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This article addresses social workers' use of knowledge by studying the rationale they provided for their actual practice decisions. Extent of knowledge use was compared across four practice decision tasks and between medical and psychiatric social work services. Data were obtained from the records of 297 clients treated by 34 experienced M.S.W. social workers in medical and psychiatric services units of two midwestern hospitals. Workers were previously trained in the approach and procedures of Systematic Planned Practice (SPP). Data were obtainedfrom SPP forms on which workers recorded their treatment decisions and rationale for each decision. Data analyzed by repeated measures (MANOVA and ANOVA's) revealed that giving of rationales, and the types of knowledge it reflected, varied significantly by the decision task and social work service. Intervention decisions were least likely to be supported by rationales, and medical services workers provided fewer rationales than psychiatric services workers. Conceptual rationales were the most frequently used, whereas rationales based on practice experience, values, research, or client wish were very little used. The implications for practice, professional education, quality assurance, and for further research are discussed.

Assessments of environmental issues are often expected to tackle the perceived disconnect between scientific knowledge and environmental policy making. However, their actual influence on processes of knowledge communication and use remains understudied. We provide one of the first studies of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), itself one of the first national-level assessments of ecosystem services. We explore expectations, early experiences, and implications for its role in promoting knowledge use, drawing on both documentary evidence and qualitative analysis of interviews with NEA authors and potential users. Many interviewees expected instrumental use; that is, facts directly assisting problem solving. This matches the rhetoric surrounding the NEA's creation. However, we found more early evidence of interacting conceptual uses (learning), and strategic uses (sometimes deemed misuse). Such uses depend not only on assessment outputs, such as reports, but also on the processes of communication and interaction by which these are created. Thus, planning and analysis of such assessments should deemphasise instrumental use and instead focus on the complex knowledge 'coproduction' processes by which diverse and interacting forms of knowledge use may be realised.

The realisation of the advantages offered by e-learning accompanied by the use of various emerging information technologies has resulted in a noticeable shift by academia towards e-learning. An analysis of the use, knowledge and adoption of emerging technologies by academics in an Open Distance Learning (ODL) environment at the University of South Africa (UNISA) was undertaken in this study. The aim of the study was to evaluate the use, knowledge and adoption of emerging e-learning technologies by the academics from the selected schools. The academics in the Schools of Arts, Computing and Science were purposively selected in order to draw on views of academics from different teaching and educational backgrounds. Questionnaires were distributed both electronically and manually. The results showed that academics in all the Schools were competent at the use of information technology tools and applications such as emailing, word-processing, Internet, myUnisa (UNISA's online teaching platform), and Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel. An evaluation of the awareness of different emerging technological tools showed that most academics were aware of Open Access Technologies, Social Networking Sites, Blogs, Video Games and Microblogging Platforms. While the level of awareness was high for these technologies, the use by the academics was low. At least 62.3% of the academics indicated willingness to migrate to online teaching completely and also indicated the need for further training on new technologies. A comparison of the different schools showed no statistically significant difference in the use, knowledge and willingness to adopt technology amongst the academics.

This paper analyses how scientists, policy makers and water users engage with scientific knowledge and uncertainties during a lengthy and complex decision-making process (2000–2014) about water quality, freshwater resources and climate adaptation in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt estuaries. The research zooms in on lake Volkerak-Zoom. Interviews confirm that 'negotiated knowledge', shaped by the agricultural sector, NGO's and water managers can lead to strategies to improve water quality problems. One such a strategy, based on negotiated knowledge, is to create an inlet to allow limited tides and inflow of saline waters in Lake Volkerak-Zoom. Meanwhile, during negotiations, monitoring showed an autonomous decline in the annually returning algal blooms, leading to new uncertainties and disrupting the negotiations. At another negotiation arena, water users and policy makers repeatedly disputed scientific assessments about costs and benefits regarding additional freshwater supply for agriculture and the knowledge underlying proposed decisions was still considered uncertain in 2014. Several strategies have been observed to deal with uncertainties in decision making, such as deconstruction of certainties, creation of deadlines for decisions and selection of preferred solutions based upon the 'No-regret principle'. The risk of a lengthy decision making process can be reduced when the responsible authorities recognize, acknowledge and give an equal role to these behavioural strategies to address uncertainties. Tailor-made strategies are needed to make knowledge use more efficient, for example, joint-fact-finding (in case of disputed knowledge and ambiguity), additional research and monitoring (in case of epistemic uncertainty) or commissioning research whereby temporarily a protected environment is created to allow research without political interference (in case of ontic/structural uncertainty).

This paper analyses how scientists, policy makers and water users engage with scientific knowledge and uncertainties during a lengthy and complex decision-making process (2000–2014) about water quality, freshwater resources and climate adaptation in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt estuaries. The research zooms in on lake Volkerak-Zoom. Interviews confirm that 'negotiated knowledge', shaped by the agricultural sector, NGO's and water managers can lead to strategies to improve water quality problems. One such a strategy, based on negotiated knowledge, is to create an inlet to allow limited tides and inflow of saline waters in Lake Volkerak-Zoom. Meanwhile, during negotiations, monitoring showed an autonomous decline in the annually returning algal blooms, leading to new uncertainties and disrupting the negotiations. At another negotiation arena, water users and policy makers repeatedly disputed scientific assessments about costs and benefits regarding additional freshwater supply for agriculture and the knowledge underlying proposed decisions was still considered uncertain in 2014. Several strategies have been observed to deal with uncertainties in decision making, such as deconstruction of certainties, creation of deadlines for decisions and selection of preferred solutions based upon the 'No-regret principle'. The risk of a lengthy decision making process can be reduced when the responsible authorities recognize, acknowledge and give an equal role to these behavioural strategies to address uncertainties. Tailor-made strategies are needed to make knowledge use more efficient, for example, joint-fact-finding (in case of disputed knowledge and ambiguity), additional research and monitoring (in case of epistemic uncertainty) or commissioning research whereby temporarily a protected environment is created to allow research without political interference (in case of ontic/structural uncertainty).

This paper examines how path dependencies in evaluation routines affect a brokerage firm's decision to provide coverage to a company that builds on new knowledge. Companies depend on brokerage firms to gain access to external resources, as a brokerage firm's coverage is a valuable form of recognition that may lower a company's cost of capital and increase its value. Yet path dependencies in a brokerage firm's evaluation routines may make it less likely to cover a company whose inventive activities build on different knowledge than it used in the past. Using data on 183 U.S. publicly traded medical device companies from 1993 to 2006, we examine how a company's use of new knowledge affects a brokerage firm's decision to cover the company. Our results suggest that a company may face a tension between exploration and resource dependence, as after it overcomes internal path dependencies that hinder exploration and successfully uses new knowledge, it may still fail to gain the attention of outside organizations on which it depends to access relevant resources due to externally borne path dependencies in the routines these outside organizations use to evaluate novelty. Also, in contrast with existing literature suggesting that brokerage firms have homogenous expectations for which strategies are appropriate for different types of companies, our results highlight that brokerage firms differ in how they respond to companies' inventive activities based on factors such as their prior exposure to new knowledge, prior evaluation of the companies' downstream product markets, and scope of technological expertise.

Despite calls for evidence-based policies, the process of using evidence in forest conservation policy implementation has remained unclear. In this paper, we focus on voluntary conservation and investigate complex ways to use evidence in implementation of the Forest Biodiversity Programme METSO in Finland. Data were collected via nine focus group discussions involving a total of 59 forest conservation stakeholders. Through interpretative qualitative analysis, we found that forest owners' and forest advisers' awareness of the voluntary instrument and the smooth interplay of knowledge types are important factors in implementing voluntary conservation. Knowledge use should be locally bound for policy implementation to be effective. Social relationships enable integrating local knowledge. Forest owners, advisers, authorities and other actors interpret scientific and other knowledges (and simultaneously co-produce new knowledge) in practical action. We conclude that educating forest advisers, informing forest owners, and increasing collaboration can enhance evidence flows from research to practice. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ; Peer reviewed