Abstract
After a decade of efforts to mainstream Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) across Europe, the policy momentum is now uncertain. We explore how 217 organisations perceive responsibility in relation to their work, what mechanisms they apply to promote responsible practices, and what hindrances to promoting RRI they observe. Most organisations are unfamiliar with RRI but employ diverse perceptions of responsibility and mechanisms to promote it nonetheless. Civil society organisations are primarily outward oriented; collaborating with others and hosting science events. Private companies are more internally focussed and more likely to formalise this effort in strategies and internal guidelines. Universities resemble private companies, while private and public funders use funding-specific tools to incentivise responsible practices. Our results suggest that RRI is still poorly institutionalised and that some areas lack attention among actors in the research and innovation systems. Future policy endeavours might benefit from addressing deficits and tapping into existing perceptions of responsibility.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 360-370 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Science and Public Policy |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2020 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
The empirical basis for this article is sixteen country reports developed as part of the Res-AGorA project. Each report addresses the perception of responsibility, the use of mechanisms to promote responsible practices, and the perceived hindrances to this effort across major organisations in the national research and innovation system. Res-AGorA was funded by the European Commission and ran from 2013 to 2016. The project employed an extensive empirical research programme to investigate practices across Europe, used to inform the development of a ‘Responsibility Navigator’ with ten governance principles for making research and innovation more responsive, responsible, and sustainable (Lindner et al. 2016). As a component of the empirical programme, national reports were developed for Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the UK. The selection was motivated by an ambition of capturing heterogeneity across Europe (Mejlgaard and Griessler 2016).
Keywords
- descriptive analysis
- Europe
- research performing and funding organizations
- responsible practices
- responsible research and innovation
