Local Knowledge Creation Research Articles

Development through commodification: exploring apple commodity production as pesticide promotion in the High Atlas

Global development initiatives frequently promote agricultural commodity chain projects to improve livelihoods. In Morocco, development projects, including the Plan Maroc Vert (PMV), have promoted apple production in rural regions of the country. In order to access domestic markets, these new apple producers often use pesticides to meet market standards. Through situated ethnographic inquiry and commodity chain analysis, using a combination of surveys (n = 120) and interviews (n = 84) with apple wholesalers, government officials, along with farmers, this paper works to critique the PMV’s development approach that implicitly values commodification. By exploring interconnected processes of commodification, I link subsidized apple saplings and cold storage infrastructure to the dependence on pesticide usage, which has become a part of daily village life. This has important implications for community health and riparian ecosystems. Alternatively, I propose how we can imagine different development trajectories that decommodify livelihoods by focusing on local knowledge creation and diversification strategies.

“The person with maximum knowledge will win the race”: Conceptualizing knowledge in microbusinesses

ABSTRACT The concept of knowledge and the process of knowledge sharing in ethnic minority microbusinesses remain neglected in contemporary debates even if their role for economic development is recognized. Drawing on a culturalist view, we explore how knowledge is defined and shared in a local niche market. Thematic analysis of semistructured qualitative interviews with 32 owner-managers and 11 employee-managers reveals that, contrary to studies on larger firms, local knowledge creation and sharing narrowly based on ethnic strengths are valuable sources of competitive advantage. Our study has implications for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in exploring, supporting, and integrating ethnic minority microbusinesses.

WHY WE SHOULD TALK? THE POTENTIALS OF COMMUNITY DIALOG IN GROUNDING AN INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Rural development is a social process. It involves local community in all stages of development. Community dialog is a means for facilitating community involvement in determining a development direction, potential development plan and development sus-tainability in the future. Frequently, local community is considered as the development target. This position puts them just being development watchers, spectators, silent and passive recipients. Moreover, these silent roles make them remain unempowered since they do not know how to determine their future, how to take part in collective decision and feel being neglected. This study examines potentials of community involvement in dialog. A qualitative research paradigm is adopted. The data are collected byrecording, transcribing and analyzing community dialog at Klagen, Nganjuk, Jawa Timur. The study finds that community dialog offers considerable potentials. The first potential of community dialog is generating local community commitment, awareness, sense of belongingness and supportive character to build their own homeland. These positive development psychological states,characters and ethos are soft human dimensions which can be critical drivers in rural development. The second is creation of local knowledge and scientific knowledge joint enabling innovation and collective learning process. This joint-knowledge allows the combination of local wisdom and scientific insight. The third is building shared or collective development vision and plan. This plan and vision allow the development prioritizing process and development of rural strength, potential competitive advantage and resource building. The fourth is expanding rural networking and exercising rural people capacity to build wider internal and external social relationship.

Curating knowledge, creating change:: University Knowledge Center, Kosovo national transition

A collaborative system design initiative at the University for Business and Technology in Kosovo aims to make local knowledge visible and to enhance local knowledge creation, within the university and throughout the country. Since its inception in 2015, design activities aimed to activate systems through modeling the global knowledge landscape, technology enabled systems, and human activity processes. Within the framework of Informed Systems, application of Informed Learning Theory and Information Experience Design (IXD) guided prototyping systems that informed building an institutional repository named the UBT Knowledge Center. The knowledge vision anticipates that sustained curation, organization, discovery, access, and usage processes will accelerate academic engagement, national development, and global visibility, over time and with practice to further theory-to-practice and practice-to-theory.

Neighbours with different innovation patterns: The implications of industrial and FDI policy for the openness of local knowledge production

This article shows evidence that FDI policies during the catch-up process may leave a trace in the openness of innovation activities in latecomer economies, based on a comparative analysis between the Republic of Korea and China. The past industrial policies of the Republic of Korea favoured creating local technological competence based on the transfer of foreign knowledge in codified form, leading to a low level of global connection in local knowledge creation. By contrast, Chinese policies encouraged the entrance of foreign firms in the Chinese market, leading to a higher level of global interaction in innovation activities. Based on the findings, the article presents policy recommendations and suggests avenues for future research.

The dimensions of reflective practice: a teacher educator’s and nurse educator’s perspective

ABSTRACTThis article aims to accentuate the value of reflective practices in the lived experiences and professional development of a teacher educator and a nursing educator at a higher education institution in South Africa. Reflective practice promotes the continuous (re)creation of local knowledge through a critical reflection on beliefs, assumptions, experiences and practices in order to identify successful strategies for teaching practice, reflect upon challenges, adapt, and evolve their practice. Reflective practice encapsulates a process of continuous learning and growth that not only resonates with pedagogical and methodological viewpoints and also ontological and epistemological situatedness and is at the same time aligned with national and institutional aims and requirements. In this self-study project based on LaBoskey’s five characteristics of self-study, educators in higher education become both the researcher and the researched and the emphasis of the research is on the self as a theorist, researcher and practitioner. The authors explore and elucidate their journey of discovery towards the various dimensions of their reflective practice through a critical evaluation of their teaching and learning theory and of their teaching and assessment strategies. Both authors have been awarded institutional teaching excellence awards. This article contributes to their joint discourse on higher education as well as their conceptualization of their respective scholarships of teaching and learning.

Public Research, Local Knowledge Transfer, and Regional Development: Insights from a Structural VAR Model

This article estimates the regional economic effects of public research activities. In order to identify the underlying transmission channels from knowledge creation to the regional environment, the empirical identification strategy goes beyond traditional partial effects analyses and studies the complex linkages between public research, innovativeness, and regional development on the basis of a structural vector autoregressive model. A particular focus is thereby set on assessing whether the effects of local public research activity differ by the type of research actors (universities, technical colleges, and public research institutes). The empirical results indicate that an increase in the volume of (public) third-party funding to technical colleges is associated with a rise in the regional investment and employment rate as well as the human capital stock. Increasing public third-party funding to both universities and technical colleges positively affects the regional patent activity, the employment rate, and per workforce output. In comparison, the empirical results provide limited evidence for regional economic effects stemming from an increase in local knowledge creation measured in terms of scientific publications. Here, only variations in the publication rate of public research institutes can be linked to positive private sector investment and employment effects.

Exploring the Roles of Vernacular Accounting Systems in the Development of “Enabling” Global Accounting and Control Systems

ABSTRACTThis study sheds light on how self‐developed local accounting and control systems (so‐called vernacular accounting systems;VAS) can influence knowledge integration in development processes of enabling global accounting and control systems. We focus on accounting and control systems as devices that enable local actors to build on codified knowledge to create “new” knowledge that can facilitate local problem solving. We argue that local actors would evaluate a proposed global system as enabling or coercive depending on both their ability to manipulate the knowledge codified within as well as the consequences that the codified knowledge has for their authority in the local knowledge creation process. Based on a case study of the development process of a global accounting and control system, we demonstrate thatVAScan play a crucial role in both local actors’ evaluation of a proposed system (as points of reference) and their influence on knowledge integration (as knowledge transformation devices). Furthermore, local actors may continue to rely on theirVASif they realize that the proposed global system does not fit their needs. Local actors can thus use theirVAS(as negotiation devices) to strengthen their position in the development process as counterparts to the global system designers because the “threat” of continuing to use theVASmay prompt system designers to integrate local knowledge into the proposed global system. We thus also suggest that, if made visible to others and actively mobilized,VASmay foster productive debates that facilitate the migration of local knowledge into global systems.

Local knowledge creation with the use of Industrial Energy Efficiency Networks (IEENs): A Swedish case study

This paper presents a case study of a Swedish municipality, focusing on how local industry and local authorities, collaborating through industrial energy efficiency networks (IEENs), can increase the amount of realized energy efficient measures. The Swedish case discussed here has similarities to a German/Swiss organizational model with the purpose of supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their implementation of energy efficient measures. Both models have a strong focus on knowledge creation through practice rather than on information sharing. The background, design, benefits, and drawbacks of the Swedish case model are discussed here through document studies and interviews with participants in the project. The Swedish model implies that by supporting knowledge creation in SMEs through a practice dimension, the amount of realized energy efficient measures can be increased. This model should therefore be recognized as an effective policy instrument for municipalities that are interested in supporting local industry. Another conclusion is that information sharing in networks must be complemented by the creation of situated local knowledge through practices. Finally, value, situated practical experience, trust, knowledge creation, and informal meetings are important factors that enabled the network to fully support SMEs in implementing energy efficient measures.

Localized Innovation of Knowledge Community - Creation of Local Knowledge and Learning Landscape

In recent years, we can see the development of social learning groups among Taiwanese communities, for example, the Taiwan Field School which co-operate with students and residents in southern Taiwan. Through these three patterns: digging local knowledge, practicing local wisdom, and transferring local experiences, from different action modes to connect local communities as well as from the local knowledge of formatting the power of action, and then the communities and spaces are changed which operates a learning-based innovative industry model. Based on experience research, the researcher conducted content analysis from Daxi Field School and Taiwan Field School. The researcher also interviewed practitioners, educators, and participants to explore the correlation among the creation of learning landscape, the establishment of the knowledge system, and knowledge communities. It facilitates the establishment and re-creation of local identity of practitioners and presents the educational influence on local development. We analysis the education system, that there is the interaction between the body, space, and network in the community. The findings of this research suggest the “internal gaze” that creating innovative potential among community actors and forming a new model of community participation.

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

An empirical two-equation dynamic panel-data model system with fixed effects is proposed to analyze the relationship between knowledge creation and economic performance across regions over time. Estimates of the model for Spanish regions show that (i) knowledge creation depends on local R&D effort, on the amount of knowledge in use, and on knowledge creation in neighboring regions; and (ii) assimilation of new knowledge depends on local knowledge creation and on assimilation of knowledge in neighboring regions. Both processes include region-specific context fixed effects and region-specific time effects, representing region-specific dynamic influences. The results imply that (a) efficiency gains at regional level may be achieved by investing locally in the creation of new knowledge, either technological or organizational; (b) creation of knowledge in a region may be promoted by using greater amounts of already existing knowledge, as well as by increasing local R&D effort; (c) both knowledge creation and knowledge assimilation spread to/from neighboring regions; and (d) regional contexts influence both knowledge creation and knowledge assimilation separately.

The case of design-oriented pedagogy: What students’ digital video stories say about emerging learning ecosystems

This paper presents a case study in which multi-age students (aged 6---12, N?=?32) in small groups made autonomous inquiries about the phenomenon of winter fishing within the framework of design-oriented pedagogy. The research analyzed storytelling videos that the students produced as learning objects. These videos revealed a picture of the developed learning process and influence afforded and emerged learning ecosystem on it. The research question was as follow: What do the digital stories reveal about the emerged learning ecosystem and learning processes? The qualitative content analysis of the videos' structure, students' commentary, and descriptions of the implemented activities revealed that each small group constructed its own niche in the learning ecosystem. By self-organizing and utilizing the afforded community, technology, and information resources, the students constructed their own interpretations of their chosen research tasks and related inquiries. Based on the findings, we argue that such inquiry-driven learning tasks and afforded learning resources guide students to search for strategic types of knowledge to understand the given phenomena and communicate their complex study processes. The study confirms that students' agency in design-oriented pedagogy will resemble that expected of 21st-century learners. Moreover, young children (from the age of 6) can participate and become active community members in the co-developed learning process and in the creation of local knowledge in the form of storytelling.

Leadership in Organizational Knowledge Creation: A Review and Framework

abstractOrganizational knowledge creation integrates context, knowledge assets, and knowledge creation processes throughout the organization. Using organizational knowledge creation theory as an organizing framework, we conduct a literature review that shows prior work has focused on the role of central, upper‐echelon, leadership in knowledge creation processes, without devoting much attention to context and knowledge assets. To remedy these weaknesses, we develop a new framework for situational leadership in organizational knowledge creation. The framework is based on a continuum that ranges from centralized to distributed leadership at three layers of activity: a core layer of local knowledge creation; a conditional layer that provides the resources and context for knowledge creation; and a structural layer that forms the overall frame and direction for knowledge creation in the organization. We discuss the implications of this framework for theory and practice.

Éloge de la copie : le reverse engineering des antirétroviraux contre le VIH/sida dans les laboratoires pharmaceutiques brésiliens

Eulogy for copying : reverse engineering of anti-retrovirals for HIV/ Aids in Brazilian pharmaceutical laboratories The Brazilian programme for combating the Aids epidemic, based on universal access to treatment and on the local production of generic drugs, closely combines public health policy and pharmaceutical companies’ industrial policies. Using the window opened by the non-patentable status of pharmaceutical products in that country before 1996, Brazilian pharmaceutical laboratories in both the public and private sectors reverse engineered anti-retrovirals (ARV) that were patented elsewhere but could legally be copied for the domestic market. Whereas the leading international laboratories generally consider the copying of drugs to be a “ waste of resources”, the reverse engineering of molecules as complex as ARVs has led to the creation of local knowledge by Brazilian chemists. It has also enhanced the research and development (R& D) capabilities of the pharmaceutical laboratories engaged in this economy. Based on the questions and methods of sociology of science and innovation, the article examines the production, circulation and conditions of duplication of knowledge in laboratories. It sets the work of reproducing knowledge and technology in the context of intellectual property rights on drugs.

Collective Learning and Relational Capital in Local Innovation Processes

Capello R. and Faggian A. (2005) Collective learning and relational capital in local innovation processes, Regional Studies39, 75-87. Innovative capacity of firms has traditionally been explained through intra-firm characteristics. In the more recent literature, much emphasis has been put on determinants that are external to the firm. These external factors, called knowledge spillovers, refer to the positive externalities that firms receive in terms of knowledge from the environment in which they operate. Geographers and industrial economists underline the importance of knowledge spillovers. As the paper underlines, an important difference exists between the approach of knowledge spillover and that of socialized processes of local knowledge creation developed by regional economists; while in the former, the mere probability of contacts explains local knowledge transfer, in the latter, the channels through which knowledge spills over a local area are clearly identified in the relational capital of the area...

Creating a knowledge‐based city: the example of Hsinchu Science Park

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of tacit knowledge in successful knowledge‐based cities. It focuses on a case study of Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan. The growth of successful knowledge‐based cities is dependent on three interrelated processes that create and transfer tacit knowledge in cities: local knowledge creation, transfer of knowledge from external sources and transfer of that knowledge into productive activities. Researchers need to focus on processes for the creation and transfer of tacit knowledge in cities, and designers and policy makers of knowledge‐based cities need to focus on creating tacit knowledge in cities. Discusses the connection between tacit knowledge and growth of global cities.

A tudásteremtés lokalitása: hallgatólagos tudás és helyi tudástranszfer

A tudás egyre gyakrabban mint erőforrás szerepel napjaink területfejlesztési elképzeléseiben. A tudásalapú társadalom, gazdaság kialakítása intenzíven felvetette a tudás fogalmának, jellemzőinek közgazdaságtudományi újragondolását. A tudás egyre jelentősebb szerepet tölt be a regionális tudomány vizsgálatainál is: a regionális egyenlőtlenségek kérdését egyre többen az eltérő tudástőkével, az ehhez kapcsolódó társadalmi tőkével magyarázzák. A regionális gazdaságfejlesztés számára a tudás teremtésének, transzferének közgazdaságtani és területi jellemzői alapvető fontosságúak, melyeket tekintetbe kell venni különböző fejlesztési programok megtervezésénél, főleg a regionális innovációs stratégiák kidolgozásánál. A tudással foglalkozó szakirodalom kiemelten foglalkozik a tudásteremtés és tudástranszfer lokális tényezőivel, amelyek az ún. hallgatólagos tudás fogalmára épülnek. A tanulmány a hallgatólagos tudás fogalmán alapuló modelleket tekinti át a szervezeti tudásteremtés nemzetközi szakirodalmából, kitérve a modellek értelmezhetőségére. A lokális tudásteremtés és tudástranszfer ún. tudásspirál modelljére ad kiterjesztést a szervezeti modellek újabb eredményeinek adaptálásával. A tudásteremtés elveinek területfejlesztési alkalmazhatóságára egy finnországi (Tampere) gyakorlati példa bemutatásával világít rá.

Development and Conflict Prevention: Reflections on Rwanda - An Interview with Professor Peter Uvin

Development assistance organizations are paying greater attention to the causes of conflict, asserting a link between poverty and violence and affirming the potential of designing more conflict prevention sensitive development policies and programs. The Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian International Development Agency recently hosted the Vancouver Roundtable on Development, Conflict and Peace building: Responding to the Challenge, on February 14-15, 2002, where invited experts explored the possibilities of linking development and conflict prevention more effectively. Noted for his extensive field experience in following up the OECD-DAC Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and Development in 1999, as well as recent articles in 2001 and 2002 and a book in 1998 on the role of the international development agencies in Rwanda, invited Roundtable participant Professor Peter Uvin of Tufts University agreed to be interviewed by IIR Liu Centre post-doctoral fellow Erin Baines to elaborate his framework for taking action, presented at the Vancouver Roundtable. Given that each conflict situation is different, too unique, too idiosyncratic to generalize across cases, as you wrote in Reflections of Good Donor Practice, can we expect from a Canadian strategic response to the issue of development and conflict prevention? There are seven features that characterize a good policy on development and conflict prevention. These seven features are relevant for non-conflict prevention related development work as well. They hold for all development work, suggesting that there is nothing unique about conflict prevention work. Now it would be interesting to tease out would be specific only to development trying to prevent conflict, as opposed to development just doing development. But do such situations exist? I do not believe you can come to very meaningful and strong predictors about violent conflict or you can do to prevent violent conflict. All you can do is ask the right questions and set up mechanisms and lenses that allow you to constantly be aware and adapt. Some of these seven features are widely accepted, while some are widely non-accepted, or non-practiced. First, you have to be prevention-oriented as a matter of total routine; it ought to be so ordinary that you do not need to talk about it any more. For example, it is now expected that, if you were to do anything in development and you totally disregard gender issues or poverty issues, people will ask you ... what decade are you coming from? This ought to be the case with conflict. This is both a relatively easy one, for it requires little money and time, and a very hard one, for it is at this level that much resistance exists. Second, you have to be knowledge based; you will never be able to deal intelligently with conflict dynamics without good knowledge. I think that is widely accepted. The question is whose knowledge counts, which is a very important and totally undervalued matter. We have to put vastly more resources into local knowledge generation. But I think that is the case also for non-conflict development work. You have to always invest in local knowledge creation to ensure that there are strong and existing dynamics for intellectual reflection and speaking out about conflict issues once they force themselves onto the agenda. This is one thing that foreign aid can do better than others, to create the kind of spaces for people to do this, because in [cases of violence] these spaces often do not exist or are weak. So that is something that could be done better.... Third, we ought to be more flexible in financial mechanisms and administrative mechanisms, capable of making short-term change with a long-term perspective. We typically do not have much of a long-term perspective. At the same time, we aren't very good at the short term either, wherein overnight or in the course of a week we can dramatically change course. …