A Knowledge Brokering Framework for Integrated Landscape Management

Sustainable land management is at the heart of some of the most intractable challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. It is critical for tackling biodiversity loss, land degradation, climate change and the decline of ecosystem services. It underpins food production, livelihoods, dietary health, social equity, climate change adaptation, and many other outcomes. However, interdependencies, trade-offs, time lags, and non-linear responses make it difficult to predict the combined effects of land management decisions. Policy decisions also have to be made in the context of conflicting interests, values and power dynamics of those living on the land and those affected by the consequences of land use decisions. This makes designing and coordinating effective land management policies and programmes highly challenging. The difficulty is exacerbated by the scarcity of reliable data on the impacts of land management on the environment and livelihoods. This poses a challenge for policymakers and practitioners in governments, development banks, non-governmental organisations, and other institutions. It also sets demands for researchers, who are under ever increasing pressure from funders to demonstrate uptake and impact of their work. Relatively few research methods exist that can address such questions in a holistic way. Decision makers and researchers need to work together to help untangle, contextualise and interpret fragmented evidence through systems approaches to make decisions in spite of uncertainty. Individuals and institutions acting as knowledge brokers can support these interactions by facilitating the co-creation and use of scientific and other knowledge. Given the patchy nature of data and evidence, particularly in developing countries, it is important to draw on the full range of available models, tools and evidence. In this paper we review the use of evidence to inform multiple-objective integrated landscape management policies and programmes, focusing on how to simultaneously achieve different sustainable development objectives in diverse landscapes. We set out key success factors for evidence-based decision-making, which are summarised into 10 key principles for integrated landscape management knowledge brokering in integrated landscape management and 12 key skills for knowledge brokers. We finally propose a decision-support framework to organise evidence that can be used to tackle different types of land management policy decision

Facilitating Meaningful Change Within U.S. Law Schools

Despite the widely recognized challenges and complaints facing U.S. legal education, very little is understood about how law schools can adapt faster and better. This Article uses institutional theory, behavioral economics, and psychology to explain why change has proven so difficult for U.S. law schools. Next, using institutional entrepreneurship, the Article explains the theoretical steps necessary to overcome the institutional resistance to change. The Article then discusses the characteristics of opportunities that are most likely to better meet the needs of law students while also providing sustainable benefits to the individually innovating law schools. Using management theory, the Article then proposes a seven-step change process model to enable individual law schools to systematically overcome institutional resistance, formulate unique strategies, and actually achieve meaningful change

Adaptation of WASH Services Delivery to Climate Change and Other Sources of Risk and Uncertainty

This report urges WASH sector practitioners to take more seriously the threat of climate change and the consequences it could have on their work. By considering climate change within a risk and uncertainty framework, the field can use the multitude of approaches laid out here to adequately protect itself against a range of direct and indirect impacts. Eleven methods and tools for this specific type of risk management are described, including practical advice on how to implement them successfully

What really matters? A qualitative analysis on the adoption of innovations in agriculture

The agricultural industry is confronted with the need of increasing the production to feed a growing population, and contemporarily to manage the decreased availability of natural resources. This major challenge boosts agriculture sector to adopt new approaches and technical innovations; anyway, the adoption of innovations in agriculture is not immediate, due to the interaction of many drivers that impact on individuals and enterprises’ decisions. This paper aims at providing a list of drivers for the adoption of technological innovations in agriculture, on the basis of the outcomes of in-depth interviews and focus groups performed in three European countries (Italy, Greece, Turkey). With specific reference to innovations, ease of use, effectiveness, usefulness, resource savings, and compatibility were mentioned as relevant features for an innovation to be adopted. Trials, demonstrations, experience and knowledge sharing, and support from qualified third parties were included among the facilitating factors for conveying and promoting innovations. Finally, public funding, agricultural policies and market conditions were identified as factors that may tip the balance in the process of innovations’ adoption

Integration of decision support systems to improve decision support performance

Decision support system (DSS) is a well-established research and development area. Traditional isolated, stand-alone DSS has been recently facing new challenges. In order to improve the performance of DSS to meet the challenges, research has been actively carried out to develop integrated decision support systems (IDSS). This paper reviews the current research efforts with regard to the development of IDSS. The focus of the paper is on the integration aspect for IDSS through multiple perspectives, and the technologies that support this integration. More than 100 papers and software systems are discussed. Current research efforts and the development status of IDSS are explained, compared and classified. In addition, future trends and challenges in integration are outlined. The paper concludes that by addressing integration, better support will be provided to decision makers, with the expectation of both better decisions and improved decision making processes

Robust decision making for agile systems development Part 1: exploring the paradigm

The need for agility in operational systems within the defence enterprise and procurement domains has been identified by many authors, and over time, there have been a number of initiatives and programmes that have sought to identify the nature of agility, and the means by which it can be defined and employed within individual cases and scenarios. These have identified impediments to the successful realization of agile practices and methods, particularly the resilience of agile decision making throughout the conceptual understanding, design and implementation of the operational system. To further investigate the extent to which this process can be implemented in a robust and reliable manner, Cranfield University created the ‘Robust Enterprise-based Approach for Agility in Capability Through-life (REA2CT)’ framework, which provides a number of functional steps to institute a systems development lifecycle approach to producing agile solutions for use in networked systems and systems-of-systems. This paper briefly examines the Customer Need (CN) for the enterprise-based delivery of system (of systems) agility into the operational domain. Axiomatic Design (AD) theory is used to describe the REA2CT framework, identifying Functional Requirements (FRs) which might satisfy the CN for agility. Initial Design Parameters (DPs) are proposed to satisfy the FRs

Which governs - the relationship or the contract?

According to the transaction cost economics literature, a firm’s external contractual relationships must be ‘fit for purpose’. What is a ‘fit for purpose’ contractual relationship should not be a normative decision, but an objective one, to be made with regard to achieving transaction cost efficiency, while defending the core competencies of the firm. Data from a Hong Kong case study is used to examine whether or not the client’s choice of contractual relationship is ‘fit for purpose’ and also to evaluate the impact of such a choice. The findings suggest that maintaining a relationship of high quality as a strategic policy not only reduces recourse to the contract but, also improves the quality and predictability of project performance and, is an antidote to ill-aligned contractual elements. These findings lend support to the growing trend towards relationship or relational contracting in construction