Background
Research partnerships for knowledge mobilisation (KMb)
Mechanisms for KMb within research partnerships
Characteristic | Description of characteristic | Heaton et al., 2016 [25] | Rycroft-Malone et al., 2016 [26] | Best & Holmes, 2010 [27] | Bennet et al., 2010 [28] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Structural and organisational features | |||||
Effective governance and support | The collaboration develops agreed structures, roles and processes that facilitate connectivity and are supported by partner organisations | Collaboration partners have committed backing and receive strategic support from their respective organisations | Governance arrangements (structures and processes between people, places, ideology and activity) prompt opportunities for connectivity | The coordination infrastructure has agreed governance and task arrangements, including formalised rules, roles and structures | Projects meet regularly Roles and responsibilities are clear Partner organisations provide support ‘Prenuptial agreements’ document expectations |
Influential leadership | Leaders foster connectivity They are credible, passionate, reflexive and empowering Local leaders forge connections and facilitate implementation | Project team leaders facilitate collaboration and knowledge mobilisation They are credible with solid connections, drive, enthusiasm and tenacity | Leadership is both formal and distributed/shared Leaders are reflexive Credible boundary spanners at different levels forge connections and facilitate implementation | Leadership style is collaborative and empowering Leaders model reflexivity and are responsive to emerging patterns of change | Leaders model collaborative skills They bring people together, listen, foster collegiality, build trust, empower and motivate members, share credit, and manage expectations |
Supportive architecture | The collaboration has a clearly defined but flexible and responsive infrastructure Local project teams comprise key stakeholders | Project teams are formed around a small strategic core of end-users and researchers from partner organisations | The enterprise has a flexible structure and clear processes It is agile enough to support emergent ideas, relationships and processes | The enterprise has sufficient resources, capacity and role clarity to support good communication and management functions Partnering organisations provide time and resources | |
Appropriate resourcing and rewards | The collaboration has (and builds) resources that foster connectivity, capacity and outcomes Assets are used to incentivise and reward members Partner organisations provide resources | Members develop assets to facilitate the enterprise, including particular knowledge and skills, routine data, platforms for shared learning, and publications | Resources (skills, funding, roles, opportunities, tools and artefacts) are positioned to catalyse engagement and outcomes Incentives appropriate to members’ contexts drive engagement | The collaboration uses its resources to ensure contributions are credited and rewarded Ownership of assets agreed in advance | |
Active conflict management | The collaboration tackles power imbalances, competition and conflicts via adaptable equity-focused processes and resource allocation | Competition and conflicting stakeholder agendas are addressed Resources are used to renegotiate and resolve the tensions caused by competition | Power disparities are recognised and addressed Negotiations use a process that is sensitive to power issues and sets fair expectations and ground rules | Leaders at all levels tackle conflicts Conflict management styles are adaptive Processes are in place to deal with disagreement | |
Mechanisms for knowledge mobilisation | |||||
Leveraged pre-collaboration assets | Collaboration members make the most of existing relationships and other valuable assets | Members harness existing assets to facilitate the collaboration | The collaboration builds on pre-existing relationships and previous work and/or dialogue, thus achieving early ‘quick wins’ | ||
Ownership and trust | The collaboration involves key stakeholders, including end-users, as active co-owners of the enterprise from beginning to end Trust is actively built | Research is driven by local end-users throughout the research life cycle Those developing research and intervention activities recognise that the key change agents are end-users | Research and implementation are owned by users resulting in co-production rather than knowledge transfer | Key stakeholders are represented in the main activities of the enterprise as active collaborators Trust is built over time | Trust is fostered through team-building activities, shared accountability, mentoring and leadership Members feel their contributions are valued |
Shared vision and goals | Collaboration members negotiate and agree on the enterprise’s goals and outcomes | End-users and researchers have a common and coherent objective around which they coalesce | Stakeholders explore their understandings of outputs so motivation to collaborate is based on a shared view of goals and outcomes | Clear common aims are negotiated | Members understand the ‘big picture’ goals of the enterprise and know which goals they are working towards Expectations are discussed and agreed |
Knowledge plurality and sharing | Different types of knowledge and experience are valued and used complementarily | Members and end-users meld different knowledge and expertise, valuing what each can contribute | Knowledge is viewed as plural, namely encompassing research and practice wisdom, tacit and explicit knowledge | Members respect each other’s input They share data and credit, and are willing to give and respond to feedback | |
Strategic communication | Communication is used to facilitate negotiations, share knowledge, build connectivity across boundaries and inspire change | New and more productive ways of working are identified and communicated | The benefits of collaboration are communicated and reinforced. Communications link projects across professional and epistemic boundaries | Ongoing communication tackles interdependencies, trade-offs and interests, builds mutual understanding and catalyses change | Leaders communicate clearly and decisively, share information and articulate the collaboration’s vision Members’ input is encouraged |
Continuous learning and reflection | The collaboration continuously learns about itself (achievements, relationships, struggles, practices, opportunities) and acts on this knowledge productively | Members identify new and more productive ways of working, and apply these more widely Learning is actively shared with and adapted to kindred settings or populations | The collaboration has a reflective culture. It evaluates its progress and this information is acted on by leaders and other members, feeding into changes in ways of working | The collaboration continuously improves via feedback loops and reflective shared learning It recognises its knowledge as context-bound, multidirectional and emergent | Members are reflexive They strive to learn from the collaboration and improve their collaborative skills They recognise the collaboration and its goals will evolve |
Capacity-building as a core activity | The collaboration provides resources and uses multiple strategies to build capacity | Professional development opportunities are created | Resources are used to maximise capacity building | The enterprise has and builds capacity | Mentors are cultivated Junior members’ career development is supported and collaboration skills are built |
The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre
Aims
Methods
Methodology
Interview participants
Participants | Who this participant group includes | Number of interviewees |
---|---|---|
Academics | Chief investigators based at universities and research institutes whose primary roles are in academia | 17 |
Funding representatives | Chief investigators based in government and charitable organisations that co-fund the Prevention Centre and who act as formal representatives for these funding partners; most of them are policy-makers | 5 |
Policy and practice partners | Chief investigators who are primarily based within policy and practice settings (e.g. within government health departments) | 4 |
Data collection
Data analysis
Results
Engagement
“I embarked on it as an experimental process to work with the area of prevention … that might generate new information. So that I didn't have an absolute expectation that it was going to go down a particular track … I thought that was a very interesting idea, so that I was very happy to be engaged in the experiment.” (P01, Academic)
“I suppose there's a bit more space to think, that sort of blue-sky-thinking …. When you're working with government, for instance on commissioned projects, there's very little opportunity to do that. The questions are very specific and very much set beforehand … I think having a Centre like this allows you to not be constrained by the very immediate outcomes you need to generate through that sort of research and that you can think a bit more about methodology and translational issues.” (P10, Policy/Practice Partner)
“Being involved in the projects it is very positive from an input perspective. It is very energising as a policy-maker to be involved in those discussions. That brings some quality of working life for me, which is an unexpected benefit.” (P18; Policy/Practice Partner)
“When the work plan was developed, I wasn't sure or confident I had much to contribute … Then more recently it's much clearer. I have a clearer understanding of what the Centre is about, what the opportunities are for people to contribute, and what I can contribute in the way that I expected initially.” (P22; Academic)
“One of the downsides of having the talented people that we have on board is that they’re supporting other lives. They are supporting their activities, their centres, their businesses, etc. They only have a limited amount of time to commit to the centre. That's been a challenge for us. The directorate has to take a greater role in trying to get those people to contribute more…. The people we have involved are senior and they're talented but because they are [they have many] other things they have to do. We are just a small part of that.” (P21; Academic)
Partnerships
Existing relationships that pre-dated the Prevention Centre were considered crucial in establishing the Centre’s networks. Face-to-face events helped strengthen these relationships and forge new ones, especially when they allowed for informal discussion and connections, but some had difficulties attending such events due to lengthy travel times and other commitments.“I saw [the Prevention Centre] as an opportunity … to demonstrate a different way for researchers and practitioners, and particularly government, to work together. In particular that this might lead to … better informed research in terms of that research better informing decision-making …. When we get people in the same room, there's definitely a sense of people firing off each other that you get that whole range of different ideas in the room.” (P21; Academic)
“There was an assumption from the academics that because it was research it must be good, whereas policy people’s time is very short and they need to understand what's in it for them to actually engage. Again, I think both of us made assumptions…. We've both got to understand each other better to make that sort of co-investigation work go more smoothly.” (P05; Funding Representative)
“If we're going to be effective about bringing about change, we have to build relationships between the researchers and policy-makers that are long term … As long as we keep doing it on a one-off project basis, then we don't really have the opportunity to learn and unpack things in the complicated way that many of the issues that we are dealing with deserve. I was interested in seeing whether the Prevention Centre, because it's got longer-term funding, it isn't just project-based, could create a new model where we are able to maximise that long-term partnership.” (P23; Academic)
Co-production
“The idea for the work that we're doing came from a policy-maker and…. the people that we got involved, those policy-makers, all have an interest in this. We said, this is what we've got in mind to do; what're your thoughts on it?... we had an initial workshop with the policy-makers and agreed on what we would do.” (P13; Academic)
“I think it's been very mixed. I think some we've helped develop the research questions but mostly the researchers are the ones who come forward with the questions. We've then had drafts to comment on but by the time you get draft as a proposal you've already ... it's a bit late. You haven't sat and brainstormed the research questions first together.” (P05; Funding Representative)
“These are very senior policy-makers, some of the ones I am working with, you literally can't get them at two weeks’ notice or one week’s notice or three weeks’ notice. You have to get into their diaries a month in advance, so getting all of the right people into the right room to have a meeting that reflects the equity of decision-making that you want takes time. During that time, there are other things that you could be doing. I can understand how it is that researchers end up doing most of the work in partnership research, they end up being the researcher, when in fact it is meant to be a little bit more equitable in the sharing of that role.” (P16; Academic)
Capacity and skills
“The other thing I really like is the focus on mentoring and supporting young practitioners and researchers so that there's much more sustainable approach to improve policy and practice likely into the future.” (P19; Funding Representative)
“I think they could do more [activities around systems thinking]. It's filtered through slowly to me over the first two and half years. I think it's really clear when you go to a national meeting that that's the framework out of which we're operating, and that's what we're trying to achieve. Tuning people in who are not in the core leadership group or connecting everybody into the literature and key resources, that we can look at in our own time, and utilise for other projects, and diffuse into the way in which we work, I think could be better done.… Links to web pages, key theoretical papers, highlighting key theoretical concepts. A must-read list or must-have access to a range of resources ... [are] the sorts of things that the Centre could have at our fingertips.” (P26; Academic)
Knowledge integration
“I think some of those ‘sharing forums’ have really brought together lots of different lessons learned and helped discuss those and bring those in the open … where there has been a lot of chance for everyone to put their lessons learned forward or their views forward and share and come up with an agreed way forward together. I think that type of facilitation has been useful.” (P05; Funding Representative)
“I find in terms of governance what we have is an executive committee that makes decisions, and then we have project leads, but what I'm not seeing really is the middle management governance or what I would call stream leaders. If there's a coherent stream of work, who's leading that? ... I know there are people that have overview of areas of work, but it doesn’t present as a coherent stream of work that connects and answers big questions and is actively driven by a stream leader. It's a bit more laisse faire and it's much more focused around individual projects which come together as a loose coalition.” (P25; Academic)
“The thing that bothers me more is that I think it might look very scattered. We gave some money to this person and they did this and that was good and it got published. Somebody else did something else over here. I'm worried that it's going to lack some kind of central organising thing that lets people understand. To make the centre more than the sum of its parts.” (P23; Academic)
Adaptive learning and improvement
“There's also a sense of if we want to do something really creative we have to actually allow for proposals to come in that aren't part of the plan … I only observe it from the outside but I know that there have been projects that have been submitted, approved and signed off, which I gather allows for much more flexibility than a fixed pre-determined work plan. My experience of it has been there has been more flexibility as time has gone on.” (P01; Academic)
“I think we've nudged in the last year towards giving people bits of more specific things to do and letting them get on with it … it's working better in a couple of ways. I think the investigators around the broader Centre are feeling more engaged because they're being given things to do that they can do and then not being scrutinised within an inch of their lives for everything that they do … What we've done I think in the centre is try and orient the areas in which they're doing things to the areas that are around the prevention system that we're trying to research. Then within that, we've just been asking people to get on with things. That's been a better development and some have taken to that quite well.” (P08; Academic)
Progress towards Prevention Centre goals
“… certainly within our own projects we're not at the stage yet of influencing actual policy decisions. We've got policy people engaged in the work right from the beginning, the plan is that it will influence their decisions. They are keen for the work to influence their decisions. It's not like we're going to knocking on their doors saying, here's our work do you want to take it into account? They're waiting for it with baited breath.” (P01; Academic)
“I haven't seen many outputs yet, because we're sort of in that development phase. Certainly some of the pieces of work look like they're going to be highly relevant … Direct applicability, I think I probably need to just wait and see. Most of the work is going to be relevant and useful.” (P09; Funding Representative)