Understanding Researchers’ different Approaches to Stakeholder Interaction

Scientific experts are increasingly put under pressure. This stems partly from the current trend towards questioning scientific authority and embracing so called “alternative facts”. Another source is the changing media landscape with a democratization of the possibility to speak. A third ground for pressure is demands raised by funding agencies to include stakeholders in different ways in research processes. Researchers increasingly need to engage with these issues, and the changing relation between science and society, in order both to get funding and to be able to influence policy-making processes. Given this, universities increasingly focus on and reward outreach and societal impact. In this paper we present a study of how Swedish environmental researchers engage with stakeholders and society at large. It is based on a survey and focus group interviews. The main conclusion from the study is that researchers use one of two models to understand and engage with stakeholders. The two models are based on different logics, which imply that facilitators and barriers for stakeholder interaction are understood in different ways. The first model, the transfer model, is built on an understanding of the necessity to protect scientific research process from undue influence from stakeholders. Interaction is in many ways seen as a threat to the integrity of scientific knowledge. Therefore, interaction with stakeholders should only be conducted at the end of research projects, when knowledge is already produced. The second model, the interaction model, is instead built on a conviction that interaction is necessary for enabling many forms of scientific knowledge production. Without stakeholder interaction the quality of knowledge would be jeopardized. In this model, interaction is, therefore, preferred throughout the entire research process. The two models are based on very different understandings of the proper relation between science and society. Due to this, scientists committed to the respective models, react in different ways to the increased pressure put on them. Researchers within the first model value their scientific neutrality and try to avoid close contact with stakeholders. Researchers in the second model instead understands it as further reason to interact and do research in cooperation with stakeholders. Although there is research supporting the higher efficiency of the interaction model, we argue that researchers within both models need to be able to receive support on stakeholder interaction from their universities as well as funding from agencies. One reason for this is that research projects are different, which means that not all projects can easily fit, or is needed to fit, within the logic of the interaction model. A second reason is that researchers within the transfer model are unlikely to adopt practices they see as a threat to the integrity of scientific knowledge production and what it means to be a scientist. Given this, we are likely to see disagreement within the scientific community as how best to respond to the changing relation between science and society.