Interactive Knowledge Creation Research Articles

Methodological Reflections on Monitoring Interactive Knowledge Creation during Farming Demonstrations by Means of Surveys and Observations

During farming demonstrations, peer-to-peer learning is known to be more effective than technology transfer when encouraging farmers to consider adopting more sustainable farming practices. Interactive knowledge creation has the potential to create a stimulating peer-learning environment focusing on the use of hands-on activities, knowledge scaffolding, discussions and negotiation. This study investigated how insight can be gained about the interactive knowledge creation that occurs during farming demonstrations by monitoring and evaluating a diverse sample of farming demonstrations in Belgium, Spain and Denmark via surveys and observations originally designed for the AgriDemo-F2F project. The study found that the selected monitoring tools provided insight about how participants experienced specific interactive knowledge creation. However, several stumbling blocks were also identified in using the proposed tools to monitor these learning processes, including the monitoring of abstract concepts and the reluctance among farmers to respond to self-administered open-ended survey questions. Based on these learning points, several proposals were made to improve the monitoring process of interactive knowledge creation. This study confirms that the improved understanding of learning practices and their impact on actual change presents a challenge, but it is essential if the adoption of sustainable farming practices is to be increased.

Leadership Orientation of Afghan and Japanese Respondents: A Study of “Guzaara” or Getting Along in Asia

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the leadership tendencies of Afghan and Japaneserespondents by exploring their task and relationship orientations. While there are many published studies onthe Japanese work culture and leadership practices, research about Afghan working adults is limited. Usingthe Style Questionnaire, this research collected and compared the leadership orientations of 400 respondentsfrom each country based on national culture on the task and relationship-orientation continuums. To deepenthe understanding of Afghan leadership tendencies, we explore their culture of “guzaara” (getting along)practices. Similarly, we discuss the Japanese concept of “ba” (interactive knowledge creation) as one exampleof a best practice that can be benchmarked by others in society. Both Afghanistan and Japan are high-contextcultures; therefore, people are expected to be more relationship-oriented. While respondents from bothcountries do have a stronger focus on their relationships, data shows that Afghans have a significantly higherscore on both the task-orientation as well as relationship-orientation continuums, compared to their Japanesecounterparts. Implications, recommendations and limitations of the study are provided. The findings thatJapanese and Afghan employees are indeed focused on their relationships, and that they have a moderatelyhigh task orientation scores, are useful for managers and expatriates working in these two Asian countries.

Trade-offs and synergies in joint knowledge creation for coastal management: insights from ecology-oriented sand nourishment in the Netherlands

ABSTRACTIn order to successfully inform environmental management, environmental research needs to balance legitimacy, credibility, and salience. This paper aims to identify trade-offs and synergies between these three attributes in collaborative research for environmental management, and draws lessons for organizing such research. Empirically, it draws on a study of a research program on the ecological effects of coastal protection through sand nourishment. Our findings suggest that the legitimacy and salience of knowledge creation, particularly in an interactive governance context, are complementary. At the same time, we found trade-offs between practical relevance and fundamental knowledge creation, as well as between issue diversity and the depth and quality of scientific inquiry. Balancing the legitimacy, credibility, and salience of knowledge may be enabled by interactive knowledge creation involving policy-makers, experts and stakeholders. We conclude that successful management-oriented environmental research, particularly in the case of wicked problems, requires both a careful design of arrangements for stakeholder engagement, and well- established linkages to broader regulatory and institutional contexts.

Interaction in the artistic knowledge creation process: The case of artists in Finnish Lapland

This paper contributes to the need in economic geography to understand temporal interactions and sources of new knowledge in such interactions in the knowledge creation process. The focus is on eleven international artists who live in peripheral locations in Finnish Lapland, where spatial and temporal disconnections easily evolve. The paper considers the meaning of such disconnections, as well as human–object interaction. The processes are analysed through the spatio-temporal framework of object, communicative and cognitive spaces, and linear and relational times.The empirical research into knowledge creation in economic geography lacks views of peripheries, artistic knowledge and the consideration of the process in the ‘here and now’. These views are needed to meet the challenge of understanding knowledge creation processes in various fields and contexts. The main materials of this ethnographic case study – interviews, observation and videotaping of the artists working – are analysed using content analysis.The results show the central position of objects in interactions of artistic knowledge creation. The two main modes of temporal interactions are (re)searching and (dis)connecting. In the early stages, continuous and wide (re)searching includes returning in time that addresses the framework for developing artwork. The artists living in peripheries benefit from disconnections based on geographical isolation. The moments of (dis)connections between the field and artist, object-cognitive spaces and dimensions of time are sources of new knowledge. Some connections might prevent knowledge creation. Therefore, objects, temporality and the cognitive space of interpreted messages are important to acknowledge when studying interactive knowledge creation.

StefanKrätke2011: The Creative Capital of Cities. Interactive Knowledge Creation and the Urbanization Economies of Innovation. Malden and Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell.

article reviews the book The Creative Capital of Cities: Interactive Knowledge Creation and the Urbanization Economies of Innovation, by Stefan Kratke.

Stefan Krätke: The creative capital of cities: interactive knowledge creation and the urbanization economies of innovation

Stefan Krätke: The creative capital of cities: interactive knowledge creation and the urbanization economies of innovation

Principles and Practices of Knowledge Creation: On the Organization of “Buzz” and “Pipelines” in Life Science Communities

abstractThis article links up with the debate in economic geography on “local buzz” and “global pipelines” as two distinct forms of interactive knowledge creation among firms and related actors and argues for a rethinking of the way social scientists should approach interactive knowledge creation. It highlights the importance of combining the insights from studies of clusters and innovation systems with an activity-oriented approach in which more attention is paid to the specific characteristics of the innovation processes and the conditions underpinning their organization. To illustrate the applicability and added value of such an alternative approach, the notion of embeddedness is linked with some basic ideas adopted from the literature on knowledge communities. The framework is then applied to a study of innovation activities conducted by firms and academic research groups working with biotechnology-related applications in the Swedish part of the Medicon Valley life science region. The findings reveal that local buzz is largely absent in these types of activities. Most interactive knowledge creation, which appears to be spontaneous and unregulated, is, on closer examination, found safely embedded in globally configured professional knowledge communities and attainable only by those who qualify.

Industrial Associations as Interactive Knowledge Creation

Industrial Associations as Interactive Knowledge Creation

Underlife and Writing Instruction

This article uses the sociological concept of to explain several aspects of writing instruction. In sociological theory, underlife refers to those behaviors which undercut the roles expected of participants in a situation-the ways an employee, for example, shows she is not just an employee, but has a more complex personality outside that role. In contemporary writing instruction, both students and teachers undercut the traditional roles of the American educational system in order to substitute more complex identities in their place. On the one hand, students disobey, write letters instead of taking notes, and whisper with their peers to show they are more than just students and can think independently of classroom expectations. On the other, writing teachers develop workshop methods, use small groups, and focus on students' own voices in order to help students see themselves as writers first and students second. Both sets of behaviors are behaviors, for they seek to provide identities that go beyond the roles offered by the normal teacher-as-lecturer, student-as-passive-learner educational system. These forms of underlife, moreover, are connected to the nature of writing itself. Writing, in the rich sense of interactive knowledge creation advocated by theorists like Ann Berthoff in The Making of Meaning and Janet Emig in Web of Meaning, necessarily involves standing outside the roles and beliefs offered by a social situation-it involves questioning them, searching for new connections, building ideas that may be in conflict with accepted ways of thinking and acting. Writing involves being able to challenge one's assigned roles long enough that one can think originally; it involves living in conflict with accepted (expected) thought and action. This article will explore student and teacher behavior in writing instruction as the of the current educational system, and will suggest that the identities which may be developing for students in writing classrooms are