Balancing with Academic Perspectives in Knowledge Brokering – Arranging the Hybridity of Knowledge Brokering Organisations

Abstract

With governments paying increasing attention to universities’ societal impact and the potential of academic research to support policymaking, the role of knowledge brokering organisations in contemporary knowledge systems emerges as particularly intriguing. Previous studies have illustrated them as intermediaries that use varied practices to connect research and policy. This chapter addresses a gap in the literature by focusing on these organisations’ internal structures, values, and activities, drawing from interviews of a Finnish and a Norwegian knowledge brokering organisation. The study conceptualises knowledge brokering organisations as hybrids. It looks to understand how academic research – e.g., academic knowledge, values, and practices – is part of this organisational hybridity. The chapter increases understanding of the organisational side of knowledge brokering and how these organisations engage with academic research in constructing their versions of good knowledge brokering. The results highlight two distinct ways to arrange hybridity in knowledge brokering organisations, showing that the bricolage of state, market, managerial, and professional logics differs between the two organisations. In a hierarchising arrangement, one logic is set above others, and in the studied organisation, this was manifested so that the aim of supporting science-policy interaction had to adapt to principles, practices, and symbols of the academic world. In contrast, the differentiating-and-combining arrangement, describing the other case organisation, showcases how logics are mixed and matched and kept in productive tension. This was manifested so that academic knowledge is shaped and steered rather than simply followed as knowledge brokering professional logic alongside market and managerial logics guide the organisation’s operations.