Burkart Holzner

Knowledge in Use Considerations in the Sociology of Knowledge Application

By now there is a considerable literature about the way in which decision makers, professionals, and others use the results of scientific studies and formal expertise. The study of knowledge utilization has become a vigorous field of inquiry as well as of practice. However, what we know does not as yet form a coherent picture and of course it would be premature to speak of a body of theory on knowledge utilization. It is therefore reasonable to reflect on the scope and structure of the conceptual organizing scheme to see how different foci of research on knowledge in use might relate to each other as well as to more general sociological knowledge. The framework of ideas developed in this article attempts some coherent grouping of concepts and issues. It is undoubtedly incomplete but may serve as a heuristic for (1) exploring relationships among the growing number of concepts and empirical findings and (2) indicating gaps where further research is needed. The article begins with a discussion of the different images of knowledge utilization that have not only guided past research but have resulted in an extensive thoughunsystematic accumulation of conceptual schemas, concepts, and research findings. The framework offered as an organizing device begins with the ideas

Knowledge in society: anatomy of an emergent field

An emergent social science of knowledge applications, drawing on a substantial multidisciplinary literature published over the past twenty-five years, signals an inversion of typical scholarly reasoning about the knowledge-society nexus. Whereas most scholarly research thus far has concentrated on conditions believed to affect the production of scientific and professional knowledge, we pose a new problematic: What must we examine in order to comprehend and consciously shape applications of scientific and professional knowledge to the manifold problems facing contemporary societies? To date, approaches to this problematic have proceeded on the basis of four broadly accepted if abstract theses about the nature of contemporary knowledge systems: subjectivity, corrigibility, sociality, and complexity. Within the boundaries supplied by these commonly accepted theses are unresolved controversies expressed in competing visions of complexity, alternative perspectives of causation, rival images of progress, and conflicting criteria of application.

An Accounting Scheme for Designing Science Impact Indicators The Knowledge System Perspective

The social system of knowledge—or knowledge system, for short—is an accounting scheme that helps organize the search for social impact of science (SIS) indicators. The accounting scheme specifies six related knowledge functions (production, structuring, storage, distribution, utilization, and mandating) that are performed in different domains (industry, agriculture, education, and so forth) by many institutions and organizations that vary in size, autonomy, specialization, and complexity. By mediating relations between science and society, these institutions and organizations facilitate and retard the impact of science on the larger society. The knowledge systems accounting scheme also helps identify aspects of science impacts on society (e.g., scientific evidence), aspects of society on which science impacts (e.g., the economy, polity, and culture), and structures by which social impacts of science are mediated (e.g., technical communities). The knowledge system provides a conceptual base for the future development of what has been called “knowledge systems accounting” (see Dunn and Holzner, this volume).

Ideological Primary Groups in Contemporary Cultural Movements

Abstract This paper argues that “post-modern” societies generate movements for cultural change in models “of” and “for” identity and consciousness, rather than traditional kinds of social movements aiming at structural changes in institutional arrangements. The distinctive and crucial unit in comtemporary cultural movements is what we have termed the “ideological group.” These groups are similar to the “ideological informal groups” which recruited members of traditional social movements on the basis of personal contacts and confidence, and which rested on shared “inner convictions.” Like other, earlier, ideological groups, they focus on the construction and legitimation of a shared symbolic interpretation, and ideology of a dissatisfying reality as well as their own personal and collective identity in relation to it. However, contemporary movement groups have been influenced considerably by the sensitivity training-encounter-group dynamics techniques associated with the intensive group movement. The resul...

The Architecture of Knowledge Systems Toward Policy-Relevant Science Impact Indicators

The task of designing social impact of science (SIS) indicators is an ill-structured or systemic problem involving competing design goals, indeterminate design states, unspecified design rules, and an unbounded design space. These features of the problem are not a result of imperfections of measurement alone; they are due primarily to properties of the knowledge system that make it resemble a tangled river delta (anastomotic reticulum) in which different functional patterns (serial, parallel, assembly, arborescent, segmented, cyclic) coexist. The stunning complexity of knowledge systems makes it difficult but nevertheless possible to develop SIS indicators that are policy relevant by virtue of their being at once relational, causal, and normative (see also Peters, this volume). Any attempt to improve the policy relevance of impact indicators will recognize that systemic problems require nonconventional solutions based on principles of externalization, formalization, and simplification. An initial attempt to externalize the design process yields typologies of science output indicators and social impact indicators that may be conjoined to form social impact of science (SIS) indicators. By formalizing rules for making and challenging causal inferences, we can formulate rival hypotheses about the role of knowledge functions and structures in mediating the impacts of science on the achievement of social goals. By simplifying the design process we can maximize the likelihood that SIS indicators and the basis for their construction are widely comprehended by groups that have a stake in the social performance of science.