Transdisciplinarity: a new mode of governing science?

What exactly does it mean to integrate extra-academic types of knowledge, interests and values into the procedures of scientific knowledge production? In this paper, we shall approach these questions from a ‘lab study perspective', investigating the discourses and practices that constitute doing transdisciplinarity. Based upon an ongoing empirical research project, we call for a novel perspective: the task of producing ‘socially robust knowledge', often couched in terms of extended responsibility of science vis-á-vis society, can also be regarded as a specific instance of neo-liberal rationality in research practice and science policy, at large. As scientific claims to accountability and truth have come under critique throughout the last decades, they now have to be reworked on the micro-level of transdisciplinary projects. Transdisciplinarity is thus revealed as a new mode of governing science in societ

Toxicology as a nanoscience? – Disciplinary identities reconsidered

Toxicology is about to establish itself as a leading scientific discipline in addressing potential health effects of materials on the nanosize level. Entering into a cutting-edge field, has an impact on identity-building processes within the involved academic fields. In our study, we analyzed the ways in which the entry into the field of nanosciences impacts on the formation of disciplinary identities. Using the methods of qualitative interviews with particle toxicologists in Germany, Holland, Switzerland and the USA, we could demonstrate that currently, toxicology finds itself in a transitional phase. The development of its disciplinary identity is not yet clear. Nearly all of our interview partners stressed the necessity of repositioning toxicology. However, they each suggested different approaches. While one part is already propagandizing the establishment of a new discipline – 'nanotoxicology'- others are more reserved and are demanding a clear separation of traditional and new research areas. In phases of disciplinary new-orientation, research communities do not act consistently. Rather, they establish diverse options. By expanding its disciplinary boundaries, participating in new research fields, while continuing its previous research, and only vaguely defining its topics, toxicology is feeling its way into the new fields without giving up its present self-conception. However, the toxicological research community is also discussing a new disciplinary identity. Within this, toxicology could develop from an auxiliary into a constitutive position, and take over a basic role in the cognitive, institutional and social framing of the nanosciences

Integrative Forschung

Integrative Forschung ist ein reflexiver Begriff, der die Zusammenführung unterschiedlicher Wissensarten, Wertvorstellungen und Formen der Wissensproduktion durch die beteiligten Projektmitglieder anstrebt. Die Forderung nach verstärkter Integration gesellschaftlicher Aspekte und sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektiven in die naturwissenschaftliche Forschung wurde seit den 1980er Jahren immer wieder erhoben. Trotzdem zeigt sich, dass ihre Umsetzung auf zahlreiche Barrieren trifft und inhärente Spannungen birgt. Die zunehmende Experimentalisierung integrativer Forschung könnte der Gefahr der Disziplinierung entgegenwirken. Hier experimentieren Forscher und Förderorganisationen mit kreativen Methoden und didaktischen Ansätzen, um aus sozialen, epistemischen und ontologischen Widersprüchen und Spannungen neue kreative Impulse zu generieren. (Herausgeber)Integrative research is a reflexive term that seeks to bring together different types of knowledge, values, and forms of knowledge production by the project members involved. The call for increased integration of societal aspects and social science perspectives into natural science research has been made repeatedly since the 1980s. Nevertheless, it is apparent that its implementation encounters numerous barriers and harbors inherent tensions. The increasing experimentalization of integrative research could counteract the danger of disciplining. Here, researchers and funding agencies are experimenting with creative methods and didactic approaches to generate new creative impulses from social, epistemic, and ontological contradictions and tensions. (Editor

Nachhaltige Transformation der Wissenschaft?

Bei der Frage, was systemstabilisierende „Ideologie“ oder aber systemtransformierende „Utopie“ ist, wird die Systemreferenz selten spezifiziert. Typischerweise wird direkt oder indirekt die Wirtschaft adressiert. Im Kontrast zur reichhaltigen Thematisierung wirtschaftlicher Zusammenhänge richtet dieser Beitrag sein Augenmerk auf das Wissenschaftssystem. Wir thematisieren dabei drei Leitbilder einer ökologisch resonanzfähigen Wissenschaft, nämlich (1) technoszientifische Innovationsbestrebungen, (2) eine Demokratisierung von Wissenschaft und (3) eine transformative Wissenschaft, welche die Wissensproduktion gezielt auf Nachhaltigkeit programmieren soll. Aus einer differenzierungstheoretischen Perspektive ist zu erkennen, dass keines der drei Leitbilder grundsätzlich infrage stellt, dass es auch in Zukunft einer Wissenschaft zur Lösung ökologischer Krisen bedarf. Die Frage ist eher, wieviel außerwissenschaftliche Fremdreferenz notwendig ist, um die Wissenschaft auf der Ebene ihrer Programme für die Anforderungen der Nach- haltigkeit zu sensibilisieren. Discussions on transformative changes towards sustainability usually address the economic system. In contrast to this, our contribution addresses the science system. We focus on three visions of science in service of sustainability, namely (1) technoscientific innovation, (2) a democratization of research, and (3) a transformation of knowledge production. We analyze these visions with the help of Luhmann’s theory of systemic resonance. None of the three visions fundamentally calls into question the need for a science system to solve ecological crises in the future. The question is rather how much external reference and structural change is necessary to make science responsive to the requirements of sustainability. (peer reviewed

BPMN+I to support decision making in innovation management for automated production systems including technological, multi team and organizational aspects

A joined interdisciplinary approach from systems engineering, organizational sociology and psychology is introduced using an enriched Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN+I) based modeling approach to support decision making on a management level for both mid-term decisions such as in-/outsourcing and short-term decisions such as fixing a weakness on site during start-up of a plant abroad or involving the design offices. This approach focusses on the actual collaboration between interdisciplinary teams within an organizational context by enriching BPMN with checklists applicable to all interfaces along the projects’ workflow. Our contribution aims at supporting innovation management for automated Production Systems which depends on successful interdisciplinary collaboration

BPMN++ to support managing organisational, multiteam and systems engineering aspects in cyber physical production systems design and operation

Interdisciplinary engineering of cyber physical production systems (CPPS) are often subject to delay, cost overrun and quality problems or may even fail due to the lack of efficient information exchange between multiple interdisciplinary teams working in complex networks within and across companies. We propose a direct integration of multiteam and organisational aspects into the graphical notation of the systems engineering workflow. BPMN++, with eight new notational elements and two subdiagrams, enables the modelling of the required cooperation aspects. BPMN++ provides an improved overview, uniform notation, more compact presentation and easier modifiability from an engineering point of view. We also included a first set of empirical studies and historical qualitative and quantitative data in addition to subjective expert-based ratings to increase validity. The use case introduced to explain the procedure and the notation is derived from surveys in plant manufacturing focussing on the start-up phase and decision support at site. This, in particular, is one of the most complex and critical phases with potentially high economic impact. For evaluation purposes, we compare two alternative solutions for a short-term management decision in the start-up phase of CPPS using the BPMN++ approach

Rethinking Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge: From personal knowing to imagined institutions

Half a century after Michael Polanyi conceptualised ‘the tacit component’ in personal knowing, management studies has reinvented ‘tacit knowledge’—albeit in ways that squander the advantages of Polanyi’s insights and ignore his faith in ‘spiritual reality’. While tacit knowing challenged the absurdities of sheer objectivity, expressed in a ‘perfect language’, it fused rational knowing, based on personal experience, with mystical speculation about an un-experienced ‘external reality’. Faith alone saved Polanyi’s model from solipsism. But Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism provides scope to rethink personal tacit knowing with regard to ‘other people’ and the intersubjectively viable construction of ‘experiential reality’. By separating tacit knowing from Polanyi’s metaphysical realism and drawing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’, it is possible to conceptualise ‘imagined institutions’ as the tacit dimension of power that shapes human interaction. Whereas Douglass North claimed institutions could be reduced to rules, imagined institutions are known in ways we cannot tell

Participation as Post-Fordist Politics: Demos, New Labour, and Science Policy

In recent years, British science policy has seen a significant shift ‘from deficit to dialogue’ in conceptualizing the relationship between science and the public. Academics in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been influential as advocates of the new public engagement agenda. However, this participatory agenda has deeper roots in the political ideology of the Third Way. A framing of participation as a politics suited to post-Fordist conditions was put forward in the magazine Marxism Today in the late 1980s, developed in the Demos thinktank in the 1990s, and influenced policy of the New Labour government. The encouragement of public participation and deliberation in relation to science and technology has been part of a broader implementation of participatory mechanisms under New Labour. This participatory program has been explicitly oriented toward producing forms of social consciousness and activity seen as essential to a viable knowledge economy and consumer society. STS arguments for public engagement in science have gained influence insofar as they have intersected with the Third Way politics of post-Fordism