Café Delphi: Hybridising ‘World Café’ and ‘Delphi Techniques’ for successful remote academic collaboration

© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100095Developing collaborative and cooperative research across academic disciplines and university administrative boundaries can be a challenge. In an attempt to understand and propose solutions to this challenge, the authors of this paper set out to: test an innovative combination of methods to generate and evaluate ideas and strategies; and to write about the findings using collaborative online methods. During this process universities in the UK moved to online working and so the authors completed this paper through entirely online means. The authors - a team of academic researchers from the University of AAA - came together in sessions designed as a hybrid of World Café and Delphi technique approaches to discuss challenges and solutions. The findings were written up drawing on insights from the use of massively authored papers (also known as ‘massively open online papers’, MOOPs), and online tools to enable remote collaboration. Expert consensus was sought in this project within a group of participants (N ​= ​7) in one university setting to create a MOOP. This paper presents details of the process, the findings, and reflections on this collaborative and cooperative exercise. That this paper was written using the methods discussed within it, highlights the value and success of the approach. In light of the current Coronavirus pandemic and the increased need to work remotely, this paper offers academics useful strategies for meaningful and productive online collaboration.Published versio

Determining barriers to sustainability within the Costa Rican coffee industry

The Costa Rican coffee industry has been the subject of many sustainability plans, all of which have had a particular bias towards one aspect of sustainability or another. Following the sustainability evaluation framework discussed in previous work a significant gap was recognized between the requirements of a sustainable industry, which address all facets of sustainability (including all stakeholders - both producers and processors), and the present system. This was particularly so within aspects of institutional considerations and the lack of continuity when integrating processing considerations into sustainability considerations. The concerns, deficiencies and perceptions of the various stakeholders within the industry were documented in order to ensure a proper match between sustainability barriers and any steps that would be taken to address them. The inclusion of stakeholders' thoughts and perceptions was determined to be important in the establishment of any policy aimed at improving the overall sustainability of the coffee industry. Using the sustainability framework as the foundation for discussion, specific barriers to the application of sustainability were highlighted and discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.