or for implementing their GAs have created and/or maintained relations with other actors both within but especially outside their organizations. DUTH, for example, has established an agreement with the local Prefecture.
The creation of a normative space, that is the introduction of new standards and practices that could also help include social aspects in daily life of the organisation and in research activities, is a third type of institutional change being pursued. DUTH, UNIZG-FAZ and IFNUL, for example, are committed to redefine research ethics, procedure and codes on Biosciences emerging needs and to develop. DUTH and UNIZG-FAZ are also promoting an Open Access policy at Faculty level.
Finally, institutional change depends also on the creation of symbolic spaces, that is the establishment of new visions, symbols, mission statements, and shared interpretations about the relationship between science and society and related to open science. Some GAs are especially oriented to this kind of change. ICM-CSIC is implementing activities aimed at enhancing gender equality commitment in the Institute. DUTH is promoting an assessment of the current situation about gender in bioscience at the Faculty level and aims at diffusing and discussing the results of such an assessment. In general, all the GAs implemented will contain “symbolic” elements, since information and communication campaigns will be needed for involving different actors and people in the activities. RRI-related issues, therefore, will be raised and presented to different audiences.
From the experience of other European projects on RRI and institutional change emerges that, to promote such institutional enduring changes, some conditions should come true. The promoter of change should have a vision of the research and academic activities that are connected to RRI. This prevents RRI from becoming a mere bureaucratic requirement and helps contextualize research in the local (social and political) environment. Therefore, the main characteristics of the research organisation (their culture, agency, action, and identity) have to be affected by the promoted change (see the STARBIOS2 Guidelines).
We can expect that the changes introduced in this way are probably bounded to become stable aspects of the organizations. They imply, indeed, a significant change in how an organization, or part of it, approaches science-society relationship since they have to do with an orientation of the organization to reflect and anticipate its future and the related relationship with other social actors, and involve them in resulting actions. Probably, this change is not so much something that occurs just once, but it appears to be a process. By including new actors and issues in its own “modus operandi”, an organization carries out a sort of dialogue with the external actors that is destined to scale-up to encompass further actors and new actions.
Andrea Declich, Maresa Berliri and Luciano d’Andrea (Knowledge and Innovation Srls — K&I)
