Learning-Based Development Approaches (LBDA)

SNM provides a conceptual model and what SNM case-study analysts might call examples of best-practice for strengthening the niche and destabilising the regime with a view to

integrating the novel technology or process developed by the niche into the regime. Similarly, LBDA consists of a body of literature that considers the concepts of institutionalisation and sustainability, but with respect to development project interventions. The purpose for considering LBDA as well as SNM is that LBDA has arisen out of the experiences of

development projects which inhabit similar socio-economic and institutional contexts to the situations under which PCI has been developed. SNM case studies, on the other hand, are largely concerned with the experiences of Western industrial innovation. In the section below I will show that despite the differences in their origination, both SNM and LBDA have distinct but complimentary approaches that can work well together in examining the factors that may influence the institutionalisation of PCI methods.

The initial suggestion that LBDA and SNM may be complimentary approaches was made by Romijn et al. (2010). They reviewed four biomass energy experiment projects in rural India and suggested that, in the context of development projects, SNM and learning-based

development approaches are complimentary analytical frameworks for investigating the issues

surrounding scaling-up and institutionalising the projects within larger socio-technical regimes (Ibid.). In general the authors’ findings were that the strengths of SNM are “its explicit conceptualisation of environmental sustainability and its endogenous treatment of larger contexts”; whereas LBDA were more specialised in dealing with the “complexities of local management and stakeholder organisation” including the power dynamics that exist between stakeholders (Ibid.:326). In reaching these conclusions the authors undertook a review of learning-based development literature focusing on the work of Korten (1980), Douthwaite (2002) and Uphoff et al. (1998), whose contributions they found to be complimentary to each other. Table 5 shows a summary of their broad comparison of LBDA to SNM approaches.

From their synthesis of LBDA and SNM, the authors found that within the LBDA literature there is often a strong focus on the self-reliance, emancipation and empowerment of local

stakeholders (Romijn et al., 2010). With respect to PCI methodologies, the degree of farmer empowerment and sovereignty over directing future plant breeding research may be diminished through engaging with the public plant breeding regime. While farmer-relevant plant varieties may be bred through PPB/COB, ongoing farmer empowerment is attenuated if the approach is not scaled-up or institutionalised within public plant breeding institutions. In attempting to analyse PPB/COB, the focus is less on farmer empowerment and farmers sustaining PPB/COB by carrying it out themselves, and on how PCI project partners interact with each other and public plant breeding organizations to promote, scale-up and

institutionalise the PCI methodologies. Despite this difference of focus, because the unit of analysis of LBDA tends to be the project, its interactions and how it is structured, these approaches may contain features and examples of good practice that can be adapted to investigate PCI projects.

Table 5 - Main Similarities and Differences between SNM and a Learning-Based Framework

Understand how poverty can be eradicated and local communities strengthened through project/programme interventions aimed at learning and capacity building for self-reliance, emancipation, and empowerment. (increase in local capacity and resources for independent problem-solving and learning) has been main focus. Recently increasing attention to environmental sustainability issues, but this aspect still not well integrated into framework.

Economic viability mainly seen as instrumental towards meeting socio-institutional aims.

Unit of analysis Niche; experiments seen as means to create niches.

Development projects/experiments; limited analytical attention to linking experiments in niches.

Ongoing learning seen as main driving process.

Less elaborate treatment of inter-stakeholder networking and mostly implicit treatment of expectations dynamics.

Detailed attention to organisational and management processes, esp. To learning culture in organisations, leadership qualities, and retarding factors at niche level emanating from larger context

Limited attention. Context mainly treated as exogenous; not an integral part of framework itself.

Romijn et al. (2010) identify the following features of good practice in LBDA that are linked to interactive learning processes, project management, and stakeholder empowerment :

 Project design and management practices (planning and technology choice, pilots, resource mobilisation, incentive creation, capability building, planning for expansion and diversification, organizational learning and knowledge management)

 Management culture of the project-implementing organization (reflexive and adaptive learning, effective knowledge management, short lines of communication, minimal bureaucracy)

 Leadership characteristics (of prominent stakeholders)- See troika model of leadership (Hauschildt, 2003, Ancona and Caldwell, 1992).

 Principles of participation – active engagement and empowerment of plant breeders as well as farmers

 Broader-project implementation context, especially institutions and culture.

This latter point on the broader project implementation context may be particularly relevant for understanding how the PCI project(s)/niche interacts with the wider socio-technical regime. In order to better understand these interactions I have adapted ideas from boundary management and socio-technical “translations” theories found in SNM.

Projects seldom exist in protective bubbles - free to pursue their own agenda without engaging with anyone else’s. Instead, especially in the case of development projects, they have to interact with and negotiate their ways through a variety of different organisations, institutions and the regulatory apparatus of the dominant socio-technical regime. In doing so they will undoubtedly come into contact with ideas, policies and politics incongruent to the objectives of the project, but with which they will never-the-less have to engage in order to implement their project successfully.

Broader stakeholder engagement is not as simple as identifying relevant stakeholders and consulting with them on a particular topic. The ‘economics of attention’ comes into play in which actors, whether consciously or not, have to allocate their limited time to investigating and engaging with different subject matters (Lanham, 2006). The amount of attention that they spare for any given task is dependent on the task’s supposed usefulness with respect to their present situation. Conveying information and soliciting stakeholders’ engagement should therefore be done in an efficient manner and in a way that is useful to their work. If this is

achieved the likelihood that actors will devote their attention to a task is increased. Tripp (2009) has applied the concept of economics of attention to plant breeding and crop management arguing that if farmers are involved in technology development, i.e.in participatory plant breeding, their attention should be managed as a scarce resource. By extension, it can also be said that if stakeholders within the public plant breeding socio-technical regime are to be engaged, consideration should be given to manage their attention and involvement in the project. One way to do so is for a project to consciously plan for and implement some form of boundary management (Cash et al., 2003).

The term ‘boundary’ refers to the interface that exists between groups of actors that hold different epistemologies, beliefs, norms and values when they try to communicate knowledge to each other. Boundaries can be found between different communities of scientific experts, decision makers and technology end users (farmers). Boundaries can be problematic to effective communication between disparate groups due to the different ways in which people define what constitutes “reliable evidence, convincing argument, procedural fairness, and appropriate characterization of uncertainty” (Cash et al., 2003:8086). This may have implications for projects that have to translate knowledge into action across epistemological boundaries. Cash and his co-authors suggest that in order to manage the relations between knowledge and action well, efforts need to be applied to plan for effective communication, translation and mediation of information across boundaries (Ibid.).

When boundary management is carried out within a project it may provide a means for the project to engage and communicate well with organisations in the broader project

implementation context. It is particularly important for projects to identify and characterise the presence of boundaries between organisations that they are working with, in order to find a means to ensure effective channels of communication and learning between themselves.

They have argued that If the project consists of a coalition of organisations it is possible for one of them to act as an intermediary boundary organization, responsible for managing and

integrating the different types of stakeholder both internal and external to the project (Thuy et al., 2010). The role of an intermediary in spanning boundaries may also be taken up by a stakeholder rather than an organisation. The intermediary should have a good understanding of how both organisations work, access to prominent and influential stakeholders, and knowledge of the differences between the organisations so that the task of knowledge communication, translation and meditation can be undertaken effectively (Ibid.).

Within the literature on SNM, boundaries have also been considered with regard to how niches interact with incumbent socio-technical regimes, although this topic remains

underdeveloped. Adrian Smith (2007) undertook a review of eco-housing and organic food

‘green niches’ in the UK in which he investigated how those niches interacted and were interdependent with their respective socio-technical regimes. In particular he considered the

“socio-technical translations” aspect of these interactions that occurred between the niches and regimes. In using the term “translation” Smith builds on a concept from actor network theory, in which translation means the transferral of one actor’s wilful objectives onto another actor, by considering higher-order translations of socio-technical practices, which he describes as consisting of many smaller individual actor translation events coupled with the

reconfiguration of their incumbent networks (Ibid.).

Smith (2007) compares and contrasts the socio-technical practices in niches and regimes across the dimensions of guiding principles, technologies, industrial structure, user relations and markets, policy and regulations, knowledge and culture. Through identifying the

differences in socio-technical practices between niche and regime he is able to infer potential opportunities for the niche to apply pressure on the regime and the potential barriers it may face in doing so. In recognising the socio-technical departures of the niche from the regime, niche stakeholders may have a greater capacity to apply more targeted boundary management strategies for the communication, translation and mediation of knowledge between the niche and the regime (Cf. Cash et al. (2003)). This may hypothetically lead to improved

communication and cooperation between organisations.

From his work Smith (2007:446) identifies three different kinds of translation, although he states that more may be discovered:

1. Translating sustainability problems, i.e. how problems in the regime inform the guiding principles creating the niche.

2. Translations that adapt lessons, i.e. reinterpreting elements of socio-technical

practice in the niche and inserting them into regime settings, or modifying the niche in light of lessons learnt about the regime.

3. Translations that alter contexts, i.e. changes that bring the regime closer to the situation that pertains in the niche, or vice versa.

One of the major similarities regarding both boundary management and the process of fostering socio-technical translations is the need for mediation between the niche and the

regime. Since the niche is often set up from second order evaluation of the normative practices operating within the incumbent socio-technical regime, it follows that translations can flow both ways between the niche and regime. Projects within a niche can evaluate the socio-technical regime to investigate different opportunities for translation and change their approach to institutionalisation accordingly.

This section on learning-based development approaches indicated that there is some conceptual overlap with SNM. The learning approaches as outlined in Romijn et al. (2010) consist of points of good planning and management practice that can help organisations and projects manage and develop the niche (internal factors) as well as engaging with and managing its boundaries (external factors).