Role Of Brokers Research Articles

Functional roles of the insurance broker in the agricultural insurance market

In modern conditions, the agricultural sector is one of the most risky branches of economy. Every year, farmers face significant losses due to various natural disasters, diseases and other factors that negatively affect their productivity. That is why insurance has become one of the most important tools that help farmers reduce their risks and maintain stability in the industry. However, in order for the insurance to be effective, it is necessary to choose the right insurance product and the company that provides such services. This is where insurance brokers come to the rescue, having the necessary knowledge and experience to help clients find the best solutions. One of the main functional roles of an insurance broker in the agricultural insurance market is to help clients choose an insurance product. Brokers must be familiar with all types of insurance that exist in the market and have an understanding of their advantages and disadvantages. They must be ready to provide clients with professional advice and recommendations on choosing the optimal insurance product, taking into account the specifics of business and the risks that may arise. In addition, insurance brokers play an important role in interaction with insurance companies. They should have a good relationship with the leading insurance companies and be aware of their offers and terms. This allows brokers to find the best conditions for their clients and negotiate optimal insurance conditions. Also, insurance brokers provide their clients with professional support and consulting throughout the entire insurance period. They help with the preparation of documents, conduct negotiations with insurers, ensure compliance with the terms of the insurance contract, help resolve disputes and other problems. In addition, insurance brokers play an important role in improving the agricultural insurance system as a whole. They provide insurance companies with feedback on customer reactions to insurance products and conditions, which allows them to improve and adapt them to customer needs. So, we can conclude that insurance brokers play an important role in the agricultural insurance market. They help clients find the best insurance products, provide them with professional support and advice, and contribute to the improvement of the insurance system as a whole. Therefore, choosing an insurance broker in the agricultural insurance market is an important step for farmers and other participants in this industry.

Framing Sustainable Supply Chain Finance: how can supply chain sustainability practices and supply chain finance solutions be integrated?

Supply chain finance (SCF) can play a role in improving supply chain (SC) sustainability. That is why academics have started investigating the connection between SCF and sustainable SC management, and practitioners have begun developing new SCF solutions with a sustainable orientation. Although SCF solutions have been suggested as supporting tools for the diffusion of sustainability within SCs, academic contributions have only partially investigated sustainable SCF (SSCF). There is the need to understand in greater detail first, how different SC sustainability practices (e.g., supplier assessment, supplier development, incentives to suppliers, and third-party involvement) can be integrated into SCF solutions; second, how different brokerage roles can facilitate this integration to contribute to the successful implementation of an SSCF solution. This paper investigates those aspects through multiple international exploratory case studies. The results confirm that SCF solutions become sustainable by integrating different SC sustainability practices, either embedded in the SSCF solutions or reinforced by the implementation of the solutions. Moreover, involving new actors, including third-party information providers, NGOs, and certification bodies, who assume different brokerage roles, positively influences the development of SSCF solutions.

The Role of EEAS Chairs in Council Negotiations on Foreign and Security Policy Post‐Lisbon

AbstractThis article examines the impact of the introduction of a permanent chair in the area of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The Lisbon Treaty transferred the functions of the rotating Presidency to the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, represented at lower levels by officials from the European External Action Service (EEAS). Whilst the permanent chair was intended to improve effectiveness in CFSP negotiations, recent deadlocks challenge such expectations. Drawing on sociological approaches, we show that the ability of EEAS chairs to uphold the impartiality norm has been undermined by the fact that they are perceived as ‘outsiders’ by national negotiators. This has had negative consequences on the chairs' capacity to fulfil key roles of organiser, broker and political leader and, in turn, negotiation dynamics. Based on these findings, we argue for the need to take norms and identity factors more seriously when designing institutions.

Knowledge Brokerage: The Musical: an analogy for explaining the role of knowledge brokers in a university setting

Background:Knowledge brokers in higher education are described as requiring a broad range of skills and characteristics, leading to both role conflict and ambiguity. Although existing studies report broad concepts regarding the role of knowledge brokers, the activities that they actually perform to broker knowledge are not systematically reported or impact evaluated. Aims and objectives:This paper aims to summarise the current literature on the role of knowledge brokers and describe this role in a higher education context. In an exploratory study, as two knowledge brokers we recorded our activities within a school of health in a large university setting using the Expert Recommendations for Implementation Change (ERIC) categories over a period of nine months. Using this report, we use the analogy of a musical to translate the role of knowledge broker. Considering the knowledge brokerage roles of musical director, set designer, choreographer, costume designer and sound and lighting, we discuss the impact of knowledge brokerage activities on actors relaying their knowledge story to an end-user audience. Knowledge brokers in the higher education context primarily perform activities in four areas: know your cast and crew; train your cast and crew; rehearse and review; and provide hands-on support. Key conclusions:Understanding the role of knowledge brokers may be enhanced by using the analogy of a musical. Due to the diverse nature of these roles, it is recommended that knowledge brokerage in higher education is performed in teams, where knowledge brokers can utilise different skill sets to facilitate their work.

Versatile brokerage: migrant-provider relationships in the third net of the U.S. Healthcare system

ABSTRACT In studies of migrant healthcare, ‘brokerage’ is conceptualised as the process by which community health workers facilitate low-income migrants’ access to the formal healthcare system, acting as both gatekeepers to healthcare and representatives advocating for patients. Building on these conceptualizations, we examine brokerage within what we call the ‘Third Net’ of the U.S. healthcare system, an informal health network comprised of mostly volunteer-run, community-based organisations and clinics that provide medical care to uninsured, undocumented migrants. Our study draws from 52 in-depth interviews with volunteers and a cumulative 23 months of ethnographic fieldwork with two migrant-serving organisations in Houston, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. We argue that brokerage roles and relationships within the Third Net are necessarily marked by versatility. This versatile brokerage in the Third Net (1) facilitates ad hoc access to the mainstream health system for uninsured, undocumented migrants; (2) challenges migrants’ racialized disentitlement and discourses of migrant dependency; and (3) de-centers and expands broker roles. Contributing to migrant health and brokerage literature, this research illustrates that brokerage relationships are not always fixed and hierarchical; brokering care is not solely about access to an inequitable health system but can also involve creating new and more equitable configurations of care.

Places et rôles des passeurs dans les Lieux d’éducation associés à l’Institut français de l’éducation

L’étude s’inscrit dans le contexte d’un réseau de recherche collaborative : le réseau des Lieux d’éducation associés de l’Institut français de l’éducation de l’École normale supérieure de Lyon (LéA-IFÉ). Un LéA est un espace lié à des enjeux d’éducation et/ou de formation qui réunit, pendant trois années, des acteurs du monde de la recherche et du monde de l’éducation autour d’un projet de recherche coconstruit. Nous questionnons les places et les rôles des différents acteurs impliqués dans un LéA. À partir des fonctions qui leur sont assignées par les institutions auxquelles ils appartiennent, nous étudions les rôles endossés par chacun et potentiellement distribués au sein du collectif de recherche. Dans la première partie de l’article, nous traitons la question à partir d’une étude de cas, issue d’un LéA : le LéA TEC (traces écrites, écoles-collèges en Terre de Lorraine). Dans la seconde partie, nous présentons l’analyse d’un rôle spécifique en contexte de recherche collaborative : le rôle de passeur ou courtier de connaissances. La question est traitée à l’échelle du réseau des LéA-IFÉ.

The Role of Marriage Brokers on Adolescent Girls’ Early Marriage: Qualitative Evidence-The Case of West Hararghe, Ethiopia

Marriages below the age of 18 are either forced or by own interest, influenced by different factors. The objective of this paper is to describe the role of marriage brokers in adolescent girls’ marriage in West Hararghe, Oromia region, Eastern Ethiopia. Qualitative data were drawn from a formative baseline (March to August 2016) and consecutive studies including the mid-term (May 2018 to August 2018) studies of Abdiboru, a Girls’ SRH and empowerment project. As findings demonstrate, adolescent girls below the legal age of marriage are forced to accept marriage proposals convinced by intermediaries/marriage brokers. Marriage brokers can be peers, relatives, elders or any skillful people in convincing and persuading girls. Marriage brokerage is commercialized and as a result, girls go through the burdens of early marriage and early child bearing. Marriage brokerage is a common act in the study area resulting in brokers to have a significant role on adolescent girls’ marriage. They play an inevitable role in arranging potential matches for adolescent girls. Programmers working on ending child marriage and related areas need to include these influential people in designing interventions.

Data for Sale: Navigating the Role of Data Brokers and Reproductive Health Information in a Post-Dobbs World

Data privacy is a growing concern in our fast-paced society, as it has become increasingly necessary to relay and retain information digitally. However, the United States trails behind its counterparts in terms of the strength of existing data protection legislation. Unlike the European Union and its General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) law, the United States has no similar comprehensive data protection act. This lack of legislation has led to the exploitation of people’s private data and allowed companies to utilize loopholes in current laws to access sensitive health information. Data brokers have been collecting and reselling consumers’ personal information, including their health data. To combat the actions of data brokers and other parties that might desire to be privy to sensitive data, the bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act (“ADPPA”) has been proposed and is arguably the nation’s first comprehensive legislation affecting information privacy that has a substantial prospect of passage. This case note looks at the history of data brokers and their relationship to the evolving field of data privacy, specifically concerning reproductive health information. Additionally, an overview and comparison of the GDPR is examined. Recent trends in government action concerning the protection of reproductive health information are discussed, and the possible effects of the passage of the ADPPA are considered, too.

China's Informal Tools of Grassroots Control

China's Informal Tools of Grassroots Control Manfred Elfstrom (bio) At the time of writing, young Chinese are gathering in cities across China, as well as on university campuses around the world, to protest their country's harsh "zero-Covid" policy. And they are raising demands that are bracingly political, including calls for freedom of speech, for an end to concentration camps for Uighurs, and for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to step down. With this historic upsurge seizing our attention, it is worth remembering that protests are actually extremely common in China but normally take a less overtly political form. Farmers clash with police over water pollution. Workers routinely strike over low wages. Homeowners demand compensation when city redevelopment projects threaten their apartments. In her excellent new book, Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China, Lynette H. Ong examines the "everyday state power" deployed to contain these instances of what James C. Scott has called "everyday resistance." Focusing on conflicts related to urbanization, in particular, Ong theorizes two approaches used by local authorities: handing violence off to thugs-for-hire in an effort at ensuring deniability, and relying on volunteer brokers with different degrees of independence from the state to use personal relationships to "mobilize the masses" into supporting, or at least acquiescing to, government plans. Although one of these approaches is coercive and the other is largely persuasive, they both involve exercising power "via society itself" (p. 5). Ong's volume adds to a growing body of work that explores the great variety of Chinese actors either on the far fringes of the state or in a gray zone between state and society that help the government realize its objectives.1 Anyone who has conducted research or done business or worked [End Page 168] with civil society in China will recognize the importance of the particular actors Ong studies. Many scholars conducting fieldwork in the country will have suspected that they are being followed by hired muscle. And foreign investors and nonprofit managers will be familiar with the manner in which entrepreneurial individuals frequently step forward to act as brokers between them and the state, easing the experience for both these perplexed outsiders and officials alike. It is thus strange that a book like Outsourcing Repression that focuses on thugs and brokers has not been written before. The likely reason for this oversight is that obtaining systematic data on "everyday state power" is incredibly difficult. Ong has expended considerable effort in assembling an impressive array of sources. She draws principally on fieldwork conducted in eight cities in China between 2011 and 2017, and her fieldwork does not take the form of one-off encounters but rather repeated interviews with people participating in the processes she describes: angry villagers, profit-oriented huangniu ("cattle") who bargain for higher compensation for the villagers and thereby pacify them, property lawyers, and local officials. Ong balances this approach with quantitative analysis using an original dataset that she assembled of over two thousand cases of land seizures and demolitions between the mid-1990s and the second decade of the 21st century. The quantitative analysis yields complicated results, but it shows that relying on arms-length coercers can often be beneficial for authorities. Ong finds that thugs are (unsurprisingly) more likely to disrupt, injure, and kill people with land or housing complaints, compared to state security forces (pp. 59–62). However, the participation of thugs in a conflict decreases the odds of protesting and petitioning by citizens significantly. If control variables are held at their means, the direct involvement of government officials, by contrast, increases protest. And the presence of officials also encourages the legal mobilization of aggrieved people (pp. 62–68). Ong's study of the Chinese government's "infrastructural" power and the role of brokers involves content analysis of the language of central and municipal government regulations on land-taking and demolitions, in-depth interviews, and the study of correlations between different government actions and citizen reactions using the same data as the analysis of the thugs versus government officials. The statistics here suggest that "thought work" and financial rewards are most effective at winning compliance (pp. 124–27). But Ong's interviews...

Contextualizing Diabetes and Obesity Care for Immigrant and Refugee Populations.

Context: Personalized healthcare strategies are recommended for diabetes and obesity. This approach helps to identify and address root causes and barriers to patients' health, and provides them with a sense of agency in healthcare. To develop such strategies for migrant patients, there should be a deeper understanding of their situation. Objective: To understand healthcare gaps and opportunities for enhancing diabetes and obesity care for immigrant and refugee populations in primary care. Study Design, Setting and Population Studied: A community-based research, involving 3 qualitative studies conducted in Edmonton, Alberta. Study participants were: 1) members of ethnocultural communities with diabetes and/or obesity; 2) Multicultural Health Brokers (MCHB) - community health workers (CHW) in these communities; and 3) Healthcare providers (HCP). Data set and Analysis: We generated data through interviews and focus groups. Community member (CM) study had 3 focus groups (two groups of 8 males & females (mixed); one of 13 females); and 22 interviews (5 males, 8 females). MCHB study had 10 interviews (females) and 2 observation sessions. HCP study had 4 focus groups (two groups of 6; 2 groups of 8 mixed) and 9 interviews (2 males, 7 females). Data were thematically analyzed. Outcome Measures: CM study explored lived experiences of diabetes and obesity. HCP study examined experiences with caring for patients with diabetes and obesity from ethnocultural communities. MCHB study examined broker roles in relation to primary care. Results: CM study showed that pre- and post-immigration stressors interact synergistically with the lived experience of diabetes and obesity thereby compounding the adverse disease effects. HCP study showed significant challenges navigating cultural distance and trying to address the non-medical issues of migrant patients. MCHB study illustrated their embeddedness in ethnocultural communities playing an invaluable but largely unrecognized role as partners in primary healthcare. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the challenges of intercultural care in primary care settings. CHWs like the MCHB can provide context for healthcare providers, thereby supporting a personalized and context-informed care that understands the intersecting realities of migrant populations. Collaborations with CHWs in primary care have widespread implications for improving healthcare and reducing health disparities for migrants with diabetes and/or obesity.

A Network Analysis of Cluster-based Government R&D Activities in a Korean Region: Examining Network Centrality and Brokerage Roles

This study aims to explore the cluster-based research and development (R&D) network in Busan-Gyeongnam Province and its potential to support the growth of regional industries and the economy. The research employes co-occurrence network analysis to examine the technology fields involved in public R&D funding projects and identify the brokerage roles in the R&D network. Busan-Gyeongnam Province is committed to developing cluster-based industries to strengthen their competitive advantages and core competencies in technology R&D. The province has focused on regional-specific platform technologies to create R&D opportunities and bridge adjoining technology fields in the R&D network. In this region, technologies with significant liaison brokerage positions in the R&D domain are closer to R&D possibilities and have a greater influence on the relationships between neighboring technologies from different R&D fields. The findings suggest that government funding for regional R&D activities should be carefully planned and monitored to support local industry growth and specialized technology areas. The value of this work is in its analysis of Korea's cluster-based R&D networks and their role in promoting technological competitiveness by encouraging industries to maintain and expand their capabilities.

Constructing healthcare services markets: networks, brokers and the China-England engagement

Healthcare services is an expanding international market with which national healthcare systems engage, and from which they benefit, to greater and lesser degrees. This study examines the case of the China-England engagement in healthcare services as a vehicle for illuminating the way in which such market relationships are constructed. China and England have different approaches to the international healthcare services market. Aware of the knowledge and technology gaps between itself and the leading capitalist nations of the West in healthcare, as in other sectors, the Chinese leadership has encouraged a variety of international engagements to facilitate the bridging of these gaps including accessing new supply and demand relationships in international markets. These engagements are situated within an approach to health system development based on establishing broad policy directions, allowing a degree of local innovation, initiating and evaluating pilot studies, and promulgating new programmatic frameworks at central and local levels. The assumption is that the new knowledge and technologies are integrated into this approach and implemented under the guidance of Chinese experts and leaders. England's healthcare system has the knowledge resources to provide the supply to meet at least some of the China demand but has yet to develop fully the means to enable an efficient market response, though such economic engagement is supported by the UK's trade related departments of state. As a result, the development of China-England commercial relationships in patient care, professional education and hospital and healthcare service development has been led largely by high status NHS Trusts and private sector organisations with the entrepreneurial capacity to exploit their market position. Drawing on their established international clinicians and commercial teams with experience of domestic private sector provision, these institutions have built trust-based collaborations sufficiently robust to facilitate demand-supply relationships in the international healthcare services market. Often key to the development of relations required to make commercial exchange feasible and practicable are a range of international brokers with the skills and capacity to provide the necessary linkage with individual healthcare consumers and institutional clients in China. Integral to the broker role, and often supplied by the broker itself, are the communication technologies of telemedicine to enable the interaction between consumer and healthcare provider, be this in patient care, professional education or healthcare service development. Although England's healthcare system has the knowledge required to respond to China's market demand and such economic engagement is supported and actively encouraged by the UK's trade related departments of state, the response is constrained by multiple domestic demands on its resources and by the limits of the NHS approach to marketisation in healthcare.

Knowledge sharing and innovation in open networks of tourism businesses

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the information flows, in terms of content and process, underpinning the sharing of knowledge by managers and owners. Such an examination reveals similarities and differences that will influence the generation and dissemination of knowledge used in tourism business operations and contribute to innovation.Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines information flows within the theoretical and methodological framework of social network analysis. The findings were derived from a quantitative study of tourism managers and owners of a tourism hub in South-West England.FindingsThe main finding was that network structure characteristics determine the flow of information within owners’ and managers’ social networks. The owners of smaller businesses received information from several sources and, therefore, had fewer structural constraints and reported larger structural holes. In comparison, the managers had more brokerage opportunities to disseminate the information within their social networks.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper highlights knowledge sharing between tourism business managers and owners in an open network structure. First, an open network structure builds innovation through the provision of nonredundant information. This is determined through the effective size of structural holes and the dissemination of information through brokerage roles. Second, the knowledge capability of a destination is built up through the social networking of managers and owners. The generation and dissemination of knowledge in a tourism destination are facilitated by the social networking activities of managers and owners.Practical implicationsManagers and owners of tourism businesses require knowledge through information to assist with innovative business practices. The practical implication of this is that the social networks of managers and owners have different network characteristics, and that these differences result in consequences for the innovation of business practices. Another practical implication relates to the importance of managers in knowledge dissemination based on having several brokerage roles in the tourism destination.Originality/valueThese findings are important because an understanding of social networks and the flow of information is one of the keys to determining the influences on knowledge sharing within tourism destination knowledge networks of owners or managers and their potential contributions to innovation.

Risk identification and analysis for the green redevelopment of industrial brownfields: a social network analysis.

The green redevelopment of industrial brownfields (GRIB) is an important means to solve the shortage of urban land resources and realize sustainable urban renewal and green development. The identification and analysis of risk factors in GRIB projects are of immense significance for completing construction tasks and ensuring the planned benefits. In this study, work and risk breakdown structures and expert interviews are used to construct the risk network model of a GRIB project, based on three dimensions: process, subject, and system sources. The software package UCINET is used to conduct social network analysis and determine the key risk factors and relationships. The results of this study suggest that the four risk factors with the most brokerage roles and the highest node betweenness centralities are located at the core of the network; the six risk relationships with the highest line betweenness centralities are those with the strongest transmission capacities; the key risk factors are mostly response and stress risks; the main source is the design unit; and the key risk relationships are the influence of the decision-making stage on the design stage and of the design stage on the construction stage. Surpassing the limitations of traditional linear research, this study explains the internal relationship among the risk factors of GRIB projects and identifies the risk factors that play a brokerage role and the risk relationship that plays a conductive role, providing a theoretical basis for introducing social network analysis tools into the risk assessment of such complex construction projects.

Smoke-Free Policy Adoption in Horizon City and El Paso Community College: A Strategic Campaign Approach That Turns a "No" Into a "Yes".

Coalitions in Horizon City in El Paso County, Texas and the El Paso Community College (EPCC) had previously attempted to pass smoke-free policies in 2008 and 2016, respectively; however, both policies failed to pass at those times. The coalitions refocused their activities and were successful in passing policies in EPCC in 2020 and in Horizon City in 2021. We employed a participatory case study method to understand what factors changed between the first and second attempts at smoke-free policy adoption in Horizon City and EPCC. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework as a basis for analysis, we identified the role of coalitions, their beliefs, use of power resources, role of policy brokers, and external events. We identify best practices and make recommendations for coalitions seeking to adopt smoke-free policies in other locations.

Are Honest Brokers Good for Democracy?

ABSTRACT In Roger Pielke Jr.’s The Honest Broker (2007) he discusses different roles a scientist can adopt when giving advice to policymakers. The honest broker role focuses on clarifying and expanding the scope of choice for others. This role has the virtues of being sensitive to known problems with experts being partisan by stealth, dominating policy decisions by controlling knowledge input, and reducing the scope of considerations deemed relevant to decision-making. Yet I argue that to the extent the honest broker role involves expanding the scope of choice, an array of problems arises. These include ambiguity about which and whose consensus ought to guide scientists in their decisions about what role to adopt, an implicit tendency to insulate politics from science, and a possible replication of the anti-pluralism of political populism. Drawing upon Phillip Pettit’s critique of Isaiah Berlin’s account of freedom as non-interference, I argue that the honest broker role for scientists inherits the problems afflicting accounts of freedom as the non-restriction of options: namely, the problems of adaptive preference formation and ingratiation. On this basis I suggest not advising scientists to be honest brokers, because doing so might fail to help them be reflexive scientists.

Language brokering and immigrant-origin youth's well-being: A meta-analytic review.

Youth from immigrant families often translate or interpret materials for their parents who lack proficiency in the dominant language of the mainstream society. However, evidence remains mixed regarding whether such a language brokering role is promotive or disruptive for youth's well-being. This meta-analysis synthesized 65 studies (1,242 effect sizes, 17,791 individuals; grand Mage = 16.68, SDage = 4.78) to examine whether, how, and when brokering frequency and feelings were related to well-being. Language brokering frequency was inversely associated with youth's positive family relationships (r = -.10) and socioemotional outcomes (r = -.10) and positively related to youth's acculturation stress (r = .06). However, positive or negative language brokering feelings were stronger predictors of youth' well-being or maladjustment (|r| = .10-.29). The associations between language brokering frequency and youth's adjustment also varied across subgroups, with the effects of frequent language brokering being more detrimental for European immigrant-origin (vs. Latinx), female (vs. male), and foreign-born (vs. native-born) youth. These findings underscore the need for a nuanced understanding of the impacts of youth language brokering. Finally, practical and policy implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Are in‐laws substituting or supplementing? Mothers' receipt of support from paternal kin

AbstractObjectivesThis study examines the financial and childcare support provided to mothers from paternal kin, as well as whether this support varies based on relationship characteristics of the mother and father, child support provided by the father, and father–child contact.BackgroundDespite the documented importance of familial support for many mothers of young children, especially single mothers, minimal quantitative research has examined the factors that pattern transfers of support from fathers' family members.MethodsUsing data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 4,296), we employ multivariate logistic regression analyses to examine mothers' receipt of financial and childcare support from paternal kin.ResultsResults indicate that mothers who report having no relationship with their child's father have a lower probability of receiving support from his family. Mothers with nonresidential fathers are more likely to receive support from the father's kin when the father provides informal or sporadic child support.ConclusionFathers occupy a brokering role between mothers and their kin. When a relationship with the father is completely absent, support from his family decreases.ImplicationsThe findings offer insight into the social capital and economic stability of mothers, particularly those with nonresidential fathers.

Food systems transformations in South America: Insights from a transdisciplinary process rooted in Uruguay

The wicked nature of sustainability challenges facing food systems demands intentional and synergistic actions at multiple scales and sectors. The Southern Cone of Latin America, with its historical legacy of “feeding the world,” presents interesting opportunities for generating insights into potential trajectories and processes for food system transformation. To foster such changes would require the development of collective understanding and agency to effectively realize purposeful and well-informed action toward desirable and sustainable food futures. This in turn demands the transdisciplinary engagement of academia, the private sector, government/policy-makers, community groups, and other institutions, as well as the broader society as food consumers. While the need for contextualized knowledge, priorities and definitions of what sustainable food systems change means is recognized, there is limited literature reporting these differences and critically reflecting on the role of knowledge brokers in knowledge co-production processes. The political nature of these issues requires arenas for dialogue and learning that are cross-sectoral and transcend knowledge generation. This paper presents a case study developed by SARAS Institute, a bridging organization based in Uruguay. This international community of practice co-designed a 3-year multi-stakeholder transdisciplinary process entitled “Knowledges on the Table.” We describe how the process was designed, structured, and facilitated around three phases, two analytical levels and through principles of knowledge co-production. The case study and its insights offer a model that could be useful to inform similar processes led by transdisciplinary communities of practice or bridging institutions in the early stages of transformative work. In itself, it also represents a unique approach to generate a language of collaboration, dialogue, and imagination informed by design skills and methods. While this is part of a longer-term process toward capitalizing on still-unfolding insights and coalitions, we hope that this example helps inspire similar initiatives to imagine, support, and realize contextualized sustainable food system transformations.

A Weighted and Normalized Gould-Fernandez brokerage measure.

The Gould and Fernandez local brokerage measure defines brokering roles based on the group membership of the nodes from the incoming and outgoing edges. This paper extends on this brokerage measure to account for weighted edges and introduces the Weighted-Normalized Gould-Fernandez measure (WNGF). The value added of this new measure is demonstrated empirically with both a macro level trade network and a micro level organization network. The measure is first applied to the EUREGIO inter-regional trade dataset and then to an organizational network in a research and development (R&D) group. The results gained from the WNGF measure are compared to those from two dichotomized networks: a threshold and a multiscale backbone network. The results show that the WNGF generates valid results, consistent with those of the dichotomized network. In addition, it provides the following advantages: (i) it ensures information retention; (ii) since no alterations and decisions have to be made on how to dichotomize the network, the WNGF frees the user from the burden of making assumptions; (iii) it provides a nuanced understanding of each node's brokerage role. These advantages are of special importance when the role of less connected nodes is considered. The two empirical networks used here are for illustrative purposes. Possible applications of WNGF span beyond regional and organizational studies, and into all those contexts where retaining weights is important, for example by accounting for persisting or repeating edges compared to one-time interactions. WNGF can also be used to further analyze networks that measure how often people meet, talk, text, like, or retweet. WNGF makes a relevant methodological contribution as it offers a way to analyze brokerage in weighted, directed, and even complete graphs without information loss that can be used across disciplines and different type of networks.