AcaWiki - User contributions [en]

The Many Meanings of Research Utilization

2018-08-25T23:07:18Z

Natematias: Reverted previous version after realizing the collision and confusion around versions after I asked Austin to write up his own summary

{{Summary
|title=The Many Meanings of Research Utilization
|authors=Carol Weiss
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109916
|tags=Policy Evaluation, Epistemology, Social Research
|summary=What does it mean for policy makers to make use of research? Carol Weiss wrote this classic paper after years of extensive work with the US government, and after editing and writing books on the roles of social research in public policy. In the paper, Weiss summarizes seven major ways of thinking about the use of research, arguing that if social scientists understand these approaches, they can improve the policy impact of their work and be less disappointed with the scope of that impact.

==Knowledge Driven Model==
This model "assumes the following sequence of events: basic research -> applied research -> development -> application." Weiss argues that this model is rare in the social sciences, whether or not it actually describes what happens in the natural sciences. She argues against "the assumption that the sheer fact that knowledge exists press it toward development and use." (427) This, she argues is for three reasons:

* "Social science knowledge is not apt to be so compelling or authoritative as to drive inevitably toward implementation" (427)
* "Social science knowledge does not readily lend itself to conversion into replicable technologies" (427)
* "Unless a social condition has been consensually identified as a pressing social problem, and unless the condition has become fully politicized, and the parameters of a potential action agreed upon, there is little likelihood that policy-making bodies will be receptive to the results of social science research" (427)

==Problem-Solving Model==
Some social scientists start from a problem that society agrees on and try to develop research that can guide subsequent decisions. Weiss points out that this model makes several assumptions:

* "there is a consensus on goals" (427)
* "policy makers and researchers tend to agree on what the desired end state shall be" (427)

In this situation, social science research may "help identify and select appropriate means to reach the goal" (427). In these cases, Weiss points out two paths for research to influence policy. In one path, the research already existed and is drawn upon when needed. This rarely happens, because people making decisions rarely have access to relevant research. Researchers who focus on this path tend to try to improve the communication of research findings. In the second path, policy makers commission research to answer questions. Weiss, writing in 1977, called this view "wildly optimistic" (428). She writes that "occasional studies have direct effect on decisions, but usually on relatively low-level narrow-gauge decisions. Most studies appear to come and go without leaving any discernible mark on the direction or substance of policy" (428). To illustrate the implausibility of impactful commissioned research, Weiss outlines the "extraordinary concatenation of circumstances" that would need to occur:

* "a well defined decision situation"
* "a set of policy actors who have responsibility and jurisdiction for making the decision"
* "an issue whose resolution depends at least to some extent on *information*"
* "identification of the requisite informational needs"
* "research that provides the information in terms that match the circumstances within which choices will be made"
* "research findings that are clear-cut, unambiguous, firmly supported, and powerful"
* "[findings] that reach decision-makers at the time they are wrestling with the issues"
* "[findings] that are comprehensible and understood, and that do not run counter to strong political interests" (428)

When these things do not converge, Weiss worries that too many researchers become discouraged.

==Interactive Model==
Another model sees researchers as "part of an interactive search for knowledge" (428). Here, researchers acknowledge that they are part of a network of people making claims and arguments, including journalists, planners, politicians, interest groups, aides etc, who all "pool their talents, beliefs, and understandings in an effort to make sense of a problem." Weiss cites Donnison's studies of UK policy research, including cases where politicians needed to make decisions before research was complete (1972).

== Political Model==
Weiss points out that research often speaks into conversations that have hardened along political lines: "At this point, decision-makers are not likely to be receptive to new evidence from social science research. For reasons of interest, ideology, or intellect, they have taken a stand that research is not likely to shake" (429). In these situations, "research becomes grist to the mill." Yet when research "finds ready-made partisans who will fight for its implementation, it stands a better chance of making a difference in the outcome." Weiss suggests that in these cases, researchers should at least support open access for reasons of equity (Weiss 1973).

==Tactical Model==
Sometimes research is used for purposes unrelated to the goals of the research itself. For example, "sometimes government agencies use research to deflect criticism" (429). Alternatively, government agencies may ally with well-known researchers as "a tactic for enhancing the prestige of the agency" (429). Sometimes, "agencies support substantial amounts of research and in so doing, build a constituency of academic supporters who rally to their defense when appropriations are under congressional review" (429).

==Enlightenment Model==
Weiss argues that most social research influences policy through a process of "enlightenment" (Janowitz, Crawford & Biderman). Rather than specific findings influencing specific policies, "it is the concepts and theoretical perspectives that social science research has engendered that permeate the policy-making process" (429). In this model, we see "social science generalizations and orientations percolating through informed publics and coming to shape the way in which people think about social issues" (429). Unlike other models, the goals of this research do not need to align with decision-makers' goals.

Weiss argues that while this idea "has a comforting quality," convincing people that "without any special effort, truth will triumph" (430). Yet this enlightenment model can spread invalid, wrong generalization along good ones. Sensational, newsworthy research can take the limelight. Important work might never get noticed. As much social research complicates our understandings rather than converging it, "advocates of almost any policy prescription are likely to find some research generalizations in circulation to support their points of view" (430).

==Research as Part of the Intellectual Enterprise of Society==
Finally, Weiss summarizes the idea of social science research as one of many forms of intellectual enquiry, which "responds to the currents of thought, the fads and fancies, of the period," where "social science and policy interact, influencing each other and being influenced by the larger fashions of thought" (1979). These fads shape what social scientists are interested in, what funders prioritize, and consequently, what researchers are able to study.

==Conclusion==
Weiss hopes that understanding the diversity of these models "may help us to overcome the disenchantment with the usefulness of social science research that has afflicted those who search for use only in problem-solving contexts" (430). She concludes by arguing that "there has been much glib rhetoric about the vast benefits that social science can offer if only policy makers paid attention" (431). Weiss argues that social scientists should apply their own methods to improving their understanding of this issue so that even if they cannot "increase the use of research," they may still be able to "improve the contribution that research makes to the wisdom of social policy" (431).

==References==
* Donnison, D. (1972). Research for policy. Minerva, 10(4), 519-536.
* Weiss, C. H. (1973). Where politics and evaluation research meet. Evaluation practice, 14(1), 93-106.
* Janowitz, M. (1972). Professionalization of sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 78(1), 105-135.
* Crawford, E. T., & Biderman, A. D. (1969). The functions of policy-oriented social science. Social scientists and international affairs, 233-43.
|relevance=This classic article outlines seven major ways that social research contributes to society. The article prompted more substantial research and thinking on the uses of social science research by society.
|journal=Public administration review
|pub_date=1979
|doi=10.2307/3109916
|subject=Sociology
}}

The Many Meanings of Research Utilization

2017-04-25T20:03:13Z

Natematias:

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-20T11:39:52Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|tags=Policy Evaluation, Social Research, Epistemology, Organizational Theory,
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: (a) studies on the uses of social science research and (b) political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures, within a subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
Referring to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Weiss, the authors argue that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

(this article is a trove of sources. You should just read it rather than rely on this list)

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymakers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
* Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-20T11:37:51Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|tags=Policy Evaluation, Social Research, Epistemology, Organizational Theory,
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: (a) studies on the uses of social science research and (b) political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures and subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
Referring to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Weiss, the authors argue that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

(this article is a trove of sources. You should just read it rather than rely on this list)

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymakers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
* Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

User:Natematias

2017-03-20T03:07:14Z

Natematias:

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation ([http://natematias.com/JNM_CV_08.2016.pdf C.V.]). He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([http://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]) and an [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias affiliate at the Berkman Center] at Harvard.

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
** The above document turned into the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Online_harassment_resource_guide Online Harassment Resource Guide], generously hosted by Wikimedia
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]

== Other Papers and Books of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.
* Yates, J. (1993). [[Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management]] (Vol. 6). JHU Press.
* Campbell, D. T. (1998). [[The Experimenting Society]]. The experimenting society: Essays in honor of Donald T. Campbell, 11, 35.
* Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
* Contandriopoulos, D., Lemire, M., Denis, J.-L., & Tremblay, É. (2010). [[Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature]]. Milbank Quarterly, 88(4), 444–483. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
* Cousins, J. B., & Whitmore, E. (1998). [[Framing participatory evaluation]]. New Directions for Evaluation, 1998(80), 5–23.

Framing participatory evaluation

2017-03-20T02:55:19Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Framing participatory evaluation
|authors=J. Bradley Cousins, Elizabeth Whittmore
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ev.1114/full
|tags=Participatory Research, Evaluation, Policy Evaluation, Popular Education
|summary=Why do researchers involve research participants in collaborative inquiry? In this influential article, J. Bradley Cousins and Elizabeth Whitmore review the meanings of "participatory evaluation" (PE) as they were used from the 1940s through the mid 1990s. The authors identify two traditions: one that (a) includes people to improve the impact of research, and a second (b) that reallocates power for purposes of social change.

== Summarizing Two Streams of Research ==
To start out, the authors offer a common summary of participatory evaluation: "when doing an evaluation, researchers, facilitators, or professional evaluators collaborate in some way with individuals, groups, or communities who have a decided stake in the program, development project, or other entity being evaluated" (5). These participants, or stakeholders are "those with a vested interest in the focus of the evaluation" (Mark & Shotland 1985).

In the '''Practical Participatory Evaluation''' (PPE) movement within the US and Canada starting in the 1970s, evaluators involve communities involved in decision-making, assuming that "stakeholder participation in evaluation will enhance evaluation relevance, ownership, and thus utilization" (6). Since the 1970s, researchers found that "utilization is often associated at least as much with the process of doing the evaluation as with the findings themselves." Many of these approaches define the research process in such a way that researchers do the technical work and stakeholders are involved in "definition of the evaluation problem, scope-setting activities, and, later, interpreting data emerging from the study" (7).

The '''Transformative Participatory Evaluation''' (TPE) movement "invokes participatory principles and actions in order to democratize social change," grounded in Latin American and post-colonial political contexts (Fals-Borda). These approaches offered "a reaction to positivist models of inquiry that were seen as exploitive and detached from urgent social and economic problems." (8) (Hall, 1992). The authors explain that "Although T-PE is now spreading to the university sector, it is deeply rooted in community and international development, adult education, and, more recently, the women's movement" (8). Influential theorists include Paolo Freire, Marx, Engels, Gramsci, Habermas, Adorno, and critical theory. Key concepts include:

* "the issue of who creates and controls the production of knowledge. One important aim of T-PE is to empower people through participation in the process of constructing and respecting their own knowledge and through their understanding of the connections among knowledge, power, and control" (8)
* "How is the evaluation conducted? The distance between researcher and researched is broken down; all participants are contributors working collectively" (8)
* "critical reflection requires participants to question, to doubt, and to consider a broad range of social factors, including their own biases and assumptions" (8)
* learning and education through the research process, not just investigation and action

T-PE processes are intended to "transform power relations and to promote social action and change" by thinking of research and evaluation "as a developmental process where, through the involvement of less powerful stakeholders in investigation, reflection, negotiation, decision making, and knowledge creations, individual participants and power dynamics in the sociocultural milieu are changed" (9).

The authors conclude that these approaches "differ in their primary functions–practical problem solving versus empowerment–and ideological and historical roots but overlap in their secondary functions and in other areas" (10).

== Differentiating Process Dimensions of collaborative Inquiry==
The authors advance three dimensions for making sense of a particular participatory evaluation project:

* "''Control of the evaluation process'', ranging from control of decisions being completely in the hands of the researcher to control being exerted entirely by practitioners. Control here relates particularly to technical decisions–those regarding evaluation processes and conduct–as opposed to decisions about whether and when to initiate evaluation" (10)
* "''Stakeholder selection'' for participation, ranging from restriction to primary users to inclusion of all legitimate groups"
* "''depth of participation'', from consultation (with no decision-making control or responsibility) to deep participation (involvement in all aspects of an evaluation from design, data collection, analysis, and reporting to decisions about dissemination of results and use).

Next, the authors ask how the two approaches to participatory evaluation differ along these dimensions. They offer a table of 10 different kinds of participatory evaluation and compare them along these three categories. Overall, the "PPE" tradition tends to include people with existing power to implement policies, while the "TPE" tradition tends to include the people most affected. The paper also compares these approaches to other related models of evaluation, with summaries and references for each of the following:

* stakeholder-based evaluation
* school-based evaluation
* democratic evaluation
* developmental evaluation
* empowerment evaluation
* participatory action research
* emancipatory action research
* cooperative inquiry

==Issues and Questions==
Finally, the authors conclude with a set of questions of importance for all participatory research:

* "Power and its ramifications. Who really controls the evaluation? How does one account for and deal with variation in power and influence among participants and between participants and the evaluator?" (18)
* "Participant Selection. Who participates on the inquiry team, and how are participants identified and selected?"
* "Technical Quality. How is technical quality defined? By whom? Are there tensions related to data quality and the relevance of the evaluation to the local setting?"
* "Cross-Cultural Issues. how can cultural, language, or racial barriers be addressed?"
* "Training. how is the training of participants in evaluation and research methods to be accomplished?"
* "Conditions enabling PE. Finally, we ask, what conditions need to be in place for meaningful PE to flourish?"

The authors conclude by calling on participatory researchers to continue to share their findings in hopes of helping others develop more thoughtful answers to these questions in the future.

== Notable References ==
(this article has four pages of great references, so you should look directly at the bibliography)

* Fals-Borda, O. (1987). The application of participatory action-research in Latin America. International sociology, 2(4), 329-347.
* Hall, B. L. (1981). Participatory research, popular knowledge and power: A personal reflection. Convergence, 14(3), 6.
* Hall, B. L. (1992). From margins to center? The development and purpose of participatory research. The American Sociologist, 23(4), 15-28.
* Huberman, M. (1995). The many modes of participatory evaluation. Participatory evaluation in education: Studies in evaluation use and organizational learning, 103-111.
* Mark, M. M., & Shotland, R. L. (1985). Stakeholder-based evaluation and value judgments. Evaluation Review, 9(5), 605-626.
|relevance=This influential article summarizes multiple threads of participatory research and compares them across three criteria: who controls the evaluation process, who chooses the stakeholders, and how deep are communities' participation in the research process? The article focuses primarily on participatory evaluation aimed at influencing decisions and a parallel thread focused on emancipation and social change.
|journal=New directions for evaluation
|pub_date=1998
|doi=10.1002/ev.1114
|subject=Sociology
}}

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-20T02:53:48Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|tags=Policy Evaluation, Social Research, Epistemology, Organizational Theory,
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: studies on the uses of social science research and political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures and subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
Referring to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Weiss, the authors argue that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

(this article is a trove of sources. You should just read it rather than rely on this list)

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymakers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
* Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

The Many Meanings of Research Utilization

2017-03-20T02:52:59Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=The Many Meanings of Research Utilization
|authors=Carol Weiss
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109916
|tags=Policy Evaluation, Epistemology, Social Research
|summary=What does it mean for policy makers to make use of research? Carol Weiss wrote this classic paper after years of extensive work with the US government, and after editing and writing books on the roles of social research in public policy. In the paper, Weiss summarizes seven major ways of thinking about the use of research, arguing that if social scientists understand these approaches, they can improve the contribution of their work and be less disappointed with their work's impact.

==Knowledge Driven Model==
This model "assumes the following sequence of events: basic research -> applied research -> development -> application." Weiss argues that this model is rare in the social sciences, whether or not it actually describes what happens in the natural sciences. She argues against "the assumption that the sheer fact that knowledge exists press it toward development and use." (427) This, she argues is for three reasons:

* "Social science knowledge is not apt to be so compelling or authoritative as to drive inevitably toward implementation" (427)
* "Social science knowledge does not readily lend itself to conversion into replicable technologies" (427)
* "Unless a social condition has been consensually identified as a pressing social problem, and unless the condition has become fully politicized, and the parameters of a potential action agreed upon, there is little likelihood that policy-making bodies will be receptive to the results of social science research" (427)

==Problem-Solving Model==
Some social scientists start from a problem that society agrees on and try to develop research that can guide subsequent decisions. Weiss points out that this model makes several assumptions:

* "there is a consensus on goals" (427)
* "policy makers and researchers tend to agree on what the desired end state shall be" (427)

In this situation, social science research may "help identify and select appropriate means to reach the goal" (427). In these cases, Weiss points out two paths for research to influence policy. In one path, the research already existed and is drawn upon when needed. This rarely happens, because people making decisions rarely have access to relevant research. Researchers who focus on this path tend to try to improve the communication of research findings. In the second path, policy makers commission research to answer questions. Weiss, writing in 1977, called this view "wildly optimistic" (428). She writes that "occasional studies have direct effect on decisions, but usually on relatively low-level narrow-gauge decisions. Most studies appear to come and go without leaving any discernible mark on the direction or substance of policy" (428). To illustrate the implausibility of impactful commissioned research, Weiss outlines the "extraordinary concatenation of circumstances" that would need to occur:

* "a well defined decision situation"
* "a set of policy actors who have responsibility and jurisdiction for making the decision"
* "an issue whose resolution depends at least to some extent on *information*"
* "identification of the requisite informational needs"
* "research that provides the information in terms that match the circumstances within which choices will be made"
* "research findings that are clear-cut, unambiguous, firmly supported, and powerful"
* "[findings] that reach decision-makers at the time they are wrestling with the issues"
* "[findings] that are comprehensible and understood, and that do not run counter to strong political interests" (428)

When these things do not converge, Weiss worries that too many researchers become discouraged.

==Interactive Model==
Another model sees researchers as "part of an interactive search for knowledge" (428). Here, researchers acknowledge that they are part of a network of people making claims and arguments, including journalists, planners, politicians, interest groups, aides etc, who all "pool their talents, beliefs, and understandings in an effort to make sense of a problem." Weiss cites Donnison's studies of UK policy research, including cases where politicians needed to make decisions before research was complete (1972).

== Political Model==
Weiss points out that research often speaks into conversations that have hardened along political lines: "At this point, decision-makers are not likely to be receptive to new evidence from social science research. For reasons of interest, ideology, or intellect, they have taken a stand that research is not likely to shake" (429). In these situations, "research becomes grist to the mill." Yet when research "finds ready-made partisans who will fight for its implementation, it stands a better chance of making a difference in the outcome." Weiss suggests that in these cases, researchers should at least support open access for reasons of equity (Weiss 1973).

==Tactical Model==
Sometimes research is used for purposes unrelated to the goals of the research itself. For example, "sometimes government agencies use research to deflect criticism" (429). Alternatively, government agencies may ally with well-known researchers as "a tactic for enhancing the prestige of the agency" (429). Sometimes, "agencies support substantial amounts of research and in so doing, build a constituency of academic supporters who rally to their defense when appropriations are under congressional review" (429).

==Enlightenment Model==
Weiss argues that most social research influences policy through a process of "enlightenment" (Janowitz, Crawford & Biderman). Rather than specific findings influencing specific policies, "it is the concepts and theoretical perspectives that social science research has engendered that permeate the policy-making process" (429). In this model, we see "social science generalizations and orientations percolating through informed publics and coming to shape the way in which people think about social issues" (429). Unlike other models, the goals of this research do not need to align with decision-makers' goals.

Weiss argues that while this idea "has a comforting quality," convincing people that "without any special effort, truth will triumph" (430). Yet this enlightenment model can spread invalid, wrong generalization along good ones. Sensational, newsworthy research can take the limelight. Important work might never get noticed. As much social research complicates our understandings rather than converging it, "advocates of almost any policy prescription are likely to find some research generalizations in circulation to support their points of view" (430).

==Research as Part of the Intellectual Enterprise of Society==
Finally, Weiss summarizes the idea of social science research as one of many forms of intellectual enquiry, which "responds to the currents of thought, the fads and fancies, of the period," where "social science and policy interact, influencing each other and being influenced by the larger fashions of thought" (1979). These fads shape what social scientists are interested in, what funders prioritize, and consequently, what researchers are able to study.

==Conclusion==
Weiss hopes that understanding the diversity of these models "may help us to overcome the disenchantment with the usefulness of social science research that has afflicted those who search for use only in problem-solving contexts" (430). She concludes by arguing that "there has been much glib rhetoric about the vast benefits that social science can offer if only policy makers paid attention" (431). Weiss argues that social scientists should apply their own methods to improving their understanding of this issue so that even if they cannot "increase the use of research," they may still be able to "improve the contribution that research makes to the wisdom of social policy" (431).

==References==
* Donnison, D. (1972). Research for policy. Minerva, 10(4), 519-536.
* Weiss, C. H. (1973). Where politics and evaluation research meet. Evaluation practice, 14(1), 93-106.
* Janowitz, M. (1972). Professionalization of sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 78(1), 105-135.
* Crawford, E. T., & Biderman, A. D. (1969). The functions of policy-oriented social science. Social scientists and international affairs, 233-43.
|relevance=This classic article outlines seven major ways that social research contributes to society. The article prompted more substantial research and thinking on the uses of social science research by society.
|journal=Public administration review
|pub_date=1979
|doi=10.2307/3109916
|subject=Sociology
}}

Framing participatory evaluation

2017-03-20T02:52:06Z

Natematias: Created page with "{{Summary |title=Framing participatory evaluation |authors=J. Bradley Cousins, Elizabeth Whittmore |url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ev.1114/full |tags=Participa..."

{{Summary
|title=Framing participatory evaluation
|authors=J. Bradley Cousins, Elizabeth Whittmore
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ev.1114/full
|tags=Participatory Research, Evaluation, Policy Evaluation, Popular Education
|summary=Why do researchers involve research participants in collaborative inquiry? In this influential article, J. Bradley Cousins and Elizabeth Whitmore review the meanings of "participatory evaluation" (PE) as they were used from the 1940s through the mid 1990s. The authors identify two traditions: one that (a) includes people to improve the impact of research, and a second (b) that reallocates power for purposes of social change.

== Summarizing Two Streams of Research ==
To start out, the authors offer a common summary of participatory evaluation: "when doing an evaluation, researchers, facilitators, or professional evaluators collaborate in some way with individuals, groups, or communities who have a decided stake in the program, development project, or other entity being evaluated" (5). These participants, or stakeholders are "those with a vested interest in the focus of the evaluation" (Mark & Shotland 1985).

In the '''Practical Participatory Evaluation''' (PPE) movement within the US and Canada starting in the 1970s, evaluators involve communities involved in decision-making, assuming that "stakeholder participation in evaluation will enhance evaluation relevance, ownership, and thus utilization" (6). Since the 1970s, researchers found that "utilization is often associated at least as much with the process of doing the evaluation as with the findings themselves." Many of these approaches define the research process in such a way that researchers do the technical work and stakeholders are involved in "definition of the evaluation problem, scope-setting activities, and, later, interpreting data emerging from the study" (7).

The '''Transformative Participatory Evaluation''' (TPE) movement "invokes participatory principles and actions in order to democratize social change," grounded in Latin American and post-colonial political contexts (Fals-Borda). These approaches offered "a reaction to positivist models of inquiry that were seen as exploitive and detached from urgent social and economic problems." (8) (Hall, 1992). The authors explain that "Although T-PE is now spreading to the university sector, it is deeply rooted in community and international development, adult education, and, more recently, the women's movement" (8). Influential theorists include Paolo Freire, Marx, Engels, Gramsci, Habermas, Adorno, and critical theory. Key concepts include:

* "the issue of who creates and controls the production of knowledge. One important aim of T-PE is to empower people through participation in the process of constructing and respecting their own knowledge and through their understanding of the connections among knowledge, power, and control" (8)
* "How is the evaluation conducted? The distance between researcher and researched is broken down; all participants are contributors working collectively" (8)
* "critical reflection requires participants to question, to doubt, and to consider a broad range of social factors, including their own biases and assumptions" (8)
* learning and education through the research process, not just investigation and action

T-PE processes are intended to "transform power relations and to promote social action and change" by thinking of research and evaluation "as a developmental process where, through the involvement of less powerful stakeholders in investigation, reflection, negotiation, decision making, and knowledge creations, individual participants and power dynamics in the sociocultural milieu are changed" (9).

The authors conclude that these approaches "differ in their primary functions–practical problem solving versus empowerment–and ideological and historical roots but overlap in their secondary functions and in other areas" (10).

== Differentiating Process Dimensions of collaborative Inquiry==
The authors advance three dimensions for making sense of a particular participatory evaluation project:

* "''Control of the evaluation process'', ranging from control of decisions being completely in the hands of the researcher to control being exerted entirely by practitioners. Control here relates particularly to technical decisions–those regarding evaluation processes and conduct–as opposed to decisions about whether and when to initiate evaluation" (10)
* "''Stakeholder selection'' for participation, ranging from restriction to primary users to inclusion of all legitimate groups"
* "''depth of participation'', from consultation (with no decision-making control or responsibility) to deep participation (involvement in all aspects of an evaluation from design, data collection, analysis, and reporting to decisions about dissemination of results and use).

Next, the authors ask how the two approaches to participatory evaluation differ along these dimensions. They offer a table of 10 different kinds of participatory evaluation and compare them along these three categories. Overall, the "PPE" tradition tends to include people with existing power to implement policies, while the "TPE" tradition tends to include the people most affected. The paper also compares these approaches to other related models of evaluation, with summaries and references for each of the following:

* stakeholder-based evaluation
* school-based evaluation
* democratic evaluation
* developmental evaluation
* empowerment evaluation
* participatory action research
* emancipatory action research
* cooperative inquiry

==Issues and Questions==
Finally, the authors conclude with a set of questions of importance for all participatory research:

* "Power and its ramifications. Who really controls the evaluation? How does one account for and deal with variation in power and influence among participants and between participants and the evaluator?" (18)
* "Participant Selection. Who participates on the inquiry team, and how are participants identified and selected?"
* "Technical Quality. How is technical quality defined? By whom? Are there tensions related to data quality and the relevance of the evaluation to the local setting?"
* "Cross-Cultural Issues. how can cultural, language, or racial barriers be addressed?"
* "Training. how is the training of participants in evaluation and research methods to be accomplished?"
* "Conditions enabling PE. Finally, we ask, what conditions need to be in place for meaningful PE to flourish?"

The authors conclude by calling on participatory researchers to continue to share their findings in hopes of helping others develop more thoughtful answers to these questions in the future.

== Notable References ==
* Fals-Borda, O. (1987). The application of participatory action-research in Latin America. International sociology, 2(4), 329-347.
* Hall, B. L. (1981). Participatory research, popular knowledge and power: A personal reflection. Convergence, 14(3), 6.
* Hall, B. L. (1992). From margins to center? The development and purpose of participatory research. The American Sociologist, 23(4), 15-28.
* Huberman, M. (1995). The many modes of participatory evaluation. Participatory evaluation in education: Studies in evaluation use and organizational learning, 103-111.
* Mark, M. M., & Shotland, R. L. (1985). Stakeholder-based evaluation and value judgments. Evaluation Review, 9(5), 605-626.
|relevance=This influential article summarizes multiple threads of participatory research and compares them across three criteria: who controls the evaluation process, who chooses the stakeholders, and how deep are communities' participation in the research process? The article focuses primarily on participatory evaluation aimed at influencing decisions and a parallel thread focused on emancipation and social change.
|journal=New directions for evaluation
|pub_date=1998
|doi=10.1002/ev.1114
|subject=Sociology
}}

User:Natematias

2017-03-20T02:03:08Z

Natematias: /* Other Papers and Books of Note */

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation ([http://natematias.com/JNM_CV_08.2016.pdf C.V.]). He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([http://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]) and an [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias affiliate at the Berkman Center] at Harvard.

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
** The above document turned into the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Online_harassment_resource_guide Online Harassment Resource Guide], generously hosted by Wikimedia
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]

== Other Papers and Books of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.
* Yates, J. (1993). [[Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management]] (Vol. 6). JHU Press.
* Campbell, D. T. (1998). [[The Experimenting Society]]. The experimenting society: Essays in honor of Donald T. Campbell, 11, 35.
* Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
* Contandriopoulos, D., Lemire, M., Denis, J.-L., & Tremblay, É. (2010). [[Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature]]. Milbank Quarterly, 88(4), 444–483. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
* Cousins, J. B., & Whitmore, E. (1998). [[Framing Participatory Evaluation. New Directions for Evaluation]], 1998(80), 5–23.

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-19T22:52:06Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: studies on the uses of social science research and political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures and subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
Referring to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Weiss, the authors argue that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

(this article is a trove of sources. You should just read it rather than rely on this list)

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymakers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
* Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-19T20:40:08Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: studies on the uses of social science research and political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures and subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
Referring to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Weiss, the authors argue that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

(this article is a trove of sources. You should just read it rather than rely on this list)

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymakers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-19T20:34:28Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: studies on the uses of social science research, and political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures and subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
Referring to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Weiss, the authors argue that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

(this article is a trove of sources. You should just read it rather than rely on this list)

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymakers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-19T20:31:11Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: studies on the uses of social science research, and political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures and subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
Referring to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Weiss, the authors argue that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymak-
ers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature

2017-03-19T20:28:15Z

Natematias: Created page with "{{Summary |title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature |authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire..."

{{Summary
|title=Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature
|authors=Damien Contandriopoulos, Marc Lemire, Jean-Louis Denis, Émile Tremblay
|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x/abstract
|summary=How do organizations and groups make use of research knowledge? In this literature review, the researchers summarize findings from two fields: studies on the uses of social science research, and political science research on the role of knowledge in policymaking and knowledge. This paper is valuable for two reasons. First, it explains how researchers have tended to think about the impact of research. Secondly, the authors conclude that "research is unlikely to provide context-independent evidence" and that anyone trying to create impact through research should tailor their work to the context of its use.

== Collective Processes in the Use of Knowledge ==
The authors wrote this article because many researchers have completely different traditions and beliefs about how knowledge leads to action within organizations (445). They focus on "collective-level processes." Rather than think about autonomous people who have the ability to make their own decisions based on information, most research-based actions occur in structures of "interdependency," where "none of the participants has enough autonomy or power to translate the information into practices on his or her own" (447). In these cases, the use of knowledge depends on social processes and structures of:

* sense making (Nonaka 1994; Russell et al. 2008; Weick 1995)
* coalition building (Heaney 2006; Lemieux 1998; Salisbury et al. 1987)
* rhetoric and persuasion (Majone 1989; Milbrath 1960; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Russell et al. 2008; Van de Ven and Schomaker 2002)

The authors argue that the complexity of social decision-making has created difficulties for quantitatively evaluating the effect of research on organizations, unlike medical research, where scholars can measure the effects of research across the decisions of many somewhat-autonomous doctors.

== Focus and Methods of the Literature Review ==
This literature review focused on collective processes, and solely on initiatives involving deliberate exchange of knowledge and attempts to influence policymakers (compared to other kinds of diffusion, such as when a policymaker just happens to pick up a book authored by a researcher). The authors review the many different definitions of knowledge exchange, decisions, and instrumental versus symbolic uses of knowledge. They settle on the following:

"our review is focused on the collective level of analysis in order to understand deliberate interventions aimed at influencing behaviors or opinions through the communication of information" (450).

To conduct this review, they used a snowball sample starting with 33 "seminal papers" across seven traditions. These "seminal" sources are included in the appendix of the paper.

* "political science literature on lobbying and group politics"
* "works on agenda-setting processes in policymaking"
* "literature on policy networks"
* " 'mainstream' literature on knowledge transfer and exchange"
* "works in the evaluation field about the use of evaluation results"
* "organizational-level literature on decision processes and learning"
* "social network analysis works on information circulation"

The authors then used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify 4,201 papers that cited these ones, choosing 189 that matched their goals. Next, they found 5,622 more papers that these articles cited and snowballed again. In the end, they organized three people to look at 204 documents and identify themes. Here is what they found:

== Components of Knowledge Exchange Systems ==

=== Individuals in Collective Knowledge Exchange Networks ===
Research on knowledge exchange often tries to understand the role that individual people play to influence the use of knowledge, often putting them into the groups of "**producers**, **intermediaries**, and **users**" (455). Producers rarely have the capacity to put knowledge to use, users are those with the power to implement things, and intermediaries often play a role as "conveyors," "brokers," "intermediaries," or "lobbyists" (455).

The authors argue that "many models or actual knowledge exchange interventions concern only two of the three. For example, political science models of lobbying often neglect the production side, and some knowledge-based models of evidence transfer tend to disregard actual utilization processes" (455). The authors warn against just using these three groups in analysis, since people carry out these roles within a variety of structures and subconscious social world, or *habitus* (456).

=== Knowledge from Information to Evidence ===
Here, the authors summarize different approaches to knowledge. In the healthcare literature, the assumption is that knowledge is based on evidence that is causal and internally-valid (456). But numerous studies have found that "internal validity per se does not influence information use (although perceived legitimacy does positively influence use...) (457). This could be for several reasons:

* maybe information users lack training to recognize valid research
* maybe external validity matters more
* maybe the social sciences tend toward "shallow" insights that seem like common sense
* users often have to balance competing information from different sources of knowledge and power, factors which are more important than the validity of research (457) (the authors seem to find this most persuasive)

"The literature reviewed offers compelling support for the idea that in the exchange and utilization process, scientific evidence is treated no differently than other types of information" (458). The authors "suggest that knowledge exchange interventions should be conceptualized as generic processes unrelated to the internal validity of the information exchanged" (458). The authors encourage people working on knowledge-exchange to see the two tasks of "developing scientifically sound advice and then designing knowledge exchange interventions" as completely different things that need to be combined.

===Defining Knowledge Use at the Collective Level===
The authors couldn't find any definitions of knowledge use that "seems to dominate" (459). They concluded that "scientific evidence seldom, if ever, directly solves organizational or policy-level problems" (459). Instead, evidence is effective when it's part of "what political science calls *policy options* and could generically be called *action proposals*" (459).

The authors decide to "define collective-level knowledge use as the process by which users incorporate specific information into action proposals to influence others' thought and practices" (459). They argue that the shallowness of any individual study isn't due to the thinness of the evidence, but instead "a characteristic of collective-level contexts" (Kothari, Birch, and Charles 2005). By defining knowledge this way, they are also able to include the role of research in setting policy agendas, not just deciding what to implement.

== Collective Action Systems that Knowledge Exchange is Part Of ==

=== Ideology and Polarization ===
The authors find agreement across the literature "that the use of knowledge is influenced by its relevance, legitimacy, and accessibility" (459-60).

* "Relevance refers to timeliness, salience, and actionability, all heavily context-dependent characteristics"
* "Legitimacy refers to the credibility of the information"
* "Accessibility refers to dimensions such as formatting and availability"

All of these factors are mediated by the perceptions of knowledge users, themselves can be influenced by politics and ideology (460). Basically, people come to decisions with their own set of "opinions, preferences, and interests." The likelihood that someone will use a certain bit of knowledge is dependent on all these factors for a given context. For researchers, it can be helpful to differentiate between low and high polarization contexts of information use, asking:

* how much consensus is their that "the given situation is a problem" ? (461)
* how much priority is this issue given
* are their agreed criteria for success?

Debates over evidence tend to be technical in cases with low polarization, while debates tend to be more ideological in contexts with higher polarization, to the point where debate may not be able to bring about consensus (461). Researchers tend to dislike the way their findings are used in contexts of high polarization. For political scientists, on the other hand, "a polarized context is the normal state of affairs" (461). Political scientists who study networks have shown how polarization explains (a) "the extent of involvement in knowledge exchange" and (b) "the structure and shape of knowledge exchange networks" (261). In these traditions "because information is a prized commodity in political struggles, with both a price and a value, it should be offered to allies and strategically used against opponents" (462).

=== The Cost-Sharing Equilibrium in the Knowledge Exchange System ===
Another tradition looks at the costs and values of knowledge. Many researchers have assumed that since knowledge has value, it will reach the people who need it (Bardach 1984). Many scholars assume that the stakeholders of research invest in it relative to the value it could bring, which generates incentives for people to do research and to use research. Because researchers are part of this cost-benefit system, they also often become "de facto lobbyists advocating for specific action proposals.... to defend their preferences or advance their interests" (463).

=== Social Structuring ===
The authors point to many studies showing "that interpersonal trust facilitates and encourages communication," a feedback loop that "is at the core of the numerous recommendations in favor of developing a close collaboration between producers and users" (463). The authors ask: is it actually possible to "intervene in the shape and nature of communication networks" used by researchers (464) ? Projects that aim to act as knowledge brokers try to do this, but it's hard to pull off: "Although conceptually appealing, presentations of this model often fail to discuss the practical difficulties of such a role in communication networks in which numerous sources of information are competing, polarization and politics matter, and information is unlikely to be neutral, objective data but, rather, bundled action proposals" (464). The authors expect that knowledge broker systems are more likely in situations of low polarization and high investment from the users of knowledge, e.g. "when a viable cost-sharing equilibrium is found" (464). They suggest the following possibilities:

* "when users are willing to invest enough resources to hire producers as consultants" (464)
* " when producers or, much more often, intermediaries perceive knowledge exchange activities as a legitimate and viable means to defend their own opinions, preferences, or interests and decide to invest in lobby-like activities" (464)

== Discussion==
The authors refer to [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]] by Carol Weiss. The authors extend Weiss's argument by suggesting that Weiss's models refer not just to different ways of *thinking* about research use, but actually different kinds of research use. They offer [http://imgur.com/XgphVfs.png a model for where these uses might be more likely], depending on who bears the cost of the research and the polarization of the area. They worry that "few levers are available at the micro level to act on the perceptions of users or producers in order to influence their willingness to invest resources or efforts in knowledge transfer" (467).

== Advice for The Practice of Research==
The authors conclude with advice for researchers:

* "Collective knowledge exchange and use are phenomena so deeply embedded in organizational, policy, and institutional contexts that externally valid evidence pertaining to the efficacy of specific knowledge exchange strategies is unlikely to be forthcoming"
* "the best available source of advice for someone designing or implementing a knowledge exchange intervention will probably be found in empirically informed and sound conceptual frameworks that can be used as field guides to decide the context and understand its impact on knowledge use and the design of exchange interventions" (in other words: the best they can offer is a field guide of issues to anticipate, rather than helping people solve those problems)

== Key References ==

* Bardach, E. 1984. The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymak-
ers. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 6:125–44.
* Kothari, A., Birch, S., & Charles, C. (2005). “Interaction” and research utilisation in health policies and programs: does it work?. Health Policy, 71(1), 117-125.
Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The Many Meanings of Research Utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.
|relevance=How should we think about the uses and impact of research in society? This article reviews over 200 articles from over 40 years of research in political science and the social sciences to suggest major questions to think about when trying to study the uses of knowledge. They focus on the components of knowledge exchange and the structures/contexts in which the exchange occurs. They offer a rich resource of references and "seminal texts" on the topic.
|journal=Milbank Quarterly
|pub_date=2010/01/01
|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0009.2010.00608.x
|subject=Sociology
}}

User:Natematias

2017-03-19T18:51:17Z

Natematias: /* Other Papers and Books of Note */

User:Natematias

2017-03-19T17:12:06Z

Natematias: /* Other Papers and Books of Note */

The Many Meanings of Research Utilization

2017-03-19T17:11:31Z

Natematias: Created page with "{{Summary |title=The Many Meanings of Research Utilization |authors=Carol Weiss |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109916 |summary=What does it mean for policy makers to make u..."

{{Summary
|title=The Many Meanings of Research Utilization
|authors=Carol Weiss
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109916
|summary=What does it mean for policy makers to make use of research? Carol Weiss wrote this classic paper after years of extensive work with the US government, and after editing and writing books on the roles of social research in public policy. In the paper, Weiss summarizes seven major ways of thinking about the use of research, arguing that if social scientists understand these approaches, they can improve the contribution of their work and be less disappointed with their work's impact.

==Knowledge Driven Model==
This model "assumes the following sequence of events: basic research -> applied research -> development -> application." Weiss argues that this model is rare in the social sciences, whether or not it actually describes what happens in the natural sciences. She argues against "the assumption that the sheer fact that knowledge exists press it toward development and use." (427) This, she argues is for three reasons:

* "Social science knowledge is not apt to be so compelling or authoritative as to drive inevitably toward implementation" (427)
* "Social science knowledge does not readily lend itself to conversion into replicable technologies" (427)
* "Unless a social condition has been consensually identified as a pressing social problem, and unless the condition has become fully politicized, and the parameters of a potential action agreed upon, there is little likelihood that policy-making bodies will be receptive to the results of social science research" (427)

==Problem-Solving Model==
Some social scientists start from a problem that society agrees on and try to develop research that can guide subsequent decisions. Weiss points out that this model makes several assumptions:

* "there is a consensus on goals" (427)
* "policy makers and researchers tend to agree on what the desired end state shall be" (427)

In this situation, social science research may "help identify and select appropriate means to reach the goal" (427). In these cases, Weiss points out two paths for research to influence policy. In one path, the research already existed and is drawn upon when needed. This rarely happens, because people making decisions rarely have access to relevant research. Researchers who focus on this path tend to try to improve the communication of research findings. In the second path, policy makers commission research to answer questions. Weiss, writing in 1977, called this view "wildly optimistic" (428). She writes that "occasional studies have direct effect on decisions, but usually on relatively low-level narrow-gauge decisions. Most studies appear to come and go without leaving any discernible mark on the direction or substance of policy" (428). To illustrate the implausibility of impactful commissioned research, Weiss outlines the "extraordinary concatenation of circumstances" that would need to occur:

* "a well defined decision situation"
* "a set of policy actors who have responsibility and jurisdiction for making the decision"
* "an issue whose resolution depends at least to some extent on *information*"
* "identification of the requisite informational needs"
* "research that provides the information in terms that match the circumstances within which choices will be made"
* "research findings that are clear-cut, unambiguous, firmly supported, and powerful"
* "[findings] that research decision-makers at the time they are wrestling with the issues"
* "[findings] that are comprehensible and understood, and that do not run counter to strong political interests" (428)

When these things do not converge, Weiss worries that too many researchers become discouraged.

==Interactive Model==
Another model sees researchers as "part of an interactive search for knowledge" (428). Here, researchers acknowledge that they are part of a network of people making claims and arguments, including journalists, planners, politicians, interest groups, aides etc, who all "pool their talents, beliefs, and understandings in an effort to make sense of a problem." Weiss cites Donnison's studies of UK policy research, including cases where politicians needed to make decisions before research was complete (1972).

== Political Model==
Weiss points out that research often speaks into conversations that have hardened along political lines: "At this point, decision-makers are not likely to be receptive to new evidence from social science research. For reasons of interest, ideology, or intellect, they have taken a stand that research is not likely to shake" (429). In these situations, "research becomes grist to the mill." Yet when research "finds ready-made partisans who will fight for its implementation, it stands a better chance of making a difference in the outcome." Weiss suggests that in these cases, researchers should at least support open access for reasons of equity (Weiss 1973).

==Tactical Model==
Sometimes research is used for purposes unrelated to the goals of the research itself. For example, "sometimes government agencies use research to deflect criticism" (429). Alternatively, government agencies may ally with well-known researchers as "a tactic for enhancing the prestige of the agency" (429). Sometimes, "agencies support substantial amounts of research and in so doing, build a constituency of academic supporters who rally to their defense when appropriations are under congressional review" (429).

==Enlightenment Model==
Weiss argues that most social research influences policy through a process of "enlightenment" (Janowitz, Crawford & Biderman). Rather than specific findings influencing specific policies, "it is the concepts and theoretical perspectives that social science research has engendered that permeate the policy-making process" (429). In this model, we see "social science generalizations and orientations percolating through informed publics and coming to shape the way in which people think about social issues" (429). Unlike other models, the goals of this research do not need to align with decision-makers' goals.

Weiss argues that while this idea "has a comforting quality," convincing people that "without any special effort, truth will triumph" (430). Yet this enlightenment model can spread invalid, wrong generalization along good ones. Sensational, newsworthy research can take the limelight. Important work might never get noticed. As much social research complicates our understandings rather than converging it, "advocates of almost any policy prescription are likely to find some research generalizations in circulation to support their points of view" (430).

==Research as Part of the Intellectual Enterprise of Society==
Finally, Weiss summarizes the idea of social science research as one of many forms of intellectual enquiry, which "responds to the currents of thought, the fads and fancies, of the period," where "social science and policy interact, influencing each other and being influenced by the larger fashions of thought" (1979). These fads shape what social scientists are interested in, what funders prioritize, and consequently, what researchers are able to study.

==Conclusion==
Weiss hopes that understanding the diversity of these models "may help us to overcome the disenchantment with the usefulness of social science research that has afflicted those who search for use only in problem-solving contexts" (430). She concludes by arguing that "there has been much glib rhetoric about the vast benefits that social science can offer if only policy makers paid attention" (431). Weiss argues that social scientists should apply their own methods to improving their understanding of this issue so that even if they cannot "increase the use of research," they may still be able to "improve the contribution that research makes to the wisdom of social policy" (431).

==References==
* Donnison, D. (1972). Research for policy. Minerva, 10(4), 519-536.
* Weiss, C. H. (1973). Where politics and evaluation research meet. Evaluation practice, 14(1), 93-106.
* Janowitz, M. (1972). Professionalization of sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 78(1), 105-135.
* Crawford, E. T., & Biderman, A. D. (1969). The functions of policy-oriented social science. Social scientists and international affairs, 233-43.
|relevance=This classic article outlines seven major ways that social research contributes to society. The article prompted more substantial research and thinking on the uses of social science research by society.
|journal=Public administration review
|pub_date=1979
|doi=10.2307/3109916
|subject=Sociology
}}

User:Natematias

2017-03-19T16:13:13Z

Natematias: /* Other Papers and Books of Note */ Added The Many Meanings of Research Utilization

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation ([http://natematias.com/JNM_CV_08.2016.pdf C.V.]). He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([http://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]) and an [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias affiliate at the Berkman Center] at Harvard.

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
** The above document turned into the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Online_harassment_resource_guide Online Harassment Resource Guide], generously hosted by Wikimedia
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]

== Other Papers and Books of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.
* Yates, J. (1993). [[Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management]] (Vol. 6). JHU Press.
* Campbell, D. T. (1998). [[The Experimenting Society]]. The experimenting society: Essays in honor of Donald T. Campbell, 11, 35.
* Weiss, C. H. (1979). [[The many meanings of research utilization]]. Public Administration Review, 39(5), 426–431.

The Experimenting Society

2017-01-03T08:59:11Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=The Experimenting Society
|authors=Donald Campbell
|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TDuXdlxjdSsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=campbell+the+experimenting+society&ots=dKg7GSD3KR&sig=Za7G69VLohZb3mUQrEVr4pZXo4Q#v=onepage&q=campbell%20the%20experimenting%20society&f=false
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, Evaluation, Political Philosophy, Policy Evaluation, Experimental Social Science, Karl Popper, Democracy
|summary=In "The Experimenting Society," Donald Campbell asks, "Can the open society be an experimenting society?" Writing the first version of this essay in 1971 and updating it over time as people photocopied and distributed it, Campbell describes an experimenting society as one that would "vigorously try out possible solutions to recurrent problems and would make hard-headed, multidimensional evaluations of outcomes, and when the evaluation of one reform showed it to have been ineffective or harmful, would move on to try other alternatives."

The article sets up a series of reasons why the experimenting society and Popper's idea of the open society are not compatible. Then, Campbell discusses possible political and methodological ways to bring them together.

=== The Ideology of the Experimenting Society ===
Campbell outlines the main characteristics of an experimenting society:

* "It will be an ''active society'' preferring exploratory innovation to inaction" (38). Campbell argues that "it will be committed to action research, to action as research rather than research as a postponement of action" (39) Here, Campbell cites Lewin, Etzioni, and Dunn, among others.
* "It will be a ''scientific society''" characterized by "scientific values of honesty, open criticism, experimentation, willingness to change once-advanced theories in the face of experimental and other evidence" (41). Campbell contrasts this attitude from the use of scientific findings to govern in ways that are "dogmatic, non-experimental" and "non-scientific" (41). Campbell complains that "economists, operations researchers, and mathematical decision theorists trustingly extrapolate from past science and conjecture, but in general fail to use the implemented decisions to correct or expand that knowledge" (42).
* "It will be an ''accountable, challengeable, due-process society.'' Campbell advocates for open access to evaluation records and "recounts, audits, reanalyses, and reinterpretations of results" through "competitive criticism possible at the level of social experimentation." He also imagines that "citizens not a part of the governmental bureaucracy will have the means to communicate with their fellow citizens disagreements with official analyses and to propose alternative experiments," characteristics that make the experimenting society an open society in Popper's sense (42).
* "It will be a ''decentralized society''." Campbell suggests that "through autonomy or deliberate diversification, different administrative units will try out different ameliorative innovations and will cross-validate those discoveries as they borrow from others" (42). This semi-competitive situation with independent groups will allow replication and verification of findings elsewhere, Campbell argues.
* "It will be a society committed to ''means-idealism'' as well as ''ends-idealism''." By this, Campbell suggests that society committed to improvement will accept that it never reaches the "ends," and that all societal states are just "transitional steps" (42).
* "It will be a ''popularly responsive society'', whose goals and means are determined by collective good and popular preference." Campbell argues that "it will be a ''voluntaristic society'', providing for individual participation and consent at all decision levels possible" (42)

=== The Social Scientist as Servant of the Experimenting Society ===
In this section, Campbell returns to ideas he set out in the 1970s (Campbell 1973), arguing that social scientists should take a passive role in politics, committing themselves to the "modesty of the physical sciences" and "more often say that we can't know until we've tried." Campbell encourages social scientists to "avoid cloaking their recommendations in a specious pseudoscientific certainty and instead acknowledge their advice as consisting of wise conjectures that need to be tested in implementation" (46).

=== Methodological Problems ===
In this section, Campbell describes the problem of administrators who closely align their political careers with the success or failure of a single idea. To avoid supporting this state of affairs, Campbell strongly encourages researchers to focus on evaluating programs rather than people and to test policies as a way to guide decisions elsewhere rather than evaluate that particular policy implementation.

=== The Use of Experimentation in the Experimenting Society ===
In this section, Campbell outlines the value of causal inference to policy evaluation, focusing on randomized trials. He argues that experiments "present special moral problems":

* experiments select people from a population and often force participation in the treatment. Consequently, they might be accused as "an authoritarian, paternalistic imposition, treating citizens as passive recipients rather than co-agents directing their own society... rather than as collegial agents of the experiment" (Campbell, 49, summarizing Janousek, 1970)
* "The enforcement of assigned treatments also violates the egalitarian and voluntaristic ideals of the experimenting society. The disguised experiment violates these too and, in addition, the values of openness, honesty, and accountability" (49).

Campbell considers several ways to address these wide-ranging problems:

* informing control and treatment groups about an experiment in advance
* adopting quasi-experimental designs
* mutual criticism and "competitive cross-validation" between different evaluation groups, in several ways: (citing Campbell, 1986)
** "contagious cross-validation" where local communities test their own ideas and also evaluate other communities' ideas when they consider adopting them. Campbell imagines a network of local communities who might be able to organize to generate "100 locally interpretable experiments" in 5 years, alongside o"a community of applied social scientists familiar with them all, that had cross-examined each others' data, suggested and done reanalyses" (52). Campbell suggests that "from the consensus of this mutually monitoring research community we would advise government and potential adopters" (52).
** Competitive replication within national pilot studies could be done by splitting policy evaluation in to smaller units, including "adversarial stake-holder participation in the design of each pilot experiment or program evaluation and again in the interpretation of results" (Krause and Howard 1976, Bryk 1983). Campbell suggests that results be subject to "competitive reanalysis," and that "dissenting-opinion research reports" be encouraged and supported through free access to experimental data and community norms that welcome re-analysis. Campbell suggests that the results of experiments should be communicated back to participants, who he describes as "co-owners" of the findings, and who "would be allowed to use these results in political debates" (55).
* Using different measures to evaluate programs as the ones used to evaluate people, since institutions will often adjust their behavior (including reporting behavior) to meet those targets: "nail factories that overproduced large spikes when the quota was set by tonnage, and overproduced small nails when the quota was set by number of items turned out" (55). Campbell also argues that the US military metrics of body counts "created an immoral and irrelevant military goal in Vietnam" (56). Campbell expects that in an experimenting society "social indicators will be used more than they are at present, and the corruption pressures will thus be greater" (56). For this reason, Campbell distances himself from the "accountability movement", writing that "I end up opposing the use of quantitative indicators for achieving managerial control" since it can "create more evils than it cures." In its place, Campbell suggests "the temporary use of quantitative measures in evaluating alternative programs" (56) and using "multiple indicators of the same problem, each of the indicators being recognized as imperfect, but so chosen as to have different imperfections" (56).
* "Legitimating and facilitating evaluation by nonprofessional participants and observers" (57). Campbell does not expect that these methods will not be statistical. When results disagree, "we should remember that the statistical analyses involve simplifying assumptions that may be seriously in error" (57). Campbell argues that "it is those who have situation-specific information who make the best critics, and the best judges, of the plausibility of most of the rival hypotheses in their specific setting... in this process we must provide these nonprofessional observers with the self-confidence and opportunity to publicly disagree with the conclusions of the professional applied social scientists" (58).
* "Long-term followup" to study the eventual outcomes of an intervention. Campbell offers a review of the methodological, administrative, and political challenges of setting up longitudinal research.
* Grappling with the fact of experimentation as "Normal rather than extraordinary or revolutionary science" (63). Experiments are tools for incremental change rather than revolutionary change. Furthermore, revolutions tend to destroy the systems of measurement that make comparison possible. But Campbell does suggest that revolutionary governments might wish to test their own policies once a revolution has concluded.

Campbell concludes by suggesting "organized skepticism" toward the idea of an experimenting society, encouraging others to address the problems he listed "before we can wholeheartedly advocate for an experimenting society" (65).

=== References of Note ===
* Bryk, A. S. (Ed.). (1983). Stakeholder-based evaluation. Jossey-Bass.
* Campbell, D. T. (1973). The social scientist as methodological servant of the experimenting society. Policy Studies Journal, 2(1), 72-75.
* Campbell, D. T. (1986). Science’s social system of validity-enhancing collective belief change and the problems of the social sciences. Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities, 108-135. University of Chicago Press
* Campbell, D. T. (1974). Qualitative knowing in action research. In ''The Social Context of Method'', edited by M. Brenner, P. marsh, and M Brenner, 184-209. London: Croom Helm.
* Krause, M. S., & Howard, K. I. (1976). Program evaluation in the public interest: A new research methodology. Community Mental Health Journal, 12(3), 291-300.
* Janoušek, J. (1970). Comments on Campbell’s“ Reforms as experiments.” American Psychologist. 25(2), 191-93.
* Popper, K. S. (2012). The open society and its enemies. Routledge.
* Etzioni, A. (1968). The active society. Free Press.
* Dunn, E. S., & Dunn, E. S. (1971). Economic and social development; a process of social learning (No. 04; HM106, D8.).
|relevance=In The Experimenting Society, Donald Campbell asks if a society that conducts social experiments to test policy can be an "open society" rather than a totalitarian one. In the article, he outlines the values of an "experimenting society" and offers a list of challenges for experimenters to address before it will be possible to evaluate the potential of an open, experimenting society. This article is a classic of policy evaluation, and the issues in the article continue to be important as measurement and experimentation become more common in society.
|journal=The Experimenting Society
|pub_date=1998
|subject=Sociology
}}

The Experimenting Society

2016-12-27T19:23:15Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=The Experimenting Society
|authors=Donald Campbell
|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TDuXdlxjdSsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=campbell+the+experimenting+society&ots=dKg7GSD3KR&sig=Za7G69VLohZb3mUQrEVr4pZXo4Q#v=onepage&q=campbell%20the%20experimenting%20society&f=false
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, Evaluation, Political Philosophy, Policy Evaluation, Experimental Social Science, Karl Popper, Democracy
|summary=In "The Experimenting Society," Donald Campbell asks, "Can the open society be an experimenting society?" Writing the first version of this essay in 1971s, Campbell describes an experimenting society as one that would "vigorously try out possible solutions to recurrent problems and would make hard-headed, multidimensional evaluations of outcomes, and when the evaluation of one reform showed it to have been ineffective or harmful, would move on to try other alternatives."

The article sets up a series of reasons why the experimenting society and Popper's idea of the open society are not compatible. Then, Campbell discusses possible political and methodological ways to bring them together.

=== The Ideology of the Experimenting Society ===
Campbell outlines the main characteristics of an experimenting society:

* "It will be an ''active society'' preferring exploratory innovation to inaction" (38). Campbell argues that "it will be committed to action research, to action as research rather than research as a postponement of action" (39) Here, Campbell cites Lewin, Etzioni, and Dunn, among others.
* "It will be a ''scientific society''" characterized by "scientific values of honesty, open criticism, experimentation, willingness to change once-advanced theories in the face of experimental and other evidence" (41). Campbell contrasts this attitude from the use of scientific findings to govern in ways that are "dogmatic, non-experimental" and "non-scientific" (41). Campbell complains that "economists, operations researchers, and mathematical decision theorists trustingly extrapolate from past science and conjecture, but in general fail to use the implemented decisions to correct or expand that knowledge" (42).
* "It will be an ''accountable, challengeable, due-process society.'' Campbell advocates for open access to evaluation records and "recounts, audits, reanalyses, and reinterpretations of results" through "competitive criticism possible at the level of social experimentation." He also imagines that "citizens not a part of the governmental bureaucracy will have the means to communicate with their fellow citizens disagreements with official analyses and to propose alternative experiments," characteristics that make the experimenting society an open society in Popper's sense (42).
* "It will be a ''decentralized society''." Campbell suggests that "through autonomy or deliberate diversification, different administrative units will try out different ameliorative innovations and will cross-validate those discoveries as they borrow from others" (42). This semi-competitive situation with independent groups will allow replication and verification of findings elsewhere, Campbell argues.
* "It will be a society committed to ''means-idealism'' as well as ''ends-idealism''." By this, Campbell suggests that society committed to improvement will accept that it never reaches the "ends," and that all societal states are just "transitional steps" (42).
* "It will be a ''popularly responsive society'', whose goals and means are determined by collective good and popular preference." Campbell argues that "it will be a ''voluntaristic society'', providing for individual participation and consent at all decision levels possible" (42)

=== The Social Scientist as Servant of the Experimenting Society ===
In this section, Campbell returns to ideas he set out in the 1970s (Campbell 1973), arguing that social scientists should take a passive role in politics, committing themselves to the "modesty of the physical sciences" and "more often say that we can't know until we've tried." Campbell encourages social scientists to "avoid cloaking their recommendations in a specious pseudoscientific certainty and instead acknowledge their advice as consisting of wise conjectures that need to be tested in implementation" (46).

=== Methodological Problems ===
In this section, Campbell describes the problem of administrators who closely align their political careers with the success or failure of a single idea. To avoid supporting this state of affairs, Campbell strongly encourages researchers to focus on evaluating programs rather than people and to test policies as a way to guide decisions elsewhere rather than evaluate that particular policy implementation.

=== The Use of Experimentation in the Experimenting Society ===
In this section, Campbell outlines the value of causal inference to policy evaluation, focusing on randomized trials. He argues that experiments "present special moral problems":

* experiments select people from a population and often force participation in the treatment. Consequently, they might be accused as "an authoritarian, paternalistic imposition, treating citizens as passive recipients rather than co-agents directing their own society... rather than as collegial agents of the experiment" (Campbell, 49, summarizing Janousek, 1970)
* "The enforcement of assigned treatments also violates the egalitarian and voluntaristic ideals of the experimenting society. The disguised experiment violates these too and, in addition, the values of openness, honesty, and accountability" (49).

Campbell considers several ways to address these wide-ranging problems:

* informing control and treatment groups about an experiment in advance
* adopting quasi-experimental designs
* mutual criticism and "competitive cross-validation" between different evaluation groups, in several ways: (citing Campbell, 1986)
** "contagious cross-validation" where local communities test their own ideas and also evaluate other communities' ideas when they consider adopting them. Campbell imagines a network of local communities who might be able to organize to generate "100 locally interpretable experiments" in 5 years, alongside o"a community of applied social scientists familiar with them all, that had cross-examined each others' data, suggested and done reanalyses" (52). Campbell suggests that "from the consensus of this mutually monitoring research community we would advise government and potential adopters" (52).
** Competitive replication within national pilot studies could be done by splitting policy evaluation in to smaller units, including "adversarial stake-holder participation in the design of each pilot experiment or program evaluation and again in the interpretation of results" (Krause and Howard 1976, Bryk 1983). Campbell suggests that results be subject to "competitive reanalysis," and that "dissenting-opinion research reports" be encouraged and supported through free access to experimental data and community norms that welcome re-analysis. Campbell suggests that the results of experiments should be communicated back to participants, who he describes as "co-owners" of the findings, and who "would be allowed to use these results in political debates" (55).
* Using different measures to evaluate programs as the ones used to evaluate people, since institutions will often adjust their behavior (including reporting behavior) to meet those targets: "nail factories that overproduced large spikes when the quota was set by tonnage, and overproduced small nails when the quota was set by number of items turned out" (55). Campbell also argues that the US military metrics of body counts "created an immoral and irrelevant military goal in Vietnam" (56). Campbell expects that in an experimenting society "social indicators will be used more than they are at present, and the corruption pressures will thus be greater" (56). For this reason, Campbell distances himself from the "accountability movement", writing that "I end up opposing the use of quantitative indicators for achieving managerial control" since it can "create more evils than it cures." In its place, Campbell suggests "the temporary use of quantitative measures in evaluating alternative programs" (56) and using "multiple indicators of the same problem, each of the indicators being recognized as imperfect, but so chosen as to have different imperfections" (56).
* "Legitimating and facilitating evaluation by nonprofessional participants and observers" (57). Campbell does not expect that these methods will not be statistical. When results disagree, "we should remember that the statistical analyses involve simplifying assumptions that may be seriously in error" (57). Campbell argues that "it is those who have situation-specific information who make the best critics, and the best judges, of the plausibility of most of the rival hypotheses in their specific setting... in this process we must provide these nonprofessional observers with the self-confidence and opportunity to publicly disagree with the conclusions of the professional applied social scientists" (58).
* "Long-term followup" to study the eventual outcomes of an intervention. Campbell offers a review of the methodological, administrative, and political challenges of setting up longitudinal research.
* Grappling with the fact of experimentation as "Normal rather than extraordinary or revolutionary science" (63). Experiments are tools for incremental change rather than revolutionary change. Furthermore, revolutions tend to destroy the systems of measurement that make comparison possible. But Campbell does suggest that revolutionary governments might wish to test their own policies once a revolution has concluded.

Campbell concludes by suggesting "organized skepticism" toward the idea of an experimenting society, encouraging others to address the problems he listed "before we can wholeheartedly advocate for an experimenting society" (65).

=== References of Note ===
* Bryk, A. S. (Ed.). (1983). Stakeholder-based evaluation. Jossey-Bass.
* Campbell, D. T. (1973). The social scientist as methodological servant of the experimenting society. Policy Studies Journal, 2(1), 72-75.
* Campbell, D. T. (1986). Science’s social system of validity-enhancing collective belief change and the problems of the social sciences. Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities, 108-135. University of Chicago Press
* Campbell, D. T. (1974). Qualitative knowing in action research. In ''The Social Context of Method'', edited by M. Brenner, P. marsh, and M Brenner, 184-209. London: Croom Helm.
* Krause, M. S., & Howard, K. I. (1976). Program evaluation in the public interest: A new research methodology. Community Mental Health Journal, 12(3), 291-300.
* Janoušek, J. (1970). Comments on Campbell’s“ Reforms as experiments.” American Psychologist. 25(2), 191-93.
* Popper, K. S. (2012). The open society and its enemies. Routledge.
* Etzioni, A. (1968). The active society. Free Press.
* Dunn, E. S., & Dunn, E. S. (1971). Economic and social development; a process of social learning (No. 04; HM106, D8.).
|relevance=In The Experimenting Society, Donald Campbell asks if a society that conducts social experiments to test policy can be an "open society" rather than a totalitarian one. In the article, he outlines the values of an "experimenting society" and offers a list of challenges for experimenters to address before it will be possible to evaluate the potential of an open, experimenting society. This article is a classic of policy evaluation, and the issues in the article continue to be important as measurement and experimentation become more common in society.
|journal=The Experimenting Society
|pub_date=1998
|subject=Sociology
}}

The Experimenting Society

2016-12-26T18:47:44Z

Natematias: Fixed some typos and tweaked the intro summary

{{Summary
|title=The Experimenting Society
|authors=Donald Campbell
|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TDuXdlxjdSsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=campbell+the+experimenting+society&ots=dKg7GSD3KR&sig=Za7G69VLohZb3mUQrEVr4pZXo4Q#v=onepage&q=campbell%20the%20experimenting%20society&f=false
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, Evaluation, Political Philosophy, Policy Evaluation, Experimental Social Science, Karl Popper, Democracy
|summary=In "The Experimenting Society," Donald Campbell asks, "Can the open society be an experimenting society?" Writing in the 1980s, Campbell describes an experimenting society as one that would "vigorously try out possible solutions to recurrent problems and would make hard-headed, multidimensional evaluations of outcomes, and when the evaluation of one reform showed it to have been ineffective or harmful, would move on to try other alternatives."

The article sets up a series of reasons why the experimenting society and Popper's idea of the open society are not compatible. Then, Campbell discusses possible political and methodological ways to bring them together.

=== The Ideology of the Experimenting Society ===
Campbell outlines the main characteristics of an experimenting society:

* "It will be an ''active society'' preferring exploratory innovation to inaction" (38). Campbell argues that "it will be committed to action research, to action as research rather than research as a postponement of action" (39) Here, Campbell cites Lewin, Etzioni, and Dunn, among others.
* "It will be a ''scientific society''" characterized by "scientific values of honesty, open criticism, experimentation, willingness to change once-advanced theories in the face of experimental and other evidence" (41). Campbell contrasts this attitude from the use of scientific findings to govern in ways that are "dogmatic, non-experimental" and "non-scientific" (41). Campbell complains that "economists, operations researchers, and mathematical decision theorists trustingly extrapolate from past science and conjecture, but in general fail to use the implemented decisions to correct or expand that knowledge" (42).
* "It will be an ''accountable, challengeable, due-process society.'' Campbell advocates for open access to evaluation records and "recounts, audits, reanalyses, and reinterpretations of results" through "competitive criticism possible at the level of social experimentation." He also imagines that "citizens not a part of the governmental bureaucracy will have the means to communicate with their fellow citizens disagreements with official analyses and to propose alternative experiments," characteristics that make the experimenting society an open society in Popper's sense (42).
* "It will be a ''decentralized society''." Campbell suggests that "through autonomy or deliberate diversification, different administrative units will try out different ameliorative innovations and will cross-validate those discoveries as they borrow from others" (42). This semi-competitive situation with independent groups will allow replication and verification of findings elsewhere, Campbell argues.
* "It will be a society committed to ''means-idealism'' as well as ''ends-idealism''." By this, Campbell suggests that society committed to improvement will accept that it never reaches the "ends," and that all societal states are just "transitional steps" (42).
* "It will be a ''popularly responsive society'', whose goals and means are determined by collective good and popular preference." Campbell argues that "it will be a ''voluntaristic society'', providing for individual participation and consent at all decision levels possible" (42)

=== The Social Scientist as Servant of the Experimenting Society ===
In this section, Campbell returns to ideas he set out in the 1970s (Campbell 1973), arguing that social scientists should take a passive role in politics, committing themselves to the "modesty of the physical sciences" and "more often say that we can't know until we've tried." Campbell encourages social scientists to "avoid cloaking their recommendations in a specious pseudoscientific certainty and instead acknowledge their advice as consisting of wise conjectures that need to be tested in implementation" (46).

=== Methodological Problems ===
In this section, Campbell describes the problem of administrators who closely align their political careers with the success or failure of a single idea. To avoid supporting this state of affairs, Campbell strongly encourages researchers to focus on evaluating programs rather than people and to test policies as a way to guide decisions elsewhere rather than evaluate that particular policy implementation.

=== The Use of Experimentation in the Experimenting Society ===
In this section, Campbell outlines the value of causal inference to policy evaluation, focusing on randomized trials. He argues that experiments "present special moral problems":

* experiments select people from a population and often force participation in the treatment. Consequently, they might be accused as "an authoritarian, paternalistic imposition, treating citizens as passive recipients rather than co-agents directing their own society... rather than as collegial agents of the experiment" (Campbell, 49, summarizing Janousek, 1970)
* "The enforcement of assigned treatments also violates the egalitarian and voluntaristic ideals of the experimenting society. The disguised experiment violates these too and, in addition, the values of openness, honesty, and accountability" (49).

Campbell considers several ways to address these wide-ranging problems:

* informing control and treatment groups about an experiment in advance
* adopting quasi-experimental designs
* mutual criticism and "competitive cross-validation" between different evaluation groups, in several ways: (citing Campbell, 1986)
** "contagious cross-validation" where local communities test their own ideas and also evaluate other communities' ideas when they consider adopting them. Campbell imagines a network of local communities who might be able to organize to generate "100 locally interpretable experiments" in 5 years, alongside o"a community of applied social scientists familiar with them all, that had cross-examined each others' data, suggested and done reanalyses" (52). Campbell suggests that "from the consensus of this mutually monitoring research community we would advise government and potential adopters" (52).
** Competitive replication within national pilot studies could be done by splitting policy evaluation in to smaller units, including "adversarial stake-holder participation in the design of each pilot experiment or program evaluation and again in the interpretation of results" (Krause and Howard 1976, Bryk 1983). Campbell suggests that results be subject to "competitive reanalysis," and that "dissenting-opinion research reports" be encouraged and supported through free access to experimental data and community norms that welcome re-analysis. Campbell suggests that the results of experiments should be communicated back to participants, who he describes as "co-owners" of the findings, and who "would be allowed to use these results in political debates" (55).
* Using different measures to evaluate programs as the ones used to evaluate people, since institutions will often adjust their behavior (including reporting behavior) to meet those targets: "nail factories that overproduced large spikes when the quota was set by tonnage, and overproduced small nails when the quota was set by number of items turned out" (55). Campbell also argues that the US military metrics of body counts "created an immoral and irrelevant military goal in Vietnam" (56). Campbell expects that in an experimenting society "social indicators will be used more than they are at present, and the corruption pressures will thus be greater" (56). For this reason, Campbell distances himself from the "accountability movement", writing that "I end up opposing the use of quantitative indicators for achieving managerial control" since it can "create more evils than it cures." In its place, Campbell suggests "the temporary use of quantitative measures in evaluating alternative programs" (56) and using "multiple indicators of the same problem, each of the indicators being recognized as imperfect, but so chosen as to have different imperfections" (56).
* "Legitimating and facilitating evaluation by nonprofessional participants and observers" (57). Campbell does not expect that these methods will not be statistical. When results disagree, "we should remember that the statistical analyses involve simplifying assumptions that may be seriously in error" (57). Campbell argues that "it is those who have situation-specific information who make the best critics, and the best judges, of the plausibility of most of the rival hypotheses in their specific setting... in this process we must provide these nonprofessional observers with the self-confidence and opportunity to publicly disagree with the conclusions of the professional applied social scientists" (58).
* "Long-term followup" to study the eventual outcomes of an intervention. Campbell offers a review of the methodological, administrative, and political challenges of setting up longitudinal research.
* Grappling with the fact of experimentation as "Normal rather than extraordinary or revolutionary science" (63). Experiments are tools for incremental change rather than revolutionary change. Furthermore, revolutions tend to destroy the systems of measurement that make comparison possible. But Campbell does suggest that revolutionary governments might wish to test their own policies once a revolution has concluded.

Campbell concludes by suggesting "organized skepticism" toward the idea of an experimenting society, encouraging others to address the problems he listed "before we can wholeheartedly advocate for an experimenting society" (65).

=== References of Note ===
* Bryk, A. S. (Ed.). (1983). Stakeholder-based evaluation. Jossey-Bass.
* Campbell, D. T. (1973). The social scientist as methodological servant of the experimenting society. Policy Studies Journal, 2(1), 72-75.
* Campbell, D. T. (1986). Science’s social system of validity-enhancing collective belief change and the problems of the social sciences. Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities, 108-135. University of Chicago Press
* Campbell, D. T. (1974). Qualitative knowing in action research. In ''The Social Context of Method'', edited by M. Brenner, P. marsh, and M Brenner, 184-209. London: Croom Helm.
* Krause, M. S., & Howard, K. I. (1976). Program evaluation in the public interest: A new research methodology. Community Mental Health Journal, 12(3), 291-300.
* Janoušek, J. (1970). Comments on Campbell’s“ Reforms as experiments.” American Psychologist. 25(2), 191-93.
* Popper, K. S. (2012). The open society and its enemies. Routledge.
* Etzioni, A. (1968). The active society. Free Press.
* Dunn, E. S., & Dunn, E. S. (1971). Economic and social development; a process of social learning (No. 04; HM106, D8.).
|relevance=In The Experimenting Society, Donald Campbell asks if a society that conducts social experiments to test policy can be an "open society" rather than a totalitarian one. In the article, he outlines the values of an "experimenting society" and offers a list of challenges for experimenters to address before it will be possible to evaluate the potential of an open, experimenting society. This article is a classic of policy evaluation, and the issues in the article continue to be important as measurement and experimentation become more common in society.
|journal=The Experimenting Society
|pub_date=1998
|subject=Sociology
}}

The Experimenting Society

2016-12-26T18:44:07Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=The Experimenting Society
|authors=Donald Campbell
|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TDuXdlxjdSsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=campbell+the+experimenting+society&ots=dKg7GSD3KR&sig=Za7G69VLohZb3mUQrEVr4pZXo4Q#v=onepage&q=campbell%20the%20experimenting%20society&f=false
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, Evaluation, Political Philosophy, Policy Evaluation, Experimental Social Science, Karl Popper, Democracy
|summary=In "The Experimenting Society," Donald Campbell asks, "Can the open society be an experimenting society?" Writing in the 1980s, Campbell describes an experimenting society as one that would "vigorously try out possible solutions to recurrent problems and would make hard-headed, multidimensional evaluations of outcomes, and when the evaluation of one reform showed it to have been ineffective or harmful, would move on to try other alternatives."

== The Ideology of the Experimenting Society ==
Campbell outlines the main characteristics of an experimenting society:

* "It will be an ''active society'' preferring exploratory innovation to inaction" (38). Campbell argues that "it will be committed to action research, to action as research rather than research as a postponement of action" (39) Here, Campbell cites Lewin, Etzioni, and Dunn, among others.
* "It will be a ''scientific society''" characterized by "scientific values of honesty, open criticism, experimentation, willingness to change once-advanced theories in the face of experimental and other evidence" (41). Campbell contrasts this attitude from the use of scientific findings to govern in ways that are "dogmatic, non-experimental" and "non-scientific" (41). Campbell complains that "economists, operations researchers, and mathematical decision theorists trustingly extrapolate from past science and conjecture, but in general fail to use the implemented decisions to correct or expand that knowledge" (42).
* "It will be an ''accountable, challengeable, due-process society.'' Campbell advocates for open access to evaluation records and "recounts, audits, reanalyses, and reinterpretations of results" through "competitive criticism possible at the level of social experimentation." He also imagines that "citizens not a part of the governmental bureaucracy will have the means to communicate with their fellow citizens disagreements with official analyses and to propose alternative experiments," characteristics that make the experimenting society an open society in Popper's sense (42).
* "It will be a ''decentralized society''." Campbell suggests that "through autonomy or deliberate diversification, different administrative units will try out different ameliorative innovations and will cross-validate those discoveries as they borrow from others" (42). This semi-competitive situation with independent groups will allow replication and verification of findings elsewhere, Campbell argues.
* "It will be a society committed to ''means-idealism'' as well as ''ends-idealism''." By this, Campbell suggests that society committed to improvement will accept that it never reaches the "ends," and that all societal states are just "transitional steps" (42).
* "It will be a ''popularly responsive society'', whose goals and means are determined by collective good and popular preference." Campbell argues that "it will be a ''voluntaristic society'', providing for individual participation and consent at all decision levels possible" (42)

== The Social Scientist as Servant of the Experimenting Society ==
In this section, Campbell returns to ideas he set out in the 1970s (Campbell 1973), arguing that social scientists should take a passive role in politics, committing themselves to the "modesty of the physical sciences" and "more often say that we can't know until we've tried." Campbell encourages social scientists to "avoid cloaking their recommendations in a specious pseudoscientific certainty and instead acknowledge their advice as consisting of wise conjectures that need to be tested in implementation" (46).

== Methodological Porblems ==
In this section, Campbell describes the problem of administrators who closely align their political careers with the success or failure of a single idea. To avoid supporting this state of affairs, Campbell strongly encourages researchers to focus on evaluating programs rather than people and to test policies as a way to guide decisions elsewhere rather than evaluate that particular policy implementation.

=== The Use of Experimentation in the Experimenting Society ===

In this section, Campbell outlines the value of causal inference to policy evaluation, focusing on randomized trials. He argues that experiments "present special moral problems":

* experiments select people from a population and often force participation in the treatment. Consequently, they might be accused as "an authoritarian, paternalistic imposition, treating citizens as passive recipients rather than co-agents directing their own society... rather than as collegial agents of the experiment" (Campbell, 49, summarizing Janousek, 1970)
* "The enforcement of assigned treatments also violates the egalitarian and voluntaristic ideals of the experimenting society. The disguised experiment violates these too and, in addition, the values of openness, honesty, and accountability" (49).

Campbell considers several ways to address these wide-ranging problems:

* informing control and treatment groups about an experiment in advance
* adopting quasi-experimental designs
* mutual criticism and "competitive cross-validation" between different evaluation groups, in several ways: (citing Campbell, 1986)
** "contagious cross-validation" where local communities test their own ideas and also evaluate other communities' ideas when they consider adopting them. Campbell imagines a network of local communities who might be able to organize to generate "100 locally interpretable experiments" in 5 years, alongside o"a community of applied social scientists familiar with them all, that had cross-examined each others' data, suggested and done reanalyses" (52). Campbell suggests that "from the consensus of this mutually monitoring research community we would advise government and potential adopters" (52).
** Competitive replication within national pilot studies could be done by splitting policy evaluation in to smaller units, including "adversarial stake-holder participation in the design of each pilot experiment or program evaluation and again in the interpretation of results" (Krause and Howard 1976, Bryk 1983). Campbell suggests that results be subject to "competitive reanalysis," and that "dissenting-opinion research reports" be encouraged and supported through free access to experimental data and community norms that welcome re-analysis. Campbell suggests that the results of experiments should be communicated back to participants, who he describes as "co-owners" of the findings, and who "would be allowed to use these results in political debates" (55).
* Using different measures to evaluate programs as the ones used to evaluate people, since institutions will often adjust their behavior (including reporting behavior) to meet those targets: "nail factories that overproduced large spikes when the quota was set by tonnage, and overproduced small nails when the quota was set by number of items turned out" (55). Campbell also argues that the US military metrics of body counts "created an immoral and irrelevant military goal in Vietnam" (56). Campbell expects that in an experimenting society "social indicators will be used more than they are at present, and the corruption pressures will thus be greater" (56). For this reason, Campbell distances himself from the "accountability movement", writing that "I end up opposing the use of quantitative indicators for achieving managerial control" since it can "create more evils than it cures." In its place, Campbell suggests "the temporary use of quantitative measures in evaluating alternative programs" (56) and using "multiple indicators of the same problem, each of the indicators being recognized as imperfect, but so chosen as to have different imperfections" (56).
* "Legitimating and facilitating evaluation by nonprofessional participants and observers" (57). Campbell does not expect that these methods will not be statistical. When results disagree, "we should remember that the statistical analyses involve simplifying assumptions that may be seriously in error" (57). Campbell argues that "it is those who have situation-specific information who make the best critics, and the best judges, of the plausibility of most of the rival hypotheses in their specific setting... in this process we must provide these nonprofessional observers with the self-confidence and opportunity to publicly disagree with the conclusions of the professional applied social scientists" (58).
* "Long-term followup" to study the eventual outcomes of an intervention. Campbell offers a review of the methodological, administrative, and political challenges of setting up longitudinal research.
* Grappling with the fact of experimentation as "Normal rather than extraordinary or revolutionary science" (63). Experiments are tools for incremental change rather than revolutionary change. Furthermore, revolutions tend to destroy the systems of measurement that make comparison possible. But Campbell does suggest that revolutionary governments might wish to test their own policies once a revolution has concluded.

Campbell concludes by suggesting "organized skepticism" toward the idea of an experimenting society, encouraging others to address the problems he listed "before we can wholeheartedly advocate for an experimenting society" (65).

== References of Note ==
* Bryk, A. S. (Ed.). (1983). Stakeholder-based evaluation. Jossey-Bass.
* Campbell, D. T. (1973). The social scientist as methodological servant of the experimenting society. Policy Studies Journal, 2(1), 72-75.
* Campbell, D. T. (1986). Science’s social system of validity-enhancing collective belief change and the problems of the social sciences. Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities, 108-135. University of Chicago Press
* Campbell, D. T. (1974). Qualitative knowing in action research. In ''The Social Context of Method'', edited by M. Brenner, P. marsh, and M Brenner, 184-209. London: Croom Helm.
* Krause, M. S., & Howard, K. I. (1976). Program evaluation in the public interest: A new research methodology. Community Mental Health Journal, 12(3), 291-300.
* Janoušek, J. (1970). Comments on Campbell’s“ Reforms as experiments.” American Psychologist. 25(2), 191-93.
* Popper, K. S. (2012). The open society and its enemies. Routledge.
* Etzioni, A. (1968). The active society. Free Press.
* Dunn, E. S., & Dunn, E. S. (1971). Economic and social development; a process of social learning (No. 04; HM106, D8.).
|relevance=In The Experimenting Society, Donald Campbell asks if a society that conducts social experiments to test policy can be an "open society" rather than a totalitarian one. In the article, he outlines the values of an "experimenting society" and offers a list of challenges for experimenters to address before it will be possible to evaluate the potential of an open, experimenting society. This article is a classic of policy evaluation, and the issues in the article continue to be important as measurement and experimentation become more common in society.
|journal=The Experimenting Society
|pub_date=1998
|subject=Sociology
}}

The Experimenting Society

2016-12-26T18:42:33Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=The Experimenting Society
|authors=Donald Campbell
|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TDuXdlxjdSsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=campbell+the+experimenting+society&ots=dKg7GSD3KR&sig=Za7G69VLohZb3mUQrEVr4pZXo4Q#v=onepage&q=campbell%20the%20experimenting%20society&f=false
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, Evaluation, Political Philosophy, Policy Evaluation, Experimental Social Science, Karl Popper, Democracy
|summary=In "The Experimenting Society," Donald Campbell asks, "Can the open society be an experimenting society?" Writing in the 1980s, Campbell describes an experimenting society as one that would "vigorously try out possible solutions to recurrent problems and would make hard-headed, multidimensional evaluations of outcomes, and when the evaluation of one reform showed it to have been ineffective or harmful, would move on to try other alternatives."

== The Ideology of the Experimenting Society ==
Campbell outlines the main characteristics of an experimenting society:

* "It will be an ''active society'' preferring exploratory innovation to inaction" (38). Campbell argues that "it will be committed to action research, to action as research rather than research as a postponement of action" (39) Here, Campbell cites Lewin, Etzioni, and Dunn, among others.
* "It will be a ''scientific society''" characterized by "scientific values of honesty, open criticism, experimentation, willingness to change once-advanced theories in the face of experimental and other evidence" (41). Campbell contrasts this attitude from the use of scientific findings to govern in ways that are "dogmatic, non-experimental" and "non-scientific" (41). Campbell complains that "economists, operations researchers, and mathematical decision theorists trustingly extrapolate from past science and conjecture, but in general fail to use the implemented decisions to correct or expand that knowledge" (42).
* "It will be an ''accountable, challengeable, due-process society.'' Campbell advocates for open access to evaluation records and "recounts, audits, reanalyses, and reinterpretations of results" through "competitive criticism possible at the level of social experimentation." He also imagines that "citizens not a part of the governmental bureaucracy will have the means to communicate with their fellow citizens disagreements with official analyses and to propose alternative experiments," characteristics that make the experimenting society an open society in Popper's sense (42).
* "It will be a ''decentralized society''." Campbell suggests that "through autonomy or deliberate diversification, different administrative units will try out different ameliorative innovations and will cross-validate those discoveries as they borrow from others" (42). This semi-competitive situation with independent groups will allow replication and verification of findings elsewhere, Campbell argues.
* "It will be a society committed to ''means-idealism'' as well as ''ends-idealism''." By this, Campbell suggests that society committed to improvement will accept that it never reaches the "ends," and that all societal states are just "transitional steps" (42).
* "It will be a ''popularly responsive society'', whose goals and means are determined by collective good and popular preference." Campbell argues that "it will be a ''voluntaristic society'', providing for individual participation and consent at all decision levels possible" (42)

== The Social Scientist as Servant of the Experimenting Society ==
In this section, Campbell returns to ideas he set out in the 1970s (Campbell 1973), arguing that social scientists should take a passive role in politics, committing themselves to the "modesty of the physical sciences" and "more often say that we can't know until we've tried." Campbell encourages social scientists to "avoid cloaking their recommendations in a specious pseudoscientific certainty and instead acknowledge their advice as consisting of wise conjectures that need to be tested in implementation" (46).

== Methodological Porblems ==
In this section, Campbell describes the problem of administrators who closely align their political careers with the success or failure of a single idea. To avoid supporting this state of affairs, Campbell strongly encourages researchers to focus on evaluating programs rather than people and to test policies as a way to guide decisions elsewhere rather than evaluate that particular policy implementation.

=== The Use of Experimentation in the Experimenting Society ===

In this section, Campbell outlines the value of causal inference to policy evaluation, focusing on randomized trials. He argues that experiments "present special moral problems":

* experiments select people from a population and often force participation in the treatment. Consequently, they might be accused as "an authoritarian, paternalistic imposition, treating citizens as passive recipients rather than co-agents directing their own society... rather than as collegial agents of the experiment" (Campbell, 49, summarizing Janousek, 1970)
* "The enforcement of assigned treatments also violates the egalitarian and voluntaristic ideals of the experimenting society. The disguised experiment violates these too and, in addition, the values of openness, honesty, and accountability" (49).

Campbell considers several ways to address these wide-ranging problems:

* informing control and treatment groups about an experiment in advance
* adopting quasi-experimental designs
* mutual criticism and "competitive cross-validation" between different evaluation groups, in several ways: (citing Campbell, 1986)
** "contagious cross-validation" where local communities test their own ideas and also evaluate other communities' ideas when they consider adopting them. Campbell imagines a network of local communities who might be able to organize to generate "100 locally interpretable experiments" in 5 years, alongside o"a community of applied social scientists familiar with them all, that had cross-examined each others' data, suggested and done reanalyses" (52). Campbell suggests that "from the consensus of this mutually monitoring research community we would advise government and potential adopters" (52).
** Competitive replication within national pilot studies could be done by splitting policy evaluation in to smaller units, including "adversarial stake-holder participation in the design of each pilot experiment or program evaluation and again in the interpretation of results" (Krause and Howard 1976, Bryk 1983). Campbell suggests that results be subject to "competitive reanalysis," and that "dissenting-opinion research reports" be encouraged and supported through free access to experimental data and community norms that welcome re-analysis. Campbell suggests that the results of experiments should be communicated back to participants, who he describes as "co-owners" of the findings, and who "would be allowed to use these results in political debates" (55).
* Using different measures to evaluate programs as the ones used to evaluate people, since institutions will often adjust their behavior (including reporting behavior) to meet those targets: "nail factories that overproduced large spikes when the quota was set by tonnage, and overproduced small nails when the quota was set by number of items turned out" (55). Campbell also argues that the US military metrics of body counts "created an immoral and irrelevant military goal in Vietnam" (56). Campbell expects that in an experimenting society "social indicators will be used more than they are at present, and the corruption pressures will thus be greater" (56). For this reason, Campbell distances himself from the "accountability movement", writing that "I end up opposing the use of quantitative indicators for achieving managerial control" since it can "create more evils than it cures." In its place, Campbell suggests "the temporary use of quantitative measures in evaluating alternative programs" (56) and using "multiple indicators of the same problem, each of the indicators being recognized as imperfect, but so chosen as to have different imperfections" (56).
* "Legitimating and facilitating evaluation by nonprofessional participants and observers" (57). Campbell does not expect that these methods will not be statistical. When results disagree, "we should remember that the statistical analyses involve simplifying assumptions that may be seriously in error" (57). Campbell argues that "it is those who have situation-specific information who make the best critics, and the best judges, of the plausibility of most of the rival hypotheses in their specific setting... in this process we must provide these nonprofessional observers with the self-confidence and opportunity to publicly disagree with the conclusions of the professional applied social scientists" (58).
* "Long-term followup" to study the eventual outcomes of an intervention. Campbell offers a review of the methodological, administrative, and political challenges of setting up longitudinal research.
* Grappling with the fact of experimentation as "Normal rather than extraordinary or revolutionary science" (63). Experiments are tools for incremental change rather than revolutionary change. Furthermore, revolutions tend to destroy the systems of measurement that make comparison possible. But Campbell does suggest that revolutionary governments might wish to test their own policies once a revolution has concluded.

Campbell concludes by suggesting "organized skepticism" toward the idea of an experimenting society, encouraging others to address the problems he listed "before we can wholeheartedly advocate for an experimenting society" (65).

== References of Note ==
* Bryk, A. S. (Ed.). (1983). Stakeholder-based evaluation. Jossey-Bass.
* Campbell, D. T. (1973). The social scientist as methodological servant of the experimenting society. Policy Studies Journal, 2(1), 72-75.
* Campbell, D. T. (1986). Science’s social system of validity-enhancing collective belief change and the problems of the social sciences. Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities, 108-135.
Chicago
* Campbell, D. T. (1974). Qualitative knowing in action research. In ''The Social Context of Method'', edited by M. Brenner, P. marsh, and M Brenner, 184-209. London: Croom Helm.
* Krause, M. S., & Howard, K. I. (1976). Program evaluation in the public interest: A new research methodology. Community Mental Health Journal, 12(3), 291-300.
* Janoušek, J. (1970). Comments on Campbell’s“ Reforms as experiments.” American Psychologist. 25(2), 191-93.
* Popper, K. S. (2012). The open society and its enemies. Routledge.
* Etzioni, A. (1968). The active society. Free Press.
* Dunn, E. S., & Dunn, E. S. (1971). Economic and social development; a process of social learning (No. 04; HM106, D8.).
|relevance=In The Experimenting Society, Donald Campbell asks if a society that conducts social experiments to test policy can be an "open society" rather than a totalitarian one. In the article, he outlines the values of an "experimenting society" and offers a list of challenges for experimenters to address before it will be possible to evaluate the potential of an open, experimenting society. This article is a classic of policy evaluation, and the issues in the article continue to be important as measurement and experimentation become more common in society.
|journal=The Experimenting Society
|pub_date=1998
|subject=Sociology
}}

User:Natematias

2016-12-26T14:40:36Z

Natematias: /* Other Papers and Books of Note */

The Experimenting Society

2016-12-26T14:39:31Z

Natematias: Created page with "{{Summary |title=The Experimenting Society |authors=Donald Campbell |url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TDuXdlxjdSsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=campbell+the+experimenting+..."

J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List

2016-12-21T23:47:34Z

Natematias:

<blockquote>
''This document is the reading list for my Spring 2015 general exams for my PhD in the MIT Center for Civic Media ('''[https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/civic-values-in-technology-design-read-along-with-me learn more in this blog post: Civic Values in Technology Design]'''). I'm using it to document my reading notes and share them under a Creative Commons license.''

''If you would like to suggest an addition to this list, please [[https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/civic-values-in-technology-design-read-along-with-me Add it to the comments on this blog post]]. Thank you so much for thinking of me! Other ways to get involved include:''

* ''Discuss my reading on Twitter (follow me at [https://twitter.com/natematias @natematias]), where I will occasionally take votes on what I should read next.''
* ''Follow my contributions to AcaWiki ([http://acawiki.org/Special:Ask/-5B-5BTag::NatematiasGenerals-5D-5D-5B-5BCategory:Summary-5D-5D/format%3Drss/title%3DNatematiasGenerals/description%3DAll-20summaries-20tagged-20with-20NatematiasGenerals/offset%3D0 RSS])''
* ''Send or order me a copy one of the books on my list. In return, I promise to publish a Creative Commons summary of the book online, or if it's a statistics book, I'll post a as many open source examples of the methods described in the book as I can, in R or IPython. Send me a tweet or email if you're interested.''
* ''Add your own Literature Review to AcaWiki.''
* ''Be understanding when I say no to things this Spring!. Thanks!''
* ''Send me cute cats. It's going to be a long, hard semester!''

--[[User:Natematias|Natematias]] ([[User talk:Natematias|talk]]) 02:16, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
</blockquote>

When people in society come together to collectively perform a task from cleaning up a park to organizing around a cause the benefits of their cooperation extend far beyond the specific task at hand. People grow relationships, argue their understanding of a situation, and often form longlasting partnerships, organizations, and communities for learning and action. Within cooperation technologies, these civic and community values are not often computed. Elections, petitions, and media campaigns are measured in the count of people who participate. Collective action systems across crowdsourcing, citizen science, collective intelligence, and human computation are measured in terms of the quality and quantity of contributions they receive.

For these socio-technical systems to deliver their full potential in civic life, we need ways to link the profound power of collective action technologies with the civic values through which we negotiate our common political life, such as fairness, justice, rights, deliberation, transparency, participation, and affiliation. For my general exams, I plan to develop an understanding of important debates on these values within civil society and the intersection of those debates with computer supported cooperation, balancing out a quantitative, experimental approach with a deep exploration of the human experience of digital labor and minority experience online.

In my main area of '''Contested Civic Values in Social Technologies''', I will be engaging in a wide overview of literature on those civic values, with particular attention to issues that overlap with the design and evaluation of socio-technical systems. I also consider literature on the contestation of those values; if code is law as Lessig argues, how have designers and activists contested and changed those laws through system design and collective action? In my technical area of '''Quantitative Analysis of Cooperation''', I will focus on methods in statistics and econometrics for testing hypotheses about cooperation and online behavior. These methods will be considered in relation areas of particular importance to online cooperation systems. Finally, in the contextual area of '''Digital Labor''' and the '''Networked Publics of Marginalized Groups''', I carry out readings that explore the nature of community-building work that occurs in online platforms, alongside literature on the experiences of marginalized groups as they form communities and conversations for civic identity online.

=Primary Area: Contested Civic Values in Social Technologies=
'''Examiner''': [http://ethanzuckerman.com Ethan Zuckerman]<br>''Principal Research Scientist,<br> MIT Media Lab & [http://civic.mit.edu MIT Center for Civic Media]''

==Overview==
In my main area, I will examine classic texts on the range of civil society values that intersect with socio-technical systems. The list includes classic readings from participatory politics, collective action, social capital, networked cooperation, deliberation, rights, paternalism, and public sphere theory (which receives greater attention in the contextual area). In the second part of this reading, I examine literature on contestation of these values within socio-technical systems—ways that the values that prevail within a particular system are contested or reshaped through collective action and design.

==Reading List==
===Civic Values===
*Haste, Helen, and Amy Hogan. 2006. “Beyond Conventional Civic Participation, beyond the Moral-Political Divide: Young People and Contemporary Debates about Citizenship.” Journal of Moral Education 35 (4): 473–93.
* Schudson, Michael. 1998. [[The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life]]. New York: Free Press.

===Civic Values: COLLECTIVE ACTION===
* Cohen, C., Kahne, J., Bowyer, B., Middaugh, E., and Rogowski, J. [[Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth Political Action]]. Youth & Participatory Politics Research Network, 2012. http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/publications/107.
* Hirschman, Albert. 1970. “[[Exit, Voice, and Loyalty]]" Harvard University Press.”
* Rowlands, Jo. 2012. “[[The Participation Reader]].” Gender & Development 20 (1): 197–98.

===Civic Values: PUBLICS===
* “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.” http://www.knightcomm.org/read-the-report-and-comment/.
* Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. 2013. "[[What Constitutes Meaningful Participation?]]" from Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. NYU Press. 153-194
* Farrell, Henry. 2014. “[[New Problems, New Publics? Dewey and New Media]].” Policy & Internet 6 (2): 176–91.
* Schudson, Michael. 2008. “[[The ‘Lippmann-Dewey Debate’ and the Invention of Walter Lippmann as an Anti-Democrat 1985-1996]].” IJOC 2: 12.

===Civic Values: COMMUNITY===
* Hampton, K. and Wellman, B. [[Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb]]. City & Community 2, 4 (2003), 277–311.
* Putnam, Robert D. 2001. [[Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community]]. (selected chapters) 1st edition. New York: Touchstone Books by Simon & Schuster.
* Putnam, Robert D. 2007. “[[E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century]] The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture.” Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2): 137–74. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x.
* Safford, Sean. 2009. [[Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt]]. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
* Levine, Peter. 2013. [[We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America]]. New York: Oxford University Press.

===Civic Values: NETWORKS===
* Bennett, Lance. 2015. “[[The Logic of Connective Action Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics]] | Comparative Politics.” Cambridge University Press.
* Benkler, Yochai. 2002. “[[Coase's penguin, or, Linux and the nature of the firm]]” Yale Law Journal, 369–446.
* Mansbridge, Jane, James Bohman, Simone Chambers, David Estlund, Andreas Føllesdal, Archon Fung, Cristina Lafont, Bernard Manin, and * José luis Martí. 2010. “[[The Place of Self-Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy]].” Journal of Political Philosophy 18 (1): 64–100. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9760.2009.00344.x.
* Rainie, L. and Wellman, B. [[Networked: The New Social Operating System]]. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2014.
* Tkacz, Nathaniel. 2014. [[Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness]]. Chicago ; London: University Of Chicago Press.

===Civic Values: DELIBERATION===
* Allen, Danielle. 2004. [[Talking to Strangers]]. University of Chicago Press
* John, Peter, Sarah Cotterill, Liz Richardson, Alice Moseley, Gerry Stoker, Corinne Wales, Graham Smith, Hanhua Liu, and Hisako Nomura. 2013. [[Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour]]. A&C Black.
* John, Peter, Graham Smith, and Gerry Stoker. 2009. "[[Nudge Nudge, Think Think: Two Strategies for Changing Civic Behaviour]]" The Political Quarterly 80 (3): 361–70.

===Civic Values: PATERNALISM===
* Anderson, David. 2010. [[The Age of Leverage]]. The Brookings Institution.
* Banerjee, Abhijit, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, and Esther Duflo. 2011. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. PublicAffairs.
* Sunstein, Cass R. 2014. [[The Ethics of Nudging]]. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2526341. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
* Scott, James C. 1999. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

===Civic Values: CONTENTION & ACCOUNTABILITY===
* Barr, Abigail, Frederick Mugisha, Pieter Serneels, and Andrew Zeitlin. 2012. “Information and Collective Action in Community-Based Monitoring of Schools: Field and Lab Experimental Evidence from Uganda.” Unpublished Paper.
* Dietz, Thomas, Elinor Ostrom, and Paul C. Stern. 2003. “[[The struggle to Govern the Commons]].” Science 302 (5652): 1907–12. doi:10.1126/science.1091015.
* Eubanks, Virginia. 2011. [[Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age]]. 1St Edition. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

===Civic Values: INDIVIDUALS: RIGHTS, SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND CAPABILITIES===
* Kleine, Dorothea. 2013. Technologies of Choice: ICTs, Development, and the Capabilities Approach. MIT Press.
* Nussbaum, Martha C. 2004. “Beyond the Social Contract: Capabilities and Global Justice. an Olaf Palme Lecture, Delivered in Oxford on 19 June 2003.” Oxford Development Studies 32 (1): 3–18.
* Sen, Amartya. 2005. “Human Rights and Capabilities.” Journal of Human Development 6 (2)
* Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Edited by Erin Kelly. 2nd edition. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press.

===Civic Values: POLITICS===
* Sifry, Micah L. 2014. The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (yet). OR Books, LLC.

===Successor Systems===
* Akrich, Madeleine. 1992. “The de-Scription of Technical Objects.” Shaping Technology/building Society, 205–24.
* Agre, Philip. 1997. “Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI.” Bridging the Great Divide: Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 131–57.
* Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 2000. [[Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences]]. MIT press. Chapters: "Some Tricks of the Trade in Analyzing Classification", "Classification, Coding, and Coordination", "Of Tuberculosis and Trajectories", "The Case of Race Classification and Reclassification under Apartheid", and "What a Difference a Name Makes: The Classification of Nursing Work"
* DeTar, C. InterTwinkles: Online Tools for Non-Hierarchical, Consensus-Oriented Decision Making. PhD Thesis, MIT Media Arts and Sciences, 2013.
* Dimond, J. Dye, M., LaRose, D., and Bruckman, A. [[Hollaback!: The Role of Storytelling Online in a Social Movement Organization]] In Proc CSCW 2013.
* Dunbar-Hester, Christina. "Radical Inclusion? Locating' Accountability' in Technical DIY" from DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media, MIT Press 2014.
* Haraway, D. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. The cybercultures reader, (2000), 291.
* Illich, I. "[[Convivial_Reconstruction]]" in ''Tools for Conviviality'' (ch2). Marion Boyars, London, 1973.
* Irani, L. and Silberman, M. Turkopticon: Interrupting worker invisibility in amazon mechanical turk. In Proc CHI 2013.
* Lessig, L. Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0. Basic Books, New York, 2006.
* Goldsmith, Stephen, and Susan Crawford. 2014. The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance. 1 edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
* Morozov, Evgeny. 2012. "Why Kierkegaard Hates Slacktivism" and "Internet Freedoms and their Consequences" from The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Reprint edition. New York: PublicAffairs.
* Neuwirth, Robert. 2012. Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy. Reprint edition. New York: Anchor.
* Tactical Technology Collective, 2013. "Visualizing Information for Advocacy"

= Technical Area: Quantitative Analysis of Cooperation=

'''Examiner''': [[User:Benjamin_Mako_Hill]]<br>''Assistant Professor, University of Washington''

==Overview==
This area examines statistical methods for the study of online cooperation. The requirements include two classes on statistics (S-40 and S-52 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education), alongside readings on experiment design, logistic regression, causal inference, and longitudinal data analysis. This area also connects two areas of theory within the study of cooperation that are open to these methods: social movement theory and theories of ladders of engagement. The readings on social movements address the recruitment, goals, and coordination activity of social movements, with the aim of linking them to questions open to statistical inference. The readings on ladders of engagement address the ideas about the journey that individuals might take through a community, offering cases of quantitative studies of engagement paths in online communities.

==Reading List==

===Statistical Methods for Computational Social Science===
* Light, Richard J., Judith D. Singer, John B. Willett, and Richard J. Light. 2009. [[By Design: Planning Research on Higher Education]]. Harvard University Press.
* Long, J. Scott. 1997. Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. 1 edition. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.
* Murnane, Richard J., and John B. Willett. 2010. "[[Introducing Instrumental-Variables Estimation]]" and "[http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/natematias/research_in_python/blob/master/instrumental_variables_estimation/Using%20IVE%20to%20Recover%20the%20Treatment%20Effect.ipynb Using IVE to Recover the Treatment Effect in a Quasi-Experiment]" from Methods Matter: Improving causal Inference in Educational and Social Science Research, Oxford University Press.
** ''for code examples, see the [https://github.com/natematias/research_in_python Research in Python github project]
* Singer, Judith D., and John B. Willett. 2003. Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence. Oxford university press.
** [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/natematias/research_in_python/blob/master/multilevel_models/Multilevel%20Models.ipynb Python example for Chapters 3-4 on Modelling Change with Multi-Level Fixed and Random Effects Models]
** [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/natematias/research_in_python/blob/master/survival_analysis/Discrete%20Time%20Survival%20Analysis%20in%20Python.ipynb Python example for chapter 11: Fitting Basic Discrete-Time Hazard Models]
* Geiger, R. Stuart, and David Ribes. 2011. “Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices.” In System Sciences (HICSS), 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on, 1–10. IEEE.

===Social Movement Theory===
* Andrews, Kenneth T., Marshall Ganz, Matthew Baggetta, Hahrie Han, and Chaeyoon Lim. 2010. “Leadership, Membership, and Voice: Civic Associations That Work.” American Journal of Sociology 115 (4): 1191–1242.
* Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. 2000. “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology, 611–39.
* Ganz, Marshall. 2001. “The Power of Story in Social Movements.” In Unpublished Paper for the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Anahem, California
* Ingram, Paul, and Hayagreeva Rao. 2004. “Store Wars: The Enactment and Repeal of Anti-Chain-Store Legislation in America1.” American Journal of Sociology 110 (2): 446–87.
* McAdam, Doug. 1986. “[[Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer]].” American Journal of Sociology, 64–90.
* McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald. 1977. “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 82 (6): 1212–41.
* Rao, Hayagreeva. 1998. “Caveat Emptor: The Construction of Nonprofit Consumer Watchdog Organizations 1.” American Journal of Sociology 103 (4): 912–61.

===Engagement and Participation in Online Communities===
* Arnstein, Sherry R. 1969. “[[A Ladder of Citizen Participation]].” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35 (4): 216–24.
* Gordon, Eric, Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, and Martina Balestra. 2013. Why We Engage: How Theories of Human Behavior Contribute to Our Understanding of Civic Engagement in a Digital Era. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2343762. Rochester, NY: Social Science
* Hart, Roger A. 1997. [[Children%27s Participation]]: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care. UNICEF, Earthscan Publications Ltd, London.
* Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge university press.
* Ofer Arazy, Felipe Ortega. 2015. “Functional Roles and Career Paths in Wikipedia.” doi:10.13140/2.1.4843.9685.
* Panciera, Katherine, Aaron Halfaker, and Loren Terveen. 2009. “Wikipedians Are Born, Not Made: A Study of Power Editors on Wikipedia.” In Proceedings of the ACM 2009 International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 51–60. ACM.
* Panciera, Katherine, Mikhil Masli, and Loren Terveen. 2014. “Cream of the Crop: Elite Contributors in an Online Community.” In Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration, 21. ACM.
* Preece, Jennifer, and Ben Shneiderman. 2009. “[[The Reader-to-Leader Framework: Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation]].” AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction 1 (1): 13–32.

===Online Communities (addendum)===
Kraut, R. E. & Resnick, P. 2012. [[Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design]]. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

= Contextual Area: Digital Labor in Context=

'''Examiner''': Mary Gray<br>''Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research''

==Overview==
==Reading List==

=== Digital Labor in Context===
* Adkins, L. (2005). The New Economy, Property and Personhood. Theory Culture Society 22(1): 111-130
* Adkins, L. & Lury, C. (1999) The Labour of Identity: Performing Identities, Performing Economies. Economy and Society, 28(4): 598-614
* Amabile, Teresa M., Sigal G. Barsade, Jennifer S. Mueller, and Barry M. Staw. 2005. “Affect and Creativity at Work.” Administrative Science Quarterly 50 (3): 367–403.
* Baker, Wayne E., and Robert R. Faulkner. 1991. “Role as Resource in the Hollywood Film Industry.” American Journal of Sociology, 279–309.
* Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity (Vol. 17). Sage.
* Burrell, Jenna. 2012. Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafés of Urban Ghana. MIT Press
* Butler, Brian, Lee Sproull, Sara Kiesler, and Robert Kraut. 2007. “[[Community Effort in Online Groups: Who Does the Work and Why?]]” Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
* Chipchase, Jan. “Red Mat: A Design Experiment” 2015. Future Perfect. http://janchipchase.com/content/essays/red-mat/.
* Gill, R. and Pratt, A. (2008) In the Social Factory?: Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work. Theory Culture Society 25(7–8): 1–30
* Gregg, M. (2011). [http://acawiki.org/Work%27s_Intimacy Work's intimacy]. Polity Press.
* Hardt, Michael. 1999. “[[Affective Labor]].” Boundary 2, 89–100.
* Hochschild, Arlie R. (1983) [[The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling]]. University of California Press.
* Kelty, C. M. (2008). Two bits: The cultural significance of free software. Duke University Press.
* Lazzarato, Maurizio. 1996. “[[Immaterial Labor]].” Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, 133–47.
* Marx, K. (1939). Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Europäische Verlags-Anstalt.
* Fuchs, Christian. 2014. Digital Labour and Karl Marx. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-71615-4.
* Nakamura, L. 2014. Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture. American Quarterly, 66(4), 919-941.
* Neff, Gina. 2012. [[Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries]]. MIT Press.
* Postigo, H. (2003). [[Emerging Sources of Labor on the Internet: The Case of America Online Volunteers]]. International review of social History, 48(S11), 205-223.
* Prahalad, C. K., and Venkat Ramaswamy. 2004. “[[Co-Creation Experiences: The next Practice in Value Creation]].” Journal of Interactive Marketing 18 (3): 5–14.
* Scholz, Trebor, ed. 2012. Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. 1 edition. New York: Routledge.
* Terranova, Tiziana. 2000. “[[Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy]].” Social Text 18 (2): 33–58.
* Von Hippel, Eric. 2005. Democratizing Innovation. MIT press.
* Weeks, K. .2007. [[Life Within and Against Work: Affective Labor, Feminist Critique, and Post-Fordist Politics]]. Ephemera 7(1): 233-249

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

2016-12-14T14:24:13Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management
|authors=JoAnne Yates
|url=https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/control-through-communication
|tags=Communications, Management, Illinois Central, DuPont, Information Systems,NatematiasGenerals
|summary=In Control Through Communication JoAnne Yates documents the transformation of the US economy from small businesses to large corporations by investigating changes in the communications systems they adopted. Yates argues that philosophies of ''systematic management'' that unfolded from the 1850s to the 1920s adopted communications technologies to manage efficiency within firms. Over time, Yates argues, these impersonal systems created morale problems that were addressed through communications systems that were designed to repersonalize some parts of work life.

Yates presents this argument by asking "how and why did formal internal communications become the principal tool for managerial control, displacing the traditional, ad hoc methods of management?" To answer this question, Yates draws from printed and archival sources from 1850 to 1920. The first half of the book outlines the development of "functions, technologies, and genres of internal communication" in conjunction with developments in management philosophies. The second half of the book presents three case studies that show this interrelation in action: the Illinois Central Railroad, Scovill Manufacturing Company, and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company.

==Chapter 1: Managerial Methods and the Functions of Internal Communication==
Yates opens up by arguing that ''systematic management'' brought two "lines of development" into firms: rational, impersonal management systems, and a subsequent set of "humanizing efforts" that supplemented these eystems:

<blockquote>During this period of change, experience soon showed that the ad hoc managerial methods that had worked satisfactorily for small, owner-managed firmed in a less competitive environment were inadequate for larger firms run by managerial hierarchies and competing in expanding markets. The philosophy of management that evolved in response to new needs, later to be labeled ''systematic management'', promoted rational and impersonal systems in preference to personal and idiosyncratic leadership for maintaining efficiency in a firm's operations. This general philosophy spawned many specific techniques and movements, including its most famous offspring, the scientific management movement. Systematic management attempted to improve control over–and thus the efficiency of–managers, workers, materials, and production processes. In teh early years of the twentieth century, it became clear that reliance on impersonal systems contributed to morale problems among workers and managers. Attempts to repersonalize certain aspects of work life, such as the paternalistic corporate welfare movement, arose to supplement systematic management. (page 1)</blockquote>

Yates argues, in contrast with Chandler, that the growing scale of US industry had an indirect rather than a direct role in shaping developments in corporate communication systems (recordkeeping, messages, etc), an influence that was mediated by the management philosophies of the time (e.g. scientific management and other movements).

In this chapter, Yates compares the management philosophies and communications technologies of four moments in US businesses: before the late 19th century, the development of railroad management, the emergence of systematic management, and the shift to re-personalize management.

===Early Manufacturing Firms===
Yates argues that before the late 19th century, manufacturing was managed in an ad hoc way by a small number of owners, skilled artisans, and foremen. Communications and information systems were limited to ledgers of transactions and trade correspondence. Even factories worked on this method, relying heavily on the leadership of foremen who managed and were managed via word of mouth. The most sophisticated mills shared monthly accounting ledgers.

=== Railroads: Innovators in Management and Communication ===
Yates argues that "it was the railroads, not the factories, that led the way in both managerial methods and formal internal communication." This occurred for several reasons:
* railroads had multiple owners, which necessitated consistent financial and operational reporting
* "the physical characteristics of railroads had inherent implications for management and communication at lower levels," especially around coordinating trains and managing the risks of derailment and collision. These pressures became greater after a series of collisions in the 1840s, after which train operators moved to control train schedules and recordkeeping on maintenance and track conditions.
* the need for efficiency, as the train industry began operating at a scale where small efficiencies could introduce substantial profits. This movement began in 1856 with Daniel C. McCallum's tenure at the New York and Erie Railroad Company, who argued that (a) each position should have clear responsibilities within a hierarchy, and that (b) a system of reports and checks should travel the hierarchy to better enable managers to monitor and evaluate the efficiency of the company. Yates credits McCallum with the idea of "upward communication as a managerial tool," that adopted "monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly reports" to make the company, in McCallum's terms, "efficient and successful." These principles were later formalized by Henry Varnum Poor into principles of the "science of management": organization, communication, and information.

Yates quotes Chandler: "For the middle and top managers, control through statistics quickly became both a science and an art. This need for accurate information led to the devising of improved methods for collecting, collating, and analyzing a wide variety of data generated by the day-to-day operations of the enterprise." (Visible Hand p109 quoted in Yates, p8).

===Systematic Management: Control Through Communication===
Yates argues that as manufacturing became larger, more mechanical, and more complex, starting in the 1870s, managers turned to methods from the railroads to coordinate the work. Quoting Litterer Yates describes this "systematic management" as an attempt to "eliminate confusion, oversight and neglect; coordinate efforts, return firm control to the top people in the organization; accomplish these things through the use of standardized procedures on routing managerial work through 'Method' or 'System.'" (Litterer p473-474 qted in Yates p10). Yates differentiates this "systematic management" from "scientific management," which was focused "primarily on the factory floor" and "efficient production," and which was just one part of a wider effort to systematize management "at all levels of the organization." Yates refers to Jelinek's summary of the characteristics of systematic management (p10-11):
* "transcending the individual" by creating well-defined roles and responsibilities that are carefully documented, and which take away the autonomy of the individual (downward communication)
* "monitoring and evaluating performance" (upward communication) to inform manager decisions

Yates quotes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church Alexander Hamilton Church] (via Litterer's article about him), who attempted to make management itself a science (Yates 13):

<blockquote>
The object of the commercial, or, as it might also be termed, the administrative organization scheme, should be to collect knowledge of what is going forward, not merely qualitatively, but quantitatively: It should also provide the means of regulating, as well as the means of recording.
</blockquote>

Methods for doing so included cost accounting, production control systems, and inventory management systems. Yates also documents other areas of business where systematic management became common, including sales, purchasing, R&D, and communications between units in a company, even as "System, efficiency, and scientific became catchwords in the business world and beyond."

===Repersonalizing Management: Indirect Control Through Communication===
Yates points out that "workers and managers... frequently resented and resisted the substitution of impersonal systems for personal relations." Yates argus that the response to this was the "corporate welfare movement" of "clubhouses, libraries, healthcare, and beautification programs" (p16). Workers rebelled against the experience of being managed so closely, and companies introduced benefits to try to placate them. Yates also argues that companies began to choose "indirect" forms of control through communication via company newspapers and "representative shop committees" that offered "a forum for two-way communication and negotiation between workers and management" (p17-18).

Managers also resisted control of the management process, says Yates. To address this unrest, "shop conferences" brought together multiple levels management to discuss problems, suggest improvements, and encourage the cooperation of people at lower levels of management. Yates cites an article in ''Factory 18 (Jan 1917)'' that argues:

<blockquote>The primary idea is to enlist the cooperation of the [fore]men in the shop in forming plans and offering suggestions for the good of the company... In its method this system is the opposite of the military method of management. The committee system is especially well adapted to furnishing a means by which the discontented can give expression to their feelings, and affords a valuable aid to the management in locating the cause of any disaffection.... it provides a method of overseeing whereby an executive totally ignorant of shop and sales processes is provided with reliable data concerning any weak spot</blockquote>

Yates points out that arguments like this claim "both a democratizing and a controlling role for such committee meetings."

Yates concludes the argument by emphasizing that systematic management of the impersonal and personalized versions relied on "flows of documents [which] were primary mechanisms of management control" (p20)

== Chapter 2: Communication Technology and the Growth of Internal Communication==
Yates argues that communications technologies co-evolved with management philosophies that responded to the growth of corporations. She also argues that "these innovations did not cause the internal communication system to develop as it did." Instead, many of these pre-existing technologies enabled the application of new management philosophies within firms.

Yates starts with the role of the telegraph in internal company communications across distances, from the first (scandalous) effort to send orders via telegraph in 1851, superintendent of the Erie railroad, to the routine monitoring of track conditions and management of schedules by the mid-1850s. By 1856, the Erie Railroad was collecting hourly data on the performance of the train system, data that was "recorded on special forms and filed for later use by management" (24). By the 1880s, the meat packing industry had been transformed by the introduction of refrigerated rail cars, managed by telegraphic systems that monitored supply and demand to route meat to customers with a minimum of spoilage (25).

Next, Yates considers the use of written communications, focusing on the use of copying technologies for outgoing communications and filing systems for managing incoming correspondence. Although visually iconic, pigeonhole desks were soon replaced with "flat filing," boxes that held and organized large numbers of unbound letters. These were soon replaced with cabinets of flat files, precursors to the contemporary vertical filing cabinet.

But the efficiency of handwritten communications could only be improved so far. When Remington began to produce typewriters in 1874, the company was thinking of court reporters rather than business users. Then the business world discovered the typewriter, and Remington and its main competitor sold eight thousand machines from 1881 and 1884. Scientific American estimated by 1886 that fifty thousand typewriters had been sold(41). By 1890, 33,000 people worked as stenographers and typists. Many of them were women.

Yates charts developments in document reproduction that ran parallel to the typewriter, including the adoption of previously-developed "carbon paper" to typewriters that could now produce carbon copies automatically. Yates cites a Taft Commission study in 1906 that preferred carbon copies to press copies for their permanency, authenticity of the copy, economy, and adaptability. Furthermore, carbon copying could produce as many as 10 copies for distribution to multiple parties, rather than Press copyging's two. But carbon copying didn't satisfy the full need for "mass duplication of internal communication" – an idea pursued through photographic techniques, Edison's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_pen Electric Pen], and the mimeograph (53).

With all this paper came new technologies for filing, most notably the vertical filing system, which adopted practices from the Dewey Decimal System of 1876 (56). Vertical files offered more efficient use of space while also allowing random access of files. Along with these file systems came organizational schemes for managing the organization of flows of information(57-61). Yates argues that "vertical filing systems organized by intended use rather than by origin and chronology allowed companies to create an accessible corporate memory to supplement or supersede individual memories" (62).

Yates concludes by remarking on the overall outcome of these developments: "Without these new technologies, systematic management's dependence on exctensive written communications might have imposed costs too heavy to be worth the resulting savings. Different methods might have been developed to manage the large companies. With these technologies, many avenues of control through communication were opened up" (64).

==Chapter 3: Genres of Internal Communication==
In this chapter, Yates outlines the genres of internal communications, whether they were "downward communication developed to aid executives in imposing system on people and processes," forms, reports, tables, and graphs for upward communications, or managerial meetings that "evolved to formalize and document multidirectional oral communication needed to ensure cooperation and maintain morale" (65-66).

Downward communication genres include:
* Circular letters and general orders that shared announcements and communicated corporate policy, sometimes posted publicly
* Manuals, which embodied a "comprehensive organizational memory," establishing lines of authority
* Notes and forms for specific orders
* In house magazines, influenced by the corporate welfare movement. "In-house magazines attempted to humanize the workplace through their content and approach." These magazines featured high-performing employees and shared information on employee clubs and activities (75)

Upward reporting systems included routine reports and information about special problems or needs. Yates traces teh development of reporting systems through the history of the railroad system and beyond. Genres included
* Tables and forms, which allowed efficient sharing of information (they have checkboxes!) Magazines including ''System'' and ''Factory'', and ''Industrial Management'' often included examples of forms to give managers ideas.
* Graphs for effective display of data. In 1914, Willard C. Brinton published a book on business graphics. Graphs increased the efficiency of business managers' ability to process information and make decisions. Since they could also distort; Brinton worked on graphics standards for information visualization.
* Efficient prose reports. This is the origin of common business report and proposal formats (91-94)

Yates shows how needs for horizontal correspondence gave birth of the memo (95).

Manager meetings and shop conferences offered an alternative to these information systems, and they developed their own genres. In 1916, ''Factory'' Magazine published results of a survey sent to 25 executives that reported two kinds of shop conferences: "good will" and "supervision conferences" ("Getting More out of Shop Conferences" qtd in Yates p98). Good will conferences focused on developing team spirit and distributing advice. Supervision conferences brought together managers on a regular basis to discuss work, solve problems, and agree on tasks.

Throughout this chapter, Yates argues that even as companies pressed for efficiency through impersonal, vertical communications, horizontal systems of communication were adopted to re-introduce a personal element with the aims of sustaining efficiency.

== Chapter 4: The Illinois Central Before 1887: Communication for Safety, Consistency, and Honesty ==

== Chapter 5: The Illinois Central after 1887: Communication for Compliance and Efficiency ==

== Chapter 6: Gradual Systematization at Scovill ==

== Chapter 7: Du Pont's First Century: Conservatism in Family and Firm ==

== Chapter 8: Du Pont, 1902-1920: Radical Change from a New Generation ==
(this chapter includes a discussion of emerging recordkeeping & communication needs of R&D and experimental research)

== Conclusion ==

== Notable Citations ==
* Chandler Jr, A. D. (1977). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visible_Hand:_The_Managerial_Revolution_in_American_Business The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business]. Harvard University Press.
* Chandler, A. D. (1962). [https://archive.org/details/strategystructur00chan_0 Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise] MIT Press.
* Litterer, J. A. (1961). [https://doi.org/10.2307/3111754 Systematic management: The search for order and integration]. Business History Review, 35(04), 461-476.
* Jelinek, M. (1980). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3114276 Toward systematic management: alexander hamilton church]. Business History Review, 54(01), 63-79.
* Haber, S. (1964). [https://books.google.com/books/about/Efficiency_and_Uplift.html?id=3gCzQgAACAAJ Efficiency and uplift: Scientific management in the progressive era 1890-1920]. University of Chicago Press.
* Nelson, D. (1982). [https://libcom.org/history/company-union-movement-1900-1937-reexamination-daniel-nelson The company union movement, 1900–1937: A reexamination]. Business History Review, 56(03), 335–357.
|relevance=Control Through Communication is a classic work in management studies, communications, and information science. The book offers a powerful model for examining sociotechnical systems in their intellectual and institutional contexts. Yate's approach of imagining data as communications within an economic system of power offers a valuable perspective for any research on sociotechnical systems.
|pub_date=1989
|subject=Sociology
}}

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

2016-12-06T16:49:20Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management
|authors=JoAnne Yates
|url=https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/control-through-communication
|tags=Communications, Management, Illinois Central, DuPont, Information Systems,NatematiasGenerals
|summary=In Control Through Communication JoAnne Yates documents the transformation of the US economy from small businesses to large corporations by investigating changes in the communications systems they adopted. Yates argues that philosophies of ''systematic management'' that unfolded from the 1850s to the 1920s adopted communications technologies to manage efficiency within firms. Over time, Yates argues, these impersonal systems created morale problems that were addressed through communications systems that were designed to repersonalize some parts of work life.

Yates presents this argument by asking "how and why did formal internal communications become the principal tool for managerial control, displacing the traditional, ad hoc methods of management?" To answer this question, Yates draws from printed and archival sources from 1850 to 1920. The first half of the book outlines the development of "functions, technologies, and genres of internal communication" in conjunction with developments in management philosophies. The second half of the book presents three case studies that show this interrelation in action: the Illinois Central Railroad, Scovill Manufacturing Company, and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company.

==Chapter 1: Managerial Methods and the Functions of Internal Communication==
Yates opens up by arguing that ''systematic management'' brought two "lines of development" into firms: rational, impersonal management systems, and a subsequent set of "humanizing efforts" that supplemented these eystems:

<blockquote>During this period of change, experience soon showed that the ad hoc managerial methods that had worked satisfactorily for small, owner-managed firmed in a less competitive environment were inadequate for larger firms run by managerial hierarchies and competing in expanding markets. The philosophy of management that evolved in response to new needs, later to be labeled ''systematic management'', promoted rational and impersonal systems in preference to personal and idiosyncratic leadership for maintaining efficiency in a firm's operations. This general philosophy spawned many specific techniques and movements, including its most famous offspring, the scientific management movement. Systematic management attempted to improve control over–and thus the efficiency of–managers, workers, materials, and production processes. In teh early years of the twentieth century, it became clear that reliance on impersonal systems contributed to morale problems among workers and managers. Attempts to repersonalize certain aspects of work life, such as the paternalistic corporate welfare movement, arose to supplement systematic management. (page 1)</blockquote>

Yates argues, in contrast with Chandler, that the growing scale of US industry had an indirect rather than a direct role in shaping developments in corporate communication systems (recordkeeping, messages, etc), an influence that was mediated by the management philosophies of the time (e.g. scientific management and other movements).

In this chapter, Yates compares the management philosophies and communications technologies of four moments in US businesses: before the late 19th century, the development of railroad management, the emergence of systematic management, and the shift to re-personalize management.

===Early Manufacturing Firms===
Yates argues that before the late 19th century, manufacturing was managed in an ad hoc way by a small number of owners, skilled artisans, and foremen. Communications and information systems were limited to ledgers of transactions and trade correspondence. Even factories worked on this method, relying heavily on the leadership of foremen who managed and were managed via word of mouth. The most sophisticated mills shared monthly accounting ledgers.

=== Railroads: Innovators in Management and Communication ===
Yates argues that "it was the railroads, not the factories, that led the way in both managerial methods and formal internal communication." This occurred for several reasons:
* railroads had multiple owners, which necessitated consistent financial and operational reporting
* "the physical characteristics of railroads had inherent implications for management and communication at lower levels," especially around coordinating trains and managing the risks of derailment and collision. These pressures became greater after a series of collisions in the 1840s, after which train operators moved to control train schedules and recordkeeping on maintenance and track conditions.
* the need for efficiency, as the train industry began operating at a scale where small efficiencies could introduce substantial profits. This movement began in 1856 with Daniel C. McCallum's tenure at the New York and Erie Railroad Company, who argued that (a) each position should have clear responsibilities within a hierarchy, and that (b) a system of reports and checks should travel the hierarchy to better enable managers to monitor and evaluate the efficiency of the company. Yates credits McCallum with the idea of "upward communication as a managerial tool," that adopted "monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly reports" to make the company, in McCallum's terms, "efficient and successful." These principles were later formalized by Henry Varnum Poor into principles of the "science of management": organization, communication, and information.

Yates quotes Chandler: "For the middle and top managers, control through statistics quickly became both a science and an art. This need for accurate information led to the devising of improved methods for collecting, collating, and analyzing a wide variety of data generated by the day-to-day operations of the enterprise." (Visible Hand p109 quoted in Yates, p8).

===Systematic Management: Control Through Communication===
Yates argues that as manufacturing became larger, more mechanical, and more complex, starting in the 1870s, managers turned to methods from the railroads to coordinate the work. Quoting Litterer Yates describes this "systematic management" as an attempt to "eliminate confusion, oversight and neglect; coordinate efforts, return firm control to the top people in the organization; accomplish these things through the use of standardized procedures on routing managerial work through 'Method' or 'System.'" (Litterer p473-474 qted in Yates p10). Yates differentiates this "systematic management" from "scientific management," which was focused "primarily on the factory floor" and "efficient production," and which was just one part of a wider effort to systematize management "at all levels of the organization." Yates refers to Jelinek's summary of the characteristics of systematic management (p10-11):
* "transcending the individual" by creating well-defined roles and responsibilities that are carefully documented, and which take away the autonomy of the individual (downward communication)
* "monitoring and evaluating performance" (upward communication) to inform manager decisions

Yates quotes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church Alexander Hamilton Church] (via Litterer's article about him), who attempted to make management itself a science (Yates 13):

<blockquote>
The object of the commercial, or, as it might also be termed, the administrative organization scheme, should be to collect knowledge of what is going forward, not merely qualitatively, but quantitatively: It should also provide the means of regulating, as well as the means of recording.
</blockquote>

Methods for doing so included cost accounting, production control systems, and inventory management systems. Yates also documents other areas of business where systematic management became common, including sales, purchasing, R&D, and communications between units in a company, even as "System, efficiency, and scientific became catchwords in the business world and beyond."

===Repersonalizing Management: Indirect Control Through Communication===
Yates points out that "workers and managers... frequently resented and resisted the substitution of impersonal systems for personal relations." Yates argus that the response to this was the "corporate welfare movement" of "clubhouses, libraries, healthcare, and beautification programs" (p16). Workers rebelled against the experience of being managed so closely, and companies introduced benefits to try to placate them. Yates also argues that companies began to choose "indirect" forms of control through communication via company newspapers and "representative shop committees" that offered "a forum for two-way communication and negotiation between workers and management" (p17-18).

Managers also resisted control of the management process, says Yates. To address this unrest, "shop conferences" brought together multiple levels management to discuss problems, suggest improvements, and encourage the cooperation of people at lower levels of management. Yates cites an article in ''Factory 18 (Jan 2917)'' that argues:

<blockquote>The primary idea is to enlist the cooperation of the [fore]men in the shop in forming plans and offering suggestions for the good of the company... In its method this system is the opposite of the military method of management. The committee system is especially well adapted to furnishing a means by which the discontented can give expression to their feelings, and affords a valuable aid to the management in locating the cause of any disaffection.... it provides a method of overseeing whereby an executive totally ignorant of shop and sales processes is provided with reliable data concerning any weak spot</blockquote>

Yates points out that arguments like this claim "both a democratizing and a controlling role for such committee meetings."

Yates concludes the argument by emphasizing that systematic management of the impersonal and personalized versions relied on "flows of documents [which] were primary mechanisms of management control" (p20)

== Chapter 2: Communication Technology and the Growth of Internal Communication==
Yates argues that communications technologies co-evolved with management philosophies that responded to the growth of corporations. She also argues that "these innovations did not cause the internal communication system to develop as it did." Instead, many of these pre-existing technologies enabled the application of new management philosophies within firms.

Yates starts with the role of the telegraph in internal company communications across distances, from the first (scandalous) effort to send orders via telegraph in 1851, superintendent of the Erie railroad, to the routine monitoring of track conditions and management of schedules by the mid-1850s. By 1856, the Erie Railroad was collecting hourly data on the performance of the train system, data that was "recorded on special forms and filed for later use by management" (24). By the 1880s, the meat packing industry had been transformed by the introduction of refrigerated rail cars, managed by telegraphic systems that monitored supply and demand to route meat to customers with a minimum of spoilage (25).

Next, Yates considers the use of written communications, focusing on the use of copying technologies for outgoing communications and filing systems for managing incoming correspondence. Although visually iconic, pigeonhole desks were soon replaced with "flat filing," boxes that held and organized large numbers of unbound letters. These were soon replaced with cabinets of flat files, precursors to the contemporary vertical filing cabinet.

But the efficiency of handwritten communications could only be improved so far. When Remington began to produce typewriters in 1874, the company was thinking of court reporters rather than business users. Then the business world discovered the typewriter, and Remington and its main competitor sold eight thousand machines from 1881 and 1884. Scientific American estimated by 1886 that fifty thousand typewriters had been sold(41). By 1890, 33,000 people worked as stenographers and typists. Many of them were women.

Yates charts developments in document reproduction that ran parallel to the typewriter, including the adoption of previously-developed "carbon paper" to typewriters that could now produce carbon copies automatically. Yates cites a Taft Commission study in 1906 that preferred carbon copies to press copies for their permanency, authenticity of the copy, economy, and adaptability. Furthermore, carbon copying could produce as many as 10 copies for distribution to multiple parties, rather than Press copyging's two. But carbon copying didn't satisfy the full need for "mass duplication of internal communication" – an idea pursued through photographic techniques, Edison's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_pen Electric Pen], and the mimeograph (53).

With all this paper came new technologies for filing, most notably the vertical filing system, which adopted practices from the Dewey Decimal System of 1876 (56). Vertical files offered more efficient use of space while also allowing random access of files. Along with these file systems came organizational schemes for managing the organization of flows of information(57-61). Yates argues that "vertical filing systems organized by intended use rather than by origin and chronology allowed companies to create an accessible corporate memory to supplement or supersede individual memories" (62).

Yates concludes by remarking on the overall outcome of these developments: "Without these new technologies, systematic management's dependence on exctensive written communications might have imposed costs too heavy to be worth the resulting savings. Different methods might have been developed to manage the large companies. With these technologies, many avenues of control through communication were opened up" (64).

==Chapter 3: Genres of Internal Communication==
In this chapter, Yates outlines the genres of internal communications, whether they were "downward communication developed to aid executives in imposing system on people and processes," forms, reports, tables, and graphs for upward communications, or managerial meetings that "evolved to formalize and document multidirectional oral communication needed to ensure cooperation and maintain morale" (65-66).

Downward communication genres include:
* Circular letters and general orders that shared announcements and communicated corporate policy, sometimes posted publicly
* Manuals, which embodied a "comprehensive organizational memory," establishing lines of authority
* Notes and forms for specific orders
* In house magazines, influenced by the corporate welfare movement. "In-house magazines attempted to humanize the workplace through their content and approach." These magazines featured high-performing employees and shared information on employee clubs and activities (75)

Upward reporting systems included routine reports and information about special problems or needs. Yates traces teh development of reporting systems through the history of the railroad system and beyond. Genres included
* Tables and forms, which allowed efficient sharing of information (they have checkboxes!) Magazines including ''System'' and ''Factory'', and ''Industrial Management'' often included examples of forms to give managers ideas.
* Graphs for effective display of data. In 1914, Willard C. Brinton published a book on business graphics. Graphs increased the efficiency of business managers' ability to process information and make decisions. Since they could also distort; Brinton worked on graphics standards for information visualization.
* Efficient prose reports. This is the origin of common business report and proposal formats (91-94)

Yates shows how needs for horizontal correspondence gave birth of the memo (95).

Manager meetings and shop conferences offered an alternative to these information systems, and they developed their own genres. In 1916, ''Factory'' Magazine published results of a survey sent to 25 executives that reported two kinds of shop conferences: "good will" and "supervision conferences" ("Getting More out of Shop Conferences" qtd in Yates p98). Good will conferences focused on developing team spirit and distributing advice. Supervision conferences brought together managers on a regular basis to discuss work, solve problems, and agree on tasks.

Throughout this chapter, Yates argues that even as companies pressed for efficiency through impersonal, vertical communications, horizontal systems of communication were adopted to re-introduce a personal element with the aims of sustaining efficiency.

== Chapter 4: The Illinois Central Before 1887: Communication for Safety, Consistency, and Honesty ==

== Chapter 5: The Illinois Central after 1887: Communication for Compliance and Efficiency ==

== Chapter 6: Gradual Systematization at Scovill ==

== Chapter 7: Du Pont's First Century: Conservatism in Family and Firm ==

== Chapter 8: Du Pont, 1902-1920: Radical Change from a New Generation ==
(this chapter includes a discussion of emerging recordkeeping & communication needs of R&D and experimental research)

== Conclusion ==

== Notable Citations ==
* Chandler Jr, A. D. (1977). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visible_Hand:_The_Managerial_Revolution_in_American_Business The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business]. Harvard University Press.
* Chandler, A. D. (1962). [https://archive.org/details/strategystructur00chan_0 Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise] MIT Press.
* Litterer, J. A. (1961). [https://doi.org/10.2307/3111754 Systematic management: The search for order and integration]. Business History Review, 35(04), 461-476.
* Jelinek, M. (1980). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3114276 Toward systematic management: alexander hamilton church]. Business History Review, 54(01), 63-79.
* Haber, S. (1964). [https://books.google.com/books/about/Efficiency_and_Uplift.html?id=3gCzQgAACAAJ Efficiency and uplift: Scientific management in the progressive era 1890-1920]. University of Chicago Press.
* Nelson, D. (1982). [https://libcom.org/history/company-union-movement-1900-1937-reexamination-daniel-nelson The company union movement, 1900–1937: A reexamination]. Business History Review, 56(03), 335–357.
|relevance=Control Through Communication is a classic work in management studies, communications, and information science. The book offers a powerful model for examining sociotechnical systems in their intellectual and institutional contexts. Yate's approach of imagining data as communications within an economic system of power offers a valuable perspective for any research on sociotechnical systems.
|pub_date=1989
|subject=Sociology
}}

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

2016-12-06T16:46:36Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management
|authors=JoAnne Yates
|url=https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/control-through-communication
|tags=Communications, Management, Illinois Central, DuPont, Information Systems,
|summary=In Control Through Communication JoAnne Yates documents the transformation of the US economy from small businesses to large corporations by investigating changes in the communications systems they adopted. Yates argues that philosophies of ''systematic management'' that unfolded from the 1850s to the 1920s adopted communications technologies to manage efficiency within firms. Over time, Yates argues, these impersonal systems created morale problems that were addressed through communications systems that were designed to repersonalize some parts of work life.

Yates presents this argument by asking "how and why did formal internal communications become the principal tool for managerial control, displacing the traditional, ad hoc methods of management?" To answer this question, Yates draws from printed and archival sources from 1850 to 1920. The first half of the book outlines the development of "functions, technologies, and genres of internal communication" in conjunction with developments in management philosophies. The second half of the book presents three case studies that show this interrelation in action: the Illinois Central Railroad, Scovill Manufacturing Company, and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company.

==Chapter 1: Managerial Methods and the Functions of Internal Communication==
Yates opens up by arguing that ''systematic management'' brought two "lines of development" into firms: rational, impersonal management systems, and a subsequent set of "humanizing efforts" that supplemented these eystems:

<blockquote>During this period of change, experience soon showed that the ad hoc managerial methods that had worked satisfactorily for small, owner-managed firmed in a less competitive environment were inadequate for larger firms run by managerial hierarchies and competing in expanding markets. The philosophy of management that evolved in response to new needs, later to be labeled ''systematic management'', promoted rational and impersonal systems in preference to personal and idiosyncratic leadership for maintaining efficiency in a firm's operations. This general philosophy spawned many specific techniques and movements, including its most famous offspring, the scientific management movement. Systematic management attempted to improve control over–and thus the efficiency of–managers, workers, materials, and production processes. In teh early years of the twentieth century, it became clear that reliance on impersonal systems contributed to morale problems among workers and managers. Attempts to repersonalize certain aspects of work life, such as the paternalistic corporate welfare movement, arose to supplement systematic management. (page 1)</blockquote>

Yates argues, in contrast with Chandler, that the growing scale of US industry had an indirect rather than a direct role in shaping developments in corporate communication systems (recordkeeping, messages, etc), an influence that was mediated by the management philosophies of the time (e.g. scientific management and other movements).

In this chapter, Yates compares the management philosophies and communications technologies of four moments in US businesses: before the late 19th century, the development of railroad management, the emergence of systematic management, and the shift to re-personalize management.

===Early Manufacturing Firms===
Yates argues that before the late 19th century, manufacturing was managed in an ad hoc way by a small number of owners, skilled artisans, and foremen. Communications and information systems were limited to ledgers of transactions and trade correspondence. Even factories worked on this method, relying heavily on the leadership of foremen who managed and were managed via word of mouth. The most sophisticated mills shared monthly accounting ledgers.

=== Railroads: Innovators in Management and Communication ===
Yates argues that "it was the railroads, not the factories, that led the way in both managerial methods and formal internal communication." This occurred for several reasons:
* railroads had multiple owners, which necessitated consistent financial and operational reporting
* "the physical characteristics of railroads had inherent implications for management and communication at lower levels," especially around coordinating trains and managing the risks of derailment and collision. These pressures became greater after a series of collisions in the 1840s, after which train operators moved to control train schedules and recordkeeping on maintenance and track conditions.
* the need for efficiency, as the train industry began operating at a scale where small efficiencies could introduce substantial profits. This movement began in 1856 with Daniel C. McCallum's tenure at the New York and Erie Railroad Company, who argued that (a) each position should have clear responsibilities within a hierarchy, and that (b) a system of reports and checks should travel the hierarchy to better enable managers to monitor and evaluate the efficiency of the company. Yates credits McCallum with the idea of "upward communication as a managerial tool," that adopted "monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly reports" to make the company, in McCallum's terms, "efficient and successful." These principles were later formalized by Henry Varnum Poor into principles of the "science of management": organization, communication, and information.

Yates quotes Chandler: "For the middle and top managers, control through statistics quickly became both a science and an art. This need for accurate information led to the devising of improved methods for collecting, collating, and analyzing a wide variety of data generated by the day-to-day operations of the enterprise." (Visible Hand p109 quoted in Yates, p8).

===Systematic Management: Control Through Communication===
Yates argues that as manufacturing became larger, more mechanical, and more complex, starting in the 1870s, managers turned to methods from the railroads to coordinate the work. Quoting Litterer Yates describes this "systematic management" as an attempt to "eliminate confusion, oversight and neglect; coordinate efforts, return firm control to the top people in the organization; accomplish these things through the use of standardized procedures on routing managerial work through 'Method' or 'System.'" (Litterer p473-474 qted in Yates p10). Yates differentiates this "systematic management" from "scientific management," which was focused "primarily on the factory floor" and "efficient production," and which was just one part of a wider effort to systematize management "at all levels of the organization." Yates refers to Jelinek's summary of the characteristics of systematic management (p10-11):
* "transcending the individual" by creating well-defined roles and responsibilities that are carefully documented, and which take away the autonomy of the individual (downward communication)
* "monitoring and evaluating performance" (upward communication) to inform manager decisions

Yates quotes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church Alexander Hamilton Church] (via Litterer's article about him), who attempted to make management itself a science (Yates 13):

<blockquote>
The object of the commercial, or, as it might also be termed, the administrative organization scheme, should be to collect knowledge of what is going forward, not merely qualitatively, but quantitatively: It should also provide the means of regulating, as well as the means of recording.
</blockquote>

Methods for doing so included cost accounting, production control systems, and inventory management systems. Yates also documents other areas of business where systematic management became common, including sales, purchasing, R&D, and communications between units in a company, even as "System, efficiency, and scientific became catchwords in the business world and beyond."

===Repersonalizing Management: Indirect Control Through Communication===
Yates points out that "workers and managers... frequently resented and resisted the substitution of impersonal systems for personal relations." Yates argus that the response to this was the "corporate welfare movement" of "clubhouses, libraries, healthcare, and beautification programs" (p16). Workers rebelled against the experience of being managed so closely, and companies introduced benefits to try to placate them. Yates also argues that companies began to choose "indirect" forms of control through communication via company newspapers and "representative shop committees" that offered "a forum for two-way communication and negotiation between workers and management" (p17-18).

Managers also resisted control of the management process, says Yates. To address this unrest, "shop conferences" brought together multiple levels management to discuss problems, suggest improvements, and encourage the cooperation of people at lower levels of management. Yates cites an article in ''Factory 18 (Jan 2917)'' that argues:

<blockquote>The primary idea is to enlist the cooperation of the [fore]men in the shop in forming plans and offering suggestions for the good of the company... In its method this system is the opposite of the military method of management. The committee system is especially well adapted to furnishing a means by which the discontented can give expression to their feelings, and affords a valuable aid to the management in locating the cause of any disaffection.... it provides a method of overseeing whereby an executive totally ignorant of shop and sales processes is provided with reliable data concerning any weak spot</blockquote>

Yates points out that arguments like this claim "both a democratizing and a controlling role for such committee meetings."

Yates concludes the argument by emphasizing that systematic management of the impersonal and personalized versions relied on "flows of documents [which] were primary mechanisms of management control" (p20)

== Chapter 2: Communication Technology and the Growth of Internal Communication==
Yates argues that communications technologies co-evolved with management philosophies that responded to the growth of corporations. She also argues that "these innovations did not cause the internal communication system to develop as it did." Instead, many of these pre-existing technologies enabled the application of new management philosophies within firms.

Yates starts with the role of the telegraph in internal company communications across distances, from the first (scandalous) effort to send orders via telegraph in 1851, superintendent of the Erie railroad, to the routine monitoring of track conditions and management of schedules by the mid-1850s. By 1856, the Erie Railroad was collecting hourly data on the performance of the train system, data that was "recorded on special forms and filed for later use by management" (24). By the 1880s, the meat packing industry had been transformed by the introduction of refrigerated rail cars, managed by telegraphic systems that monitored supply and demand to route meat to customers with a minimum of spoilage (25).

Next, Yates considers the use of written communications, focusing on the use of copying technologies for outgoing communications and filing systems for managing incoming correspondence. Although visually iconic, pigeonhole desks were soon replaced with "flat filing," boxes that held and organized large numbers of unbound letters. These were soon replaced with cabinets of flat files, precursors to the contemporary vertical filing cabinet.

But the efficiency of handwritten communications could only be improved so far. When Remington began to produce typewriters in 1874, the company was thinking of court reporters rather than business users. Then the business world discovered the typewriter, and Remington and its main competitor sold eight thousand machines from 1881 and 1884. Scientific American estimated by 1886 that fifty thousand typewriters had been sold(41). By 1890, 33,000 people worked as stenographers and typists. Many of them were women.

Yates charts developments in document reproduction that ran parallel to the typewriter, including the adoption of previously-developed "carbon paper" to typewriters that could now produce carbon copies automatically. Yates cites a Taft Commission study in 1906 that preferred carbon copies to press copies for their permanency, authenticity of the copy, economy, and adaptability. Furthermore, carbon copying could produce as many as 10 copies for distribution to multiple parties, rather than Press copyging's two. But carbon copying didn't satisfy the full need for "mass duplication of internal communication" – an idea pursued through photographic techniques, Edison's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_pen Electric Pen], and the mimeograph (53).

With all this paper came new technologies for filing, most notably the vertical filing system, which adopted practices from the Dewey Decimal System of 1876 (56). Vertical files offered more efficient use of space while also allowing random access of files. Along with these file systems came organizational schemes for managing the organization of flows of information(57-61). Yates argues that "vertical filing systems organized by intended use rather than by origin and chronology allowed companies to create an accessible corporate memory to supplement or supersede individual memories" (62).

Yates concludes by remarking on the overall outcome of these developments: "Without these new technologies, systematic management's dependence on exctensive written communications might have imposed costs too heavy to be worth the resulting savings. Different methods might have been developed to manage the large companies. With these technologies, many avenues of control through communication were opened up" (64).

==Chapter 3: Genres of Internal Communication==
In this chapter, Yates outlines the genres of internal communications, whether they were "downward communication developed to aid executives in imposing system on people and processes," forms, reports, tables, and graphs for upward communications, or managerial meetings that "evolved to formalize and document multidirectional oral communication needed to ensure cooperation and maintain morale" (65-66).

Downward communication genres include:
* Circular letters and general orders that shared announcements and communicated corporate policy, sometimes posted publicly
* Manuals, which embodied a "comprehensive organizational memory," establishing lines of authority
* Notes and forms for specific orders
* In house magazines, influenced by the corporate welfare movement. "In-house magazines attempted to humanize the workplace through their content and approach." These magazines featured high-performing employees and shared information on employee clubs and activities (75)

Upward reporting systems included routine reports and information about special problems or needs. Yates traces teh development of reporting systems through the history of the railroad system and beyond. Genres included
* Tables and forms, which allowed efficient sharing of information (they have checkboxes!) Magazines including ''System'' and ''Factory'', and ''Industrial Management'' often included examples of forms to give managers ideas.
* Graphs for effective display of data. In 1914, Willard C. Brinton published a book on business graphics. Graphs increased the efficiency of business managers' ability to process information and make decisions. Since they could also distort; Brinton worked on graphics standards for information visualization.
* Efficient prose reports. This is the origin of common business report and proposal formats (91-94)

Yates shows how needs for horizontal correspondence gave birth of the memo (95).

Manager meetings and shop conferences offered an alternative to these information systems, and they developed their own genres. In 1916, ''Factory'' Magazine published results of a survey sent to 25 executives that reported two kinds of shop conferences: "good will" and "supervision conferences" ("Getting More out of Shop Conferences" qtd in Yates p98). Good will conferences focused on developing team spirit and distributing advice. Supervision conferences brought together managers on a regular basis to discuss work, solve problems, and agree on tasks.

Throughout this chapter, Yates argues that even as companies pressed for efficiency through impersonal, vertical communications, horizontal systems of communication were adopted to re-introduce a personal element with the aims of sustaining efficiency.

== Chapter 4: The Illinois Central Before 1887: Communication for Safety, Consistency, and Honesty ==

== Chapter 5: The Illinois Central after 1887: Communication for Compliance and Efficiency ==

== Chapter 6: Gradual Systematization at Scovill ==

== Chapter 7: Du Pont's First Century: Conservatism in Family and Firm ==

== Chapter 8: Du Pont, 1902-1920: Radical Change from a New Generation ==
(this chapter includes a discussion of emerging recordkeeping & communication needs of R&D and experimental research)

== Conclusion ==

== Notable Citations ==
* Chandler Jr, A. D. (1977). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visible_Hand:_The_Managerial_Revolution_in_American_Business The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business]. Harvard University Press.
* Chandler, A. D. (1962). [https://archive.org/details/strategystructur00chan_0 Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise] MIT Press.
* Litterer, J. A. (1961). [https://doi.org/10.2307/3111754 Systematic management: The search for order and integration]. Business History Review, 35(04), 461-476.
* Jelinek, M. (1980). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3114276 Toward systematic management: alexander hamilton church]. Business History Review, 54(01), 63-79.
* Haber, S. (1964). [https://books.google.com/books/about/Efficiency_and_Uplift.html?id=3gCzQgAACAAJ Efficiency and uplift: Scientific management in the progressive era 1890-1920]. University of Chicago Press.
* Nelson, D. (1982). [https://libcom.org/history/company-union-movement-1900-1937-reexamination-daniel-nelson The company union movement, 1900–1937: A reexamination]. Business History Review, 56(03), 335–357.
|relevance=Control Through Communication is a classic work in management studies, communications, and information science. The book offers a powerful model for examining sociotechnical systems in their intellectual and institutional contexts. Yate's approach of imagining data as communications within an economic system of power offers a valuable perspective for any research on sociotechnical systems.
|pub_date=1989
|subject=Sociology
}}

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

2016-12-06T16:46:15Z

Natematias:

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

2016-12-06T06:48:12Z

Natematias:

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

2016-12-06T04:58:56Z

Natematias:

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

2016-12-06T03:08:08Z

Natematias: Created page with "{{Summary |title=Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management |authors=JoAnne Yates |url=https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/control-through-co..."

User:Natematias

2016-12-06T02:32:00Z

Natematias: /* Other Papers and Books of Note */ Added Yates's Control Through Communication

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation ([http://natematias.com/JNM_CV_08.2016.pdf C.V.]). He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([http://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]) and an [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias affiliate at the Berkman Center] at Harvard.

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
** The above document turned into the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Online_harassment_resource_guide Online Harassment Resource Guide], generously hosted by Wikimedia
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]

== Other Papers and Books of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.
* Yates, J. (1993). [[Control through communication: The rise of system in American management]] (Vol. 6). JHU Press.

User:Natematias

2016-12-06T02:31:06Z

Natematias: /* Work In Progress on AcaWiki */

User:Natematias

2016-12-06T02:30:18Z

Natematias:

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation ([http://natematias.com/JNM_CV_08.2016.pdf C.V.]). He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([http://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]) and an [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias affiliate at the Berkman Center] at Harvard.

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]
* [[Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment]]

== Other Papers and Books of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.

User:Natematias

2016-12-06T02:25:59Z

Natematias: /* Other Papers of Note */

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation. He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]), a [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias fellow at the Berkman Center] at Harvard and a [http://derp.institute DERP Institute fellow].

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]
* [[Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment]]

== Other Papers and Books of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.

Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment

2015-08-10T00:42:59Z

Natematias:

Online harassment is a problem with a long history, including a history of academic research on harassment, ranging across a wide range of fields. On this page, we list short collections of readings that will give you a start on many of the areas relevant to understanding and responding to online harassment.

__TOC__

==Flagging and Reporting Systems==
Platforms often offer systems for flagging or reporting online harassment. These readings describe this approach, its effects, and its limitations.
* '' What is a flag for?"
** Crawford, Kate, and Tarleton L. Gillespie 2014 '''[http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2476464 What Is a Flag for? Social Media Reporting Tools and the Vocabulary of Complaint]'''. New Media & Society.

* '' What is the flagging process like for those involved? ''
** Matias, J. Nathan, Amy Johnson, Whitney Erin Boesel, Brian Keegan, Jaclyn Friedman, Charlie DeTar. 2015 '''[http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.03359 Reporting, Reviewing, and Responding to Harassment on Twitter]'''. arXiv Preprint arXiv:1505.03359.
** Geiger, R. Stuart, and David Ribes 2010 '''[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1718941 The Work of Sustaining Order in Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal]'''. In Proceedings of CSCW 2010 Pp. 117–126. ACM.
* '' What is the role of Terms of Service in Flagging Systems? ''
** Wauters, E., E. Lievens, and P. Valcke 2014 '''[http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/254 Towards a Better Protection of Social Media Users: A Legal Perspective on the Terms of Use of Social Networking Sites]'''. International Journal of Law and Information Technology 22(3): 254–294.

* '' What are the consequences of flagging policies for marginalized groups? ''
** Thakor, Mitali, and Danah Boyd 2013 '''[http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/254 Networked Trafficking: Reflections on Technology and the Anti-Trafficking Movement]'''. Dialectical Anthropology 37(2): 277–290.

== Volunteer Moderators ==
One approach to dealing with online harassment is to recruit volunteer moderators or responders to take a special role on a platform or in a community. This is the approach taken by Google Groups, Meetup.com, Reddit, Facebook Groups, and many online forums.

*''What actions could moderators be supported to take?'' Grimmelman's paper offers a helpful taxonomy of moderation strategies, focusing on the "verbs of moderation" and the kinds of powers you might give moderators. Grimmelman also cites many papers and articles relevant to these possible actions. Quinn offers an alternative to Grimmelman's systematic approach, describing the "ethos" that is created through community and moderation by a few. In ongoing work, Matias is researching the work of Reddit's moderators.
** Grimmelmann, James 2015 '''[http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2588493 The Virtues of Moderation]'''. SSRN Scholarly Paper, ID 2588493. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
** Warnick, Quinn 2010 "The four paradoxes of Metafilter" in '''[http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/11487 What We Talk about When We Talk about Talking: Ethos at Work in an Online Community]'''. Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
** Matias, J. Nathan 2015 '''[http://socialmediacollective.org/2015/06/16/reddit-research/ Recognizing the Work of Reddit's Moderators]''' (work in progress). Microsoft Research Social Media Collective.
*''Is asking volunteers to moderate online conversation asking them to do free work?'' Postigo's paper offers an overview of AOL's community leaders and the Department of Labor investigation into the work of moderators in the early 2000s.
** Postigo, H. 2009 '''[http://ics.sagepub.com/content/12/5/451.full.pdf America Online Volunteers: Lessons from an Early Co-Production Community]'''. International Journal of Cultural Studies 12(5): 451–469.
*''Is Self-Governance Democratic?'' Shaw and HIll's quantitative research across 683 different wikis shows that "peer production entails oligarchic organizational forms," in line with a trend for large democracies to become oligrachic. This issue is taken up in Nathaniel Tkacz's book, where he outlines the kinds of contention that occur in "open organizations," a book that is as much about the idea of Wikipedia as the way Wikipedia actually works.
** Shaw, Aaron, and Benjamin M. Hill 2014 '''[http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.0323 Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production]'''. Journal of Communication 64(2): 215–238.
** Tkacz, Nathaniel 2014 '''[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo19085555.html Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness]'''. Chicago ; London: University Of Chicago Press.
*''Why do people do volunteer moderation?'' In behavioural economics experiments, Hergueaux finds that Wikipedia's administrators are most motivated by social image rather than reciprocity or altruism. Butler, Sproul, Kiesler, and Kraut offer survey results showing a diversity of formal and informal community work in online groups, and that people's participation can be related to how well they know other community members.
** Hergueux, Jérôme, Yann Algan, Yochai Benkler, and Mayo Fuster Morell 2013 '''[http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/IMG/pdf/hergueux_paper-2.pdf Cooperation in a Peer-Production Economy Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia]'''. In 12th Journées Louis-André Gérard-Varet.
** Butler, Brian, Lee Sproull, Sara Kiesler, and Robert Kraut 2002 '''[http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=hcii Community Effort in Online Groups: Who Does the Work and Why]'''. Leadership at a Distance: Research in Technologically Supported Work: 171–194.

Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment

2015-08-10T00:42:21Z

Natematias: Added Initial links for the Flagging and Reporting section

Online harassment is a problem with a long history, including a history of academic research on harassment, ranging across a wide range of fields. On this page, we list short collections of readings that will give you a start on many of the areas relevant to understanding and responding to online harassment.

__TOC__

==Flagging and Reporting Systems==
Platforms often offer systems for flagging or reporting online harassment. These readings describe this approach, its effects, and its limitations.
* '' What is a flag for?"
** Crawford, Kate, and Tarleton L. Gillespie 2014 '''[http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2476464 What Is a Flag for? Social Media Reporting Tools and the Vocabulary of Complaint]'''. New Media & Society.

* '' What is the flagging process like for those involved? ''
** Matias, J. Nathan, Amy Johnson, Whitney Erin Boesel, Brian Keegan, Jaclyn Friedman, Charlie DeTar. 2015 '''[http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.03359 Reporting, Reviewing, and Responding to Harassment on Twitter]'''. arXiv Preprint arXiv:1505.03359.
** Geiger, R. Stuart, and David Ribes 2010 '''[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1718941 The Work of Sustaining Order in Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal]'''. In Proceedings of CSCW 2010 Pp. 117–126. ACM.
* '' What is the role of Terms of Service in Flagging Systems? ''
** Wauters, E., E. Lievens, and P. Valcke 2014 '''[http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/254 Towards a Better Protection of Social Media Users: A Legal Perspective on the Terms of Use of Social Networking Sites]'''. International Journal of Law and Information Technology 22(3): 254–294.

* '' What are the consequences of flagging policies for marginalized groups? ''
** Thakor, Mitali, and Danah Boyd 2013 Networked Trafficking: Reflections on Technology and the Anti-Trafficking Movement. Dialectical Anthropology 37(2): 277–290.

== Volunteer Moderators ==
One approach to dealing with online harassment is to recruit volunteer moderators or responders to take a special role on a platform or in a community. This is the approach taken by Google Groups, Meetup.com, Reddit, Facebook Groups, and many online forums.

*''What actions could moderators be supported to take?'' Grimmelman's paper offers a helpful taxonomy of moderation strategies, focusing on the "verbs of moderation" and the kinds of powers you might give moderators. Grimmelman also cites many papers and articles relevant to these possible actions. Quinn offers an alternative to Grimmelman's systematic approach, describing the "ethos" that is created through community and moderation by a few. In ongoing work, Matias is researching the work of Reddit's moderators.
** Grimmelmann, James 2015 '''[http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2588493 The Virtues of Moderation]'''. SSRN Scholarly Paper, ID 2588493. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
** Warnick, Quinn 2010 "The four paradoxes of Metafilter" in '''[http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/11487 What We Talk about When We Talk about Talking: Ethos at Work in an Online Community]'''. Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
** Matias, J. Nathan 2015 '''[http://socialmediacollective.org/2015/06/16/reddit-research/ Recognizing the Work of Reddit's Moderators]''' (work in progress). Microsoft Research Social Media Collective.
*''Is asking volunteers to moderate online conversation asking them to do free work?'' Postigo's paper offers an overview of AOL's community leaders and the Department of Labor investigation into the work of moderators in the early 2000s.
** Postigo, H. 2009 '''[http://ics.sagepub.com/content/12/5/451.full.pdf America Online Volunteers: Lessons from an Early Co-Production Community]'''. International Journal of Cultural Studies 12(5): 451–469.
*''Is Self-Governance Democratic?'' Shaw and HIll's quantitative research across 683 different wikis shows that "peer production entails oligarchic organizational forms," in line with a trend for large democracies to become oligrachic. This issue is taken up in Nathaniel Tkacz's book, where he outlines the kinds of contention that occur in "open organizations," a book that is as much about the idea of Wikipedia as the way Wikipedia actually works.
** Shaw, Aaron, and Benjamin M. Hill 2014 '''[http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.0323 Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production]'''. Journal of Communication 64(2): 215–238.
** Tkacz, Nathaniel 2014 '''[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo19085555.html Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness]'''. Chicago ; London: University Of Chicago Press.
*''Why do people do volunteer moderation?'' In behavioural economics experiments, Hergueaux finds that Wikipedia's administrators are most motivated by social image rather than reciprocity or altruism. Butler, Sproul, Kiesler, and Kraut offer survey results showing a diversity of formal and informal community work in online groups, and that people's participation can be related to how well they know other community members.
** Hergueux, Jérôme, Yann Algan, Yochai Benkler, and Mayo Fuster Morell 2013 '''[http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/IMG/pdf/hergueux_paper-2.pdf Cooperation in a Peer-Production Economy Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia]'''. In 12th Journées Louis-André Gérard-Varet.
** Butler, Brian, Lee Sproull, Sara Kiesler, and Robert Kraut 2002 '''[http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=hcii Community Effort in Online Groups: Who Does the Work and Why]'''. Leadership at a Distance: Research in Technologically Supported Work: 171–194.

Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment

2015-08-10T00:34:26Z

Natematias:

Online harassment is a problem with a long history, including a history of academic research on harassment, ranging across a wide range of fields. On this page, we list short collections of readings that will give you a start on many of the areas relevant to understanding and responding to online harassment.

__TOC__

=== Volunteer Moderators ===
One approach to dealing with online harassment is to recruit volunteer moderators or responders to take a special role on a platform or in a community. This is the approach taken by Google Groups, Meetup.com, Reddit, Facebook Groups, and many online forums.

*''What actions could moderators be supported to take?'' Grimmelman's paper offers a helpful taxonomy of moderation strategies, focusing on the "verbs of moderation" and the kinds of powers you might give moderators. Grimmelman also cites many papers and articles relevant to these possible actions. Quinn offers an alternative to Grimmelman's systematic approach, describing the "ethos" that is created through community and moderation by a few. In ongoing work, Matias is researching the work of Reddit's moderators.
** Grimmelmann, James 2015 '''[http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2588493 The Virtues of Moderation]'''. SSRN Scholarly Paper, ID 2588493. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
** Warnick, Quinn 2010 "The four paradoxes of Metafilter" in '''[http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/11487 What We Talk about When We Talk about Talking: Ethos at Work in an Online Community]'''. Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
** Matias, J. Nathan 2015 '''[http://socialmediacollective.org/2015/06/16/reddit-research/ Recognizing the Work of Reddit's Moderators]''' (work in progress). Microsoft Research Social Media Collective.
*''Is asking volunteers to moderate online conversation asking them to do free work?'' Postigo's paper offers an overview of AOL's community leaders and the Department of Labor investigation into the work of moderators in the early 2000s.
** Postigo, H. 2009 '''[http://ics.sagepub.com/content/12/5/451.full.pdf America Online Volunteers: Lessons from an Early Co-Production Community]'''. International Journal of Cultural Studies 12(5): 451–469.
*''Is Self-Governance Democratic?'' Shaw and HIll's quantitative research across 683 different wikis shows that "peer production entails oligarchic organizational forms," in line with a trend for large democracies to become oligrachic. This issue is taken up in Nathaniel Tkacz's book, where he outlines the kinds of contention that occur in "open organizations," a book that is as much about the idea of Wikipedia as the way Wikipedia actually works.
** Shaw, Aaron, and Benjamin M. Hill 2014 '''[http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.0323 Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production]'''. Journal of Communication 64(2): 215–238.
** Tkacz, Nathaniel 2014 '''[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo19085555.html Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness]'''. Chicago ; London: University Of Chicago Press.
*''Why do people do volunteer moderation?'' In behavioural economics experiments, Hergueaux finds that Wikipedia's administrators are most motivated by social image rather than reciprocity or altruism. Butler, Sproul, Kiesler, and Kraut offer survey results showing a diversity of formal and informal community work in online groups, and that people's participation can be related to how well they know other community members.
** Hergueux, Jérôme, Yann Algan, Yochai Benkler, and Mayo Fuster Morell 2013 '''[http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/IMG/pdf/hergueux_paper-2.pdf Cooperation in a Peer-Production Economy Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia]'''. In 12th Journées Louis-André Gérard-Varet.
** Butler, Brian, Lee Sproull, Sara Kiesler, and Robert Kraut 2002 '''[http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=hcii Community Effort in Online Groups: Who Does the Work and Why]'''. Leadership at a Distance: Research in Technologically Supported Work: 171–194.

Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment

2015-08-10T00:32:22Z

Natematias: Added an update to

Store wars: The enactment and repeal of anti-chain-store legislation in America

2015-08-05T20:47:53Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Store wars: The enactment and repeal of anti-chain-store legislation in America
|authors=Paul Ingram, Hayagreeva Rao
|tags=social movements,organization theory,institutionalism
|summary=Chain stores were created in the early part of the twentieth century, received fierce resistance, had many states pass laws outlawing them, and then saw those laws repealed. Ingram and Rao provide a sociological account, and analysis, of the enactment and repeal of chain store legislation. Their analysis focuses on the social movement literature but focus on the way that institutional helped influence the outcomes. In both cases, the state had to be involved in the delegitimation and legitimation of the chain store organizational form. Ingram and Rao argue that although neo-institutionalists as early as DiMaggio and Powell and Meyer and Rowan established that isomorphic pressure was often influenced, that theorists know very little about how this happens. They offer the example of chain store legislation as a way of understanding one example of how this happens.

They frame their argument in both the social movement literature and the institutional literature and build explicitly off of Rao 1998's [[Caveat emptor: The construction of nonprofit consumer watchdog organizations]] which occupies a similar theoretical place.

This story, however, looks more at the way that formal laws are influenced (e.g., Gusfield's [[Symbolic crusade: Status politics and the American temperance movement]] on the temperance movement) and the interaction between different types of interest groups and with a tact that looks more like a resource mobilization perspective from social movements. In particular, they describe the way that chain stores were able to take advantage of cooperative agricultural interests and retain worker unions which the chain stores will essentially willing to cut deals with in order to bring additional resources to their own attempt to create legitimacy for their form.

They offer a series of formal hypotheses:

* '''1a:''' The rate of anti-chain legislative outcomes will increase with the number of independent stores in a state.
* '''1b:''' The rate of pro-chain legislative outcomes will increase with the number of chain stores in the state.
* '''2:''' The rate of anti-chain legislative outcomes will increase with the degree of segment homogeneity of independents in a state.
* '''3''': The rate of pro-chain legislative outcomes will increase with the number of retail workers in the state.
* '''4a''': The rate of anti-chain legislative outcomes will increase with the size of of non-cooperative agricultural interests in a state.
* '''4b''': The rate of pro-chain legislative outcomes will increase with the size of of cooperative agricultural interests in a state.

They also offer a series of hypotheses about interstate diffusion:

* '''5a''': Legislative contention will do more to promote anti-chain store outcomes in other states when the anti-chain store forces in the state are higher.
* '''5b''': Legislative contention will do more to promote pro-chain store outcomes in other states when the pro-chain store forces in the state are higher.
* '''6''': Susceptibility of a state to influence by action in other states will decrease with the degree of segment homogeneity in the focal state.
* '''7''': Pro-chain store legislative outcomes will increase with Supreme Court decisions striking down anti-chain-store legislation.

The hypotheses using a dataset assembled by the authors associated with different years and states and with legislative information. The two dependent variables are the passage of pro- or anti- chain-store legislation.

Hypotheses 4a and 4b are not supported. Indeed, the results show an asymmetry asymmetry in that the number of independents influenced the the anti-chain store but that repeal "happened on the chain store's turf". Essentially, chains were able to use their national networks to use supra-state organizations and structure to enact legislation at that level, but their opponents, operating at the within-state level, were much less effective at influencing outcomes.

The authors suggest that the relationship between the chain and independent effort can be associated with the (often unexplored) distinction between interest groups and social movements -- the former are without organization.
|relevance=Ingram and Rao's article has been cited more than 50 times in the 6 years since it's publication. It is frequently used as a citation in the growing sociological literature on markets and movements.
|journal=The American Journal of Sociology
|pub_date=2004
|doi=10.2307/3568223
|subject=Sociology
|journal_vol=110
|pub_open_access=No
}}

Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment

2015-07-30T19:04:56Z

Natematias: Added a moderation systems entry. Starting off with two entries to iterate on the formatting...

Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment

2015-07-30T17:03:26Z

Natematias: Initial page creation: Intro

User:Natematias

2015-07-30T15:53:23Z

Natematias: /* Work In Progress on AcaWiki */

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation. He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]), a [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias fellow at the Berkman Center] at Harvard and a [http://derp.institute DERP Institute fellow].

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]
* [[Understanding and Responding to Online Harassment]]

== Other Papers of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.

Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion

2015-06-05T13:31:24Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion
|authors=Amy Blackstone
|url=jce.sagepub.com/content/38/1/85.abstract
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, social movements, compassion, self help, civic engagement
|summary="How do social movement participants ascribe meaning to what they do, and what do these representations mean for our understanding of compassion more generally?" In this paper, Amy Blackstone looks at the gendered nature of "acts of compassion" carried out by people who also seek wider social change through "doing good" and "being good."

Blackstone explores these questions by looking at the antirape and breast cancer movements, which have different historical relations to feminism, with antirape being associated with second-wave feminism and breast cancer associated with the backlash against it. Blackstone argues that although we would expect participation in these movements to be different, "in conducting the day-to-day work of the movement, the gendered processes by which participants construct compassion are similar" (86). In both cases, the social processes involve participants' actions (doing good) and their identities (being good). To examine these two processes, Blackstone focuses on the effect of gender essentialism ideologies on the two movements.

Gender essentialism, says Blackstone, disempowers the breast cancer movement, since it silences women as "crazy or bothersome." The same essentialism disempowers the antirape movement by positiong women as victims (87). Blackstone argues that while both movements fight against this essentialism, they are often working "to undo the consequences of essentialist gender constructions(whether consciously or not), their actions and identities sometimes reify traditional visions of gender." (87).

== Literature Review ==
Blackstone reviews literature in civic engagement and social moments to frame this research. One set of literature in civic engagement sees civic engagement in the U.S. as an "ideology of individuals [and self interest] pitted against institutions." This self-interest model can conflict with civic engagement focused on care<ref name="gerson">Gerson, K. (2002). Moral dilemmas, moral strategies, and the transformation of gender lessons from two generations of work and family change. Gender & Society, 16(1), 8-28.</ref>, or institutionally-oriented change. Blackstone reviews literature in civic engagement and social moments to frame this research. One set of literature in civic engagement sees civic engagement in the U.S. as an "ideology of individuals [and self interest] pitted against institutions." This self-interest model can conflict with civic engagement focused on care<ref name="gerson"/>, or institutionally-oriented change. One theory is that self-interested participants take on care to "pursue self-fulfillment at the same time that they connect with others" <ref>Lichterman, P. (1996). The search for political community: American activists reinventing commitment. Cambridge University Press.</ref>. Blackstone argues that compassion in social movements is constructed in this self-interested/individual communal connection.

Blackstone argues that "doing good" has often been accused of failing to achieve broader change, and is complicated by issues of pwoer and inequality<ref>Blackstone, A. M. (2003). Racing for the Cure and Taking Back the Night: Constructing Gender, Politics, and Public Participation in Women's Activist/volunteer Work (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota).</ref>. This work of doing good is often gendered, and "stereotypes about gender can lead one to take wome's acts of compassion for granted" <ref>Blackstone, A. (2004). “It’s Just about being Fair” Activism and the Politics of Volunteering in the Breast Cancer Movement. Gender & Society, 18(3), 350-368.</ref><ref>Daniels, A. K. (1985). Good times and good works: The place of sociability in the work of women volunteers. Social Problems, 32(4), 363-374.</ref><ref>Daniels, A. K. (1988). Invisible careers: Women civic leaders from the volunteer world. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref>DeVault, M. L. (1994). Feeding the family: The social organization of caring as gendered work. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref name="wuthnow">Wuthnow, R. (2012). Acts of compassion: Caring for others and helping ourselves. Princeton University Press.</ref>.

Blackstone also describes work on "new social movements" that are concerned with tensions between individual and institutional change. Within this, Blackstone identifies scholarship that focuses on emotions in social movements<ref>Flam, H., & King, D. (2007). Emotions and social movements. Routledge.</ref><ref>Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M., & Polletta, F. (Eds.). (2009). Passionate politics: Emotions and social movements. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref>Jasper, J. M. (1998, September). The emotions of protest: Affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements. In Sociological forum (Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 397-424). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.</ref>. Blackstone also describes social movement research that focuses on groups seeking personal change, attempting to "normalize experiences traditionally regarded as deviant" in addition to the more common research on groups seeking institutional change<ref name="taylor">Taylor, V., & Van Willigen, M. (1996). Women's self-help and the reconstruction of gender: The postpartum support and breast cancer movements. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 1(2), 123-142.</ref>.

To focus on social movements that seek individual change and collective change (like breast cancer and antirape movements), Blackstone also draws from "scholars who have challenged the conceptual distinction between charity work and activism... these scholars have sought to overcome the tendency to overlook certain forms of women's activism" (90) <ref>Martin, P. Y. (1995). Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women's movement. Temple University Press.</ref><ref>McAdam, D. (1992). Gender as a mediator of the activist experience: The case of Freedom Summer. American journal of sociology, 1211-1240.</ref><ref name="taylor"/><ref>Naples, N. A. (1992). Activist mothering: Cross-generational continuity in the community work of women from low-income urban neighborhoods. Gender & Society, 6(3), 441-463.</ref><ref name="rock">Taylor, V. A. (1996). Rock-a-by baby: feminism, self help, and postpartum depression. Psychology Press.</ref>. Blackstone writes: "'''By showing that women’s activist/charity work in relatively private arenas indeed has public implications and repercussions''', these authors urge us to stretch our consideration of what it means to be compassionate, to do good, and to be good."

By combining civic engagement and social movement literature, Blackstone hopes to offer "new insights about how compassion works." One predicts that individualism shapes how we see ourselves and our good works. The other argues that "emotions matter" to these processes. Blackstone hopes to offer insights on how these two processes are are gendered.

== Methods ==
Blackstone carried out ethnographic research in two social movements, with case-oriented qualitative methods <ref>Ragin, C. C. (2014). The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Univ of California Press.</ref>. The breast cancer organization was the "Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation" as a steering committee member. She carried out 300 hours of participant observation over 3.5 years, and data from 10 formal and 50 informal interviews with social movement participants. The other organization was a campus antirape organization in the Midwest called "Stop Rape" in this paper. She attended 2 42-hour training sessions and "hung out" in the office. She also analyzes data from a national conference focused on sexual violence advocacy.

Blackstone describes her method as "critical ethnography"<ref>Jim Thomas (Ed.). (1993). Doing critical ethnography (Vol. 26). Sage.</ref>, where she uses the data to "critique not only the social processes observed but also the theoretical concepts around which those processes are centered" (93). She contrasts this with a grounded theory approach, since she was focusing on "anomalies in existing understandings of doing good at the same time that it highlighted silences in earlier scholarly discussions of doing good" (94), silences she attempted to verify in the second site.

==Findings==
=== Constructing Compassion ===
Blackstone argues that compassion is constructed through actions (doing good) and perceptions/presentations of themselves (being good). In many cases "participants also seemed to equate doing good with being good" whether a "'good' survivor, a good movement participant, and a good community member" (96).

Participants in Komen often described their activism as "having fun" or "hanging out." They described male participants as "heroes or protectors," they described women as victims or nurturers. Blackstone observed in Stop Rape that participants imagined that men might be uncomfortable joining a movement "where men are often the bad guys" and flirted with men to show them that they didn't always see them as "the bad guys" (100).

Participants in both movements often connected "doing good" with "being good" and described "incorporating their commitment to doing good into all realms of their lives" (102). Citing Bellah's research on the inability of Americans to relate moral identity to wider social problems<ref>Bellah, E. R. N., Bellah, R. N., Tipton, S. M., Sullivan, W. M., Madsen, R., Swidler, A., ... & Tipton, S. M. (2007). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Univ of California Press.</ref>, Blackstone traces this to Komen and Stop Rape. "At Stop Rape, participants seem unaware of their privilege as college students and the ways atht their social positions enable their participation" (103). At Komen, participants were unable to link their work with the experiences of people with lower socioeconomic status, and avoided "confronting the inequalities that breast cancer is centered around" (103). As a result "those who do good for fre are sometimes constructed as ''more'' good" (105).

===Doing Good, Being Good, and the Politics of Empowerment ===
Blackstone asks "is empowerment anything more than self-care? Is it at all political, and does it lead to broader change?" Is it self help or activism? <ref name="rock"/><ref name="taylor"/>. In the two organizations, "the emphasis is on empowering the individual," which BLackstone says "is arguably the most pervasive, most readily available way in America of conceiving the possibilities for social chang" (108). Yet participants also engage with wider concerns, whether the healthcare system or "the culture of violence" (109). Since it is not clear how to chang this culture "advocate rhetoric thus comes back to the individual" (110).

== Conclusions ==
Blackstone argues that "the cultural context of individualsm operates together with the gendered character of social movements to shape the processes by which participants do their good works and construct themselves as morel beings," mediated by social location and gender (111).

Prompted by Wuthnow's findings on the importance of volunteer narratives <ref name="wuthnow"/>, Blackstone speculates that "the telling of these stories, as activists go about the work of doing good... connects individuals to something beyond themselves" (111).
|relevance=This paper offers a helpful literature review that links theories of civic engagement with social movement theory around the role of care in civic life. It also offers a helpful lens on two questions that bear further research:
* the degree to which care work in civic life is gendered
* the question of whether care work / compassion in civic life can address systemic change

== Notable References ==
<references/>
|journal=Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
|pub_date=2009/02/01
|doi=10.1177/0891241607310864
|subject=Sociology
}}

Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion

2015-06-05T13:30:30Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion
|authors=Amy Blackstone
|url=jce.sagepub.com/content/38/1/85.abstract
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, social movements, compassion, self help, civic engagement
|summary="How do social movement participants ascribe meaning to what they do, and what do these representations mean for our understanding of compassion more generally?" In this paper, Amy Blackstone looks at the gendered nature of "acts of compassion" carried out by people who also seek wider social change through "doing good" and "being good."

Blackstone explores these questions by looking at the antirape and breast cancer movements, which have different historical relations to feminism, with antirape being associated with second-wave feminism and breast cancer associated with the backlash against it. Blackstone argues that although we would expect participation in these movements to be different, "in conducting the day-to-day work of the movement, the gendered processes by which participants construct compassion are similar" (86). In both cases, the social processes involve participants' actions (doing good) and their identities (being good). To examine these two processes, Blackstone focuses on the effect of gender essentialism ideologies on the two movements.

Gender essentialism, says Blackstone, disempowers the breast cancer movement, since it silences women as "crazy or bothersome." The same essentialism disempowers the antirape movement by positiong women as victims (87). Blackstone argues that while both movements fight against this essentialism, they are often working "to undo the consequences of essentialist gender constructions(whether consciously or not), their actions and identities sometimes reify traditional visions of gender." (87).

== Literature Review ==
Blackstone reviews literature in civic engagement and social moments to frame this research. One set of literature in civic engagement sees civic engagement in the U.S. as an "ideology of individuals [and self interest] pitted against institutions." This self-interest model can conflict with civic engagement focused on care<ref>Gerson, K. (2002). Moral dilemmas, moral strategies, and the transformation of gender lessons from two generations of work and family change. Gender & Society, 16(1), 8-28.</ref>, or institutionally-oriented change. Blackstone reviews literature in civic engagement and social moments to frame this research. One set of literature in civic engagement sees civic engagement in the U.S. as an "ideology of individuals [and self interest] pitted against institutions." This self-interest model can conflict with civic engagement focused on care<ref>Gerson, K. (2002). Moral dilemmas, moral strategies, and the transformation of gender lessons from two generations of work and family change. Gender & Society, 16(1), 8-28.</ref>, or institutionally-oriented change. One theory is that self-interested participants take on care to "pursue self-fulfillment at the same time that they connect with others" <ref>Lichterman, P. (1996). The search for political community: American activists reinventing commitment. Cambridge University Press.</ref>. Blackstone argues that compassion in social movements is constructed in this self-interested/individual communal connection.

Blackstone argues that "doing good" has often been accused of failing to achieve broader change, and is complicated by issues of pwoer and inequality<ref>Blackstone, A. M. (2003). Racing for the Cure and Taking Back the Night: Constructing Gender, Politics, and Public Participation in Women's Activist/volunteer Work (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota).</ref>. This work of doing good is often gendered, and "stereotypes about gender can lead one to take wome's acts of compassion for granted" <ref>Blackstone, A. (2004). “It’s Just about being Fair” Activism and the Politics of Volunteering in the Breast Cancer Movement. Gender & Society, 18(3), 350-368.</ref><ref>Daniels, A. K. (1985). Good times and good works: The place of sociability in the work of women volunteers. Social Problems, 32(4), 363-374.</ref><ref>Daniels, A. K. (1988). Invisible careers: Women civic leaders from the volunteer world. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref>DeVault, M. L. (1994). Feeding the family: The social organization of caring as gendered work. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref name="wuthnow">Wuthnow, R. (2012). Acts of compassion: Caring for others and helping ourselves. Princeton University Press.</ref>.

Blackstone also describes work on "new social movements" that are concerned with tensions between individual and institutional change. Within this, Blackstone identifies scholarship that focuses on emotions in social movements<ref>Flam, H., & King, D. (2007). Emotions and social movements. Routledge.</ref><ref>Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M., & Polletta, F. (Eds.). (2009). Passionate politics: Emotions and social movements. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref>Jasper, J. M. (1998, September). The emotions of protest: Affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements. In Sociological forum (Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 397-424). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.</ref>. Blackstone also describes social movement research that focuses on groups seeking personal change, attempting to "normalize experiences traditionally regarded as deviant" in addition to the more common research on groups seeking institutional change<ref name="taylor">Taylor, V., & Van Willigen, M. (1996). Women's self-help and the reconstruction of gender: The postpartum support and breast cancer movements. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 1(2), 123-142.</ref>.

To focus on social movements that seek individual change and collective change (like breast cancer and antirape movements), Blackstone also draws from "scholars who have challenged the conceptual distinction between charity work and activism... these scholars have sought to overcome the tendency to overlook certain forms of women's activism" (90) <ref>Martin, P. Y. (1995). Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women's movement. Temple University Press.</ref><ref>McAdam, D. (1992). Gender as a mediator of the activist experience: The case of Freedom Summer. American journal of sociology, 1211-1240.</ref><ref name="taylor"/><ref>Naples, N. A. (1992). Activist mothering: Cross-generational continuity in the community work of women from low-income urban neighborhoods. Gender & Society, 6(3), 441-463.</ref><ref name="rock">Taylor, V. A. (1996). Rock-a-by baby: feminism, self help, and postpartum depression. Psychology Press.</ref>. Blackstone writes: "'''By showing that women’s activist/charity work in relatively private arenas indeed has public implications and repercussions''', these authors urge us to stretch our consideration of what it means to be compassionate, to do good, and to be good."

By combining civic engagement and social movement literature, Blackstone hopes to offer "new insights about how compassion works." One predicts that individualism shapes how we see ourselves and our good works. The other argues that "emotions matter" to these processes. Blackstone hopes to offer insights on how these two processes are are gendered.

== Methods ==
Blackstone carried out ethnographic research in two social movements, with case-oriented qualitative methods <ref>Ragin, C. C. (2014). The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Univ of California Press.</ref>. The breast cancer organization was the "Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation" as a steering committee member. She carried out 300 hours of participant observation over 3.5 years, and data from 10 formal and 50 informal interviews with social movement participants. The other organization was a campus antirape organization in the Midwest called "Stop Rape" in this paper. She attended 2 42-hour training sessions and "hung out" in the office. She also analyzes data from a national conference focused on sexual violence advocacy.

Blackstone describes her method as "critical ethnography"<ref>Jim Thomas (Ed.). (1993). Doing critical ethnography (Vol. 26). Sage.</ref>, where she uses the data to "critique not only the social processes observed but also the theoretical concepts around which those processes are centered" (93). She contrasts this with a grounded theory approach, since she was focusing on "anomalies in existing understandings of doing good at the same time that it highlighted silences in earlier scholarly discussions of doing good" (94), silences she attempted to verify in the second site.

==Findings==
=== Constructing Compassion ===
Blackstone argues that compassion is constructed through actions (doing good) and perceptions/presentations of themselves (being good). In many cases "participants also seemed to equate doing good with being good" whether a "'good' survivor, a good movement participant, and a good community member" (96).

Participants in Komen often described their activism as "having fun" or "hanging out." They described male participants as "heroes or protectors," they described women as victims or nurturers. Blackstone observed in Stop Rape that participants imagined that men might be uncomfortable joining a movement "where men are often the bad guys" and flirted with men to show them that they didn't always see them as "the bad guys" (100).

Participants in both movements often connected "doing good" with "being good" and described "incorporating their commitment to doing good into all realms of their lives" (102). Citing Bellah's research on the inability of Americans to relate moral identity to wider social problems<ref>Bellah, E. R. N., Bellah, R. N., Tipton, S. M., Sullivan, W. M., Madsen, R., Swidler, A., ... & Tipton, S. M. (2007). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Univ of California Press.</ref>, Blackstone traces this to Komen and Stop Rape. "At Stop Rape, participants seem unaware of their privilege as college students and the ways atht their social positions enable their participation" (103). At Komen, participants were unable to link their work with the experiences of people with lower socioeconomic status, and avoided "confronting the inequalities that breast cancer is centered around" (103). As a result "those who do good for fre are sometimes constructed as ''more'' good" (105).

===Doing Good, Being Good, and the Politics of Empowerment ===
Blackstone asks "is empowerment anything more than self-care? Is it at all political, and does it lead to broader change?" Is it self help or activism? <ref name="rock"/><ref name="taylor"/>. In the two organizations, "the emphasis is on empowering the individual," which BLackstone says "is arguably the most pervasive, most readily available way in America of conceiving the possibilities for social chang" (108). Yet participants also engage with wider concerns, whether the healthcare system or "the culture of violence" (109). Since it is not clear how to chang this culture "advocate rhetoric thus comes back to the individual" (110).

== Conclusions ==
Blackstone argues that "the cultural context of individualsm operates together with the gendered character of social movements to shape the processes by which participants do their good works and construct themselves as morel beings," mediated by social location and gender (111).

Prompted by Wuthnow's findings on the importance of volunteer narratives <ref name="wuthnow"/>, Blackstone speculates that "the telling of these stories, as activists go about the work of doing good... connects individuals to something beyond themselves" (111).
|relevance=This paper offers a helpful literature review that links theories of civic engagement with social movement theory around the role of care in civic life. It also offers a helpful lens on two questions that bear further research:
* the degree to which care work in civic life is gendered
* the question of whether care work / compassion in civic life can address systemic change

== Notable References ==
<references/>
|journal=Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
|pub_date=2009/02/01
|doi=10.1177/0891241607310864
|subject=Sociology
}}

User:Natematias

2015-06-04T20:58:15Z

Natematias:

Nathan Matias collaborates on technology, research, and communities which support people in expression, creativity, and cooperation. He's a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media ([civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/ blog here]), a [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jnmatias fellow at the Berkman Center] at Harvard and a [http://derp.institute DERP Institute fellow].

At Texperts, Nathan was on the startup team that scaled microwork systems to reach customers and workers on four continents. At SwiftKey, he helped develop one of the premier text entry systems for mobile, currently used by millions of people. At Microsoft Fuse Labs, he developed novel systems for collaborative neighborhood journalism. Nathan was also the founding Chief Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing center in London.

Nathan regularly liveblogs talks and events. He also publishes data journalism with the [http://www.theguardian.com/profile/nathan-matias Guardian Datablog] and [http://www.pbs.org/idealab/author/natematias/ PBS IdeaLab]. From 2012-2014, Nathan facilitated [http://www.theatlantic.com/j-nathan-matias/ #1book140, The Atlantic's Twitter book club], hosting frequent live Twitter Q&As with prominent writers. He coordinated the Media Lab [http://festival-of-learning.media.mit.edu/ Festival of Learning] in 2012 and 2013.

Before MIT, Nathan completed an MA in English literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Davies Jackson scholar and wrote two theses on African literature and the psychology of interactive fiction. In earlier years, he was Riddick Scholar and Hugh Cannon Memorial Scholar at the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He won the Ted Nelson award at ACM Hypertext 2005 with a work of tangible scholarly hypermedia. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Manufacturing in 2013.

== Work In Progress on AcaWiki ==
* [[TODO List for Literature Review on Online Harassment]]
* [[J Nathan Matias General Exams Reading List]]

== Other Papers of Note ==
* Blackstone, A. (2009). [[Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion]]. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 85-116.

Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion

2015-06-04T20:55:10Z

Natematias:

{{Summary
|title=Doing Good, Being Good, and the Social Construction of Compassion
|authors=Amy Blackstone
|url=jce.sagepub.com/content/38/1/85.abstract
|tags=NatematiasGenerals, social movements, compassion, self help, civic engagement
|summary="How do social movement participants ascribe meaning to what they do, and what do these representations mean for our understanding of compassion more generally?" In this paper, Amy Blackstone looks at the gendered nature of "acts of compassion" carried out by people who also seeks wider social change through "doing good" and "being good."

Blackstone explores these questions by looking at the antirape and breast cancer movements, which have different historical relations to feminism, with antirape being associated with second-wave feminism and breast cancer associated with the backlash against it. Blackstone argues that although we would expect participation in these movements to be different, "in conducting the day-to-day work of the movement, the gendered processes by which participants construct compassion are similar" (86). In both cases, the social processes relate to participants' actions (doing good) and their identities (being good). To examine these two processes, Blackstone focuses on the effect of gender essentialism ideologies on the two movements.

Gender essentialism, says Blackstone, disempowers the breast cancer movement, since it silences women as "crazy or bothersome." The same essentialism disempowers the antirape movement by positiong women as victims (87). Blackstone argues that while both movements fight against this essentialism, they are often working "to undo the consequences of essentialist gender constructions(whether consciously or not), their actions and identities sometimes reify traditional visions of gender." (87).

== Literature Review ==
Blackstone reviews literature in civic engagement and social moments to frame this research. One set of literature in civic engagement sees civic engagement in the U.S. as an "ideology of individuals [and self interest] pitted against institutions." This self-interest model can conflict with civic engagement focused on care<ref>Gerson, K. (2002). Moral dilemmas, moral strategies, and the transformation of gender lessons from two generations of work and family change. Gender & Society, 16(1), 8-28.</ref>, or institutionally-oriented change. Blackstone reviews literature in civic engagement and social moments to frame this research. One set of literature in civic engagement sees civic engagement in the U.S. as an "ideology of individuals [and self interest] pitted against institutions." This self-interest model can conflict with civic engagement focused on care<ref>Gerson, K. (2002). Moral dilemmas, moral strategies, and the transformation of gender lessons from two generations of work and family change. Gender & Society, 16(1), 8-28.</ref>, or institutionally-oriented change. One theory is that self-interested participants take on care to "pursue self-fulfillment at the same time that they connect with others" <ref>Lichterman, P. (1996). The search for political community: American activists reinventing commitment. Cambridge University Press.</ref>. Blackstone argues that compassion in social movements is constructed in this self-interested/individual communal connection.

Blackstone argues that "doing good" has often been accused of failing to achieve broader change, and is complicated by issues of pwoer and inequality<ref>Blackstone, A. M. (2003). Racing for the Cure and Taking Back the Night: Constructing Gender, Politics, and Public Participation in Women's Activist/volunteer Work (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota).</ref>. This work of doing good is often gendered, and "stereotypes about gender can lead one to take wome's acts of compassion for granted" <ref>Blackstone, A. (2004). “It’s Just about being Fair” Activism and the Politics of Volunteering in the Breast Cancer Movement. Gender & Society, 18(3), 350-368.</ref><ref>Daniels, A. K. (1985). Good times and good works: The place of sociability in the work of women volunteers. Social Problems, 32(4), 363-374.</ref><ref>Daniels, A. K. (1988). Invisible careers: Women civic leaders from the volunteer world. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref>DeVault, M. L. (1994). Feeding the family: The social organization of caring as gendered work. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref name="wuthnow">Wuthnow, R. (2012). Acts of compassion: Caring for others and helping ourselves. Princeton University Press.</ref>.

Blackstone also describes work on "new social movements" that are concerned with tensions between individual and institutional change. Within this, Blackstone identifies scholarship that focuses on emotions in social movements<ref>Flam, H., & King, D. (2007). Emotions and social movements. Routledge.</ref><ref>Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M., & Polletta, F. (Eds.). (2009). Passionate politics: Emotions and social movements. University of Chicago Press.</ref><ref>Jasper, J. M. (1998, September). The emotions of protest: Affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements. In Sociological forum (Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 397-424). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.</ref>. Blackstone also describes social movement research that focuses on groups seeking personal change, attempting to "normalize experiences traditionally regarded as deviant" in addition to the more common research on groups seeking institutional change<ref name="taylor">Taylor, V., & Van Willigen, M. (1996). Women's self-help and the reconstruction of gender: The postpartum support and breast cancer movements. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 1(2), 123-142.</ref>.

To focus on social movements that seek individual change and collective change (like breast cancer and antirape movements), Blackstone also draws from "scholars who have challenged the conceptual distinction between charity work and activism... these scholars have sought to overcome the tendency to overlook certain forms of women's activism" (90) <ref>Martin, P. Y. (1995). Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women's movement. Temple University Press.</ref><ref>McAdam, D. (1992). Gender as a mediator of the activist experience: The case of Freedom Summer. American journal of sociology, 1211-1240.</ref><ref name="taylor"/><ref>Naples, N. A. (1992). Activist mothering: Cross-generational continuity in the community work of women from low-income urban neighborhoods. Gender & Society, 6(3), 441-463.</ref><ref name="rock">Taylor, V. A. (1996). Rock-a-by baby: feminism, self help, and postpartum depression. Psychology Press.</ref>. Blackstone writes: "'''By showing that women’s activist/charity work in relatively private arenas indeed has public implications and repercussions''', these authors urge us to stretch our consideration of what it means to be compassionate, to do good, and to be good."

By combining civic engagement and social movement literature, Blackstone hopes to offer "new insights about how compassion works." One predicts that individualism shapes how we see ourselves and our good works. The other argues that "emotions matter" to these processes. Blackstone hopes to offer insights on how these two processes are are gendered.

== Methods ==
Blackstone carried out ethnographic research in two social movements, with case-oriented qualitative methods <ref>Ragin, C. C. (2014). The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Univ of California Press.</ref>. The breast cancer organization was the "Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation" as a steering committee member. She carried out 300 hours of participant observation over 3.5 years, and data from 10 formal and 50 informal interviews with social movement participants. The other organization was a campus antirape organization in the Midwest called "Stop Rape" in this paper. She attended 2 42-hour training sessions and "hung out" in the office. She also analyzes data from a national conference focused on sexual violence advocacy.

Blackstone describes her method as "critical ethnography"<ref>Jim Thomas (Ed.). (1993). Doing critical ethnography (Vol. 26). Sage.</ref>, where she uses the data to "critique not only the social processes observed but also the theoretical concepts around which those processes are centered" (93). She contrasts this with a grounded theory approach, since she was focusing on "anomalies in existing understandings of doing good at the same time that it highlighted silences in earlier scholarly discussions of doing good" (94), silences she attempted to verify in the second site.

==Findings==
=== Constructing Compassion ===
Blackstone argues that compassion is constructed through actions (doing good) and perceptions/presentations of themselves (being good). In many cases "participants also seemed to equate doing good with being good" whether a "'good' survivor, a good movement participant, and a good community member" (96).

Participants in Komen often described their activism as "having fun" or "hanging out." They described male participants as "heroes or protectors," they described women as victims or nurturers. Blackstone observed in Stop Rape that participants imagined that men might be uncomfortable joining a movement "where men are often the bad guys" and flirted with men to show them that they didn't always see them as "the bad guys" (100).

Participants in both movements often connected "doing good" with "being good" and described "incorporating their commitment to doing good into all realms of their lives" (102). Citing Bellah's research on the inability of Americans to relate moral identity to wider social problems<ref>Bellah, E. R. N., Bellah, R. N., Tipton, S. M., Sullivan, W. M., Madsen, R., Swidler, A., ... & Tipton, S. M. (2007). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Univ of California Press.</ref>, Blackstone traces this to Komen and Stop Rape. "At Stop Rape, participants seem unaware of their privilege as college students and the ways atht their social positions enable their participation" (103). At Komen, participants were unable to link their work with the experiences of people with lower socioeconomic status, and avoided "confronting the inequalities that breast cancer is centered around" (103). As a result "those who do good for fre are sometimes constructed as ''more'' good" (105).

===Doing Good, Being Good, and the Politics of Empowerment ===
Blackstone asks "is empowerment anything more than self-care? Is it at all political, and does it lead to broader change?" Is it self help or activism? <ref name="rock"/><ref name="taylor"/>. In the two organizations, "the emphasis is on empowering the individual," which BLackstone says "is arguably the most pervasive, most readily available way in America of conceiving the possibilities for social chang" (108). Yet participants also engage with wider concerns, whether the healthcare system or "the culture of violence" (109). Since it is not clear how to chang this culture "advocate rhetoric thus comes back to the individual" (110).

== Conclusions ==
Blackstone argues that "the cultural context of individualsm operates together with the gendered character of social movements to shape the processes by which participants do their good works and construct themselves as morel beings," mediated by social location and gender (111).

Prompted by Wuthnow's findings on the importance of volunteer narratives <ref name="wuthnow"/>, Blackstone speculates that "the telling of these stories, as activists go about the work of doing good... connects individuals to something beyond themselves" (111).
|relevance=This paper offers a helpful literature review that links theories of civic engagement with social movement theory around the role of care in civic life. It also offers a helpful lens on two questions that bear further research:
* the degree to which care work in civic life is gendered
* the question of whether care work / compassion in civic life can address systemic change

== Notable References ==
<references/>
|journal=Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
|pub_date=2009/02/01
|doi=10.1177/0891241607310864
|subject=Sociology
}}