Clark William C, Tomich Thomas P, van Noordwijk Meine, Guston David, Catacutan Delia, Dickson Nancy M, McNie Elizabeth
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
Agricultural Sustainability Institute, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616;
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Apr 26;113(17):4615-22. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0900231108. Epub 2011 Aug 15.
Previous research on the determinants of effectiveness in knowledge systems seeking to support sustainable development has highlighted the importance of "boundary work" through which research communities organize their relations with new science, other sources of knowledge, and the worlds of action and policymaking. A growing body of scholarship postulates specific attributes of boundary work that promote used and useful research. These propositions, however, are largely based on the experience of a few industrialized countries. We report here on an effort to evaluate their relevance for efforts to harness science in support of sustainability in the developing world. We carried out a multicountry comparative analysis of natural resource management programs conducted under the auspices of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. We discovered six distinctive kinds of boundary work contributing to the successes of those programs-a greater variety than has been documented in previous studies. We argue that these different kinds of boundary work can be understood as a dual response to the different uses for which the results of specific research programs are intended, and the different sources of knowledge drawn on by those programs. We show that these distinctive kinds of boundary work require distinctive strategies to organize them effectively. Especially important are arrangements regarding participation of stakeholders, accountability in governance, and the use of "boundary objects." We conclude that improving the ability of research programs to produce useful knowledge for sustainable development will require both greater and differentiated support for multiple forms of boundary work.
以往关于旨在支持可持续发展的知识系统有效性决定因素的研究强调了“边界工作”的重要性，通过这种工作，研究团体组织他们与新科学、其他知识来源以及行动和决策领域的关系。越来越多的学术研究提出了促进有用且实用研究的边界工作的具体属性。然而，这些主张很大程度上基于少数工业化国家的经验。我们在此报告一项评估其对发展中国家利用科学支持可持续发展努力的相关性的工作。我们对在国际农业研究磋商小组主持下开展的自然资源管理项目进行了多国比较分析。我们发现了六种有助于这些项目成功的独特边界工作类型——比以往研究记录的种类更多。我们认为，这些不同类型的边界工作可以理解为对特定研究项目结果预期的不同用途以及这些项目所利用的不同知识来源的双重回应。我们表明，这些独特的边界工作类型需要独特的策略来有效组织。特别重要的是关于利益相关者参与、治理中的问责制以及“边界对象”使用的安排。我们得出结论，提高研究项目为可持续发展产生有用知识的能力将需要对多种形式的边界工作给予更多且有差别的支持。
