Emad Yaghmaei

Addressing responsible research and innovation to industry: introduction of a conceptual framework

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is taking a role to assist all types of stakeholders including industry to move research and innovation initiatives to responsible manner for tackling grand challenges. The literature on RRI focuses little on how industry can implement RRI principles. In solving such gap in the literature, this article constructs a solid framework that provides a conceptual starting point for future research on levels of RRI. It draws a fundamental path to align industrial activities with environmental and societal needs. The framework develops a normatively grounded conceptual path for managing and assessing RRI principles in industry. This study depicts five successive RRI implementation stages and exhibits three RRI dimensions that represent different categories and corresponding indicators for that. The rationale behind this framework has been derived from extant models of corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. Drawing on these models, this study develops stages and dimensions of RRI for discussing why industry should become engaged in RRI, how industry can embed RRI principles into research and innovation processes, how companies progress from one RRI stage to another, and how industry can manage all RRI dimensions systematically.

Research and innovation processes revisited – networked responsibility in industry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how relationships between different actors are being shaped to allow industry to come to acceptable and desirable uses of research and innovation (R&I) that address societal challenges. Design/methodology/approach Building on existing notions of responsibility proposed in the literature, the paper develops a theoretical account of “networks of responsibility” which capture the interlinked nature of responsibility relationships. The usefulness of the approach is evaluated by exploring two cases of R&I in industry deploying a qualitative research approach that involves interviewing and document analysis. For this, a multinational company from Germany was involved, as well as a small- and medium-sized company from Denmark. Findings The study surfaced 68 responsibility relationships involving a range of different objects, subjects, authorities and norms. By describing overlaps in objects, subjects and other aspects across relationships, the theoretical model proved adequate in untangling and displaying interrelatedness of responsibilities. Furthermore, the analysis surfaced characteristics of responsible research and innovation (RRI) that are already in place in the R&I processes of two innovative companies, such as anticipation, foresight and stakeholder engagement. Not all aspects of responsibility outlined in the theoretical model could be extracted from the interview data for every responsibility relationship, pointing to the need for further research. Practical implications The paper is practically relevant because it supports policy development on an organisational, as well as societal level. Moreover, the networks of responsibility model offer a fine-grained assessment of responsibilities in R&I practice by mapping existing responsibilities which supports translating RRI principles into everyday organisational practices. Social implications RRI sets an ambitious agenda to ensure a more social and ethical R&I. Much work is still needed to bridge the gap between these theoretical and political aspirations and daily R&I practice, especially in non-academic contexts such as industry. By offering a way to understand and untangle the complexity of responsibility relationships, the networks of responsibility model seem to offer a promising approach that can support this endeavour. Originality/value The paper offers a novel theoretical approach to understanding and analysing responsibility allocations in R&I in industry. It demonstrates the reliability of this theoretical position empirically. It is practically important because it supports policy development on an organisational as well as societal level.

Responsible Research and Innovation Revisited: Aligning Product Development Processes with the Corporate Responsibility Agenda

It is well established that society faces some grand challenges ahead that have led to a call for more focus on sustainability and socially responsible business practices (European Commission 2010, 2012; Scherer and Palazzo 2011). It is now widely accepted that human-induced climate change is caused by production and consumption patterns that have emerged to meet society’s evolving needs (Unruh 2000; Foxon and Pearson 2006). There are increasing amounts of legislation to try to encourage more sustainable practices and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. For example, the 2008 United Kingdom (UK) Climate Change Act (UK Parliament 2008) states that “It is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for the year 2050 is at least 80 % lower than the 1990 baseline” (p. 1). Other legislation is encouraging manufacturers to take back and recycle their products at the end of their useful lives.

The Role of Privacy in the Framework for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT for Health, Demographic Change and Ageing

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is an approach to research governance that promotes the sustainability, acceptability and desirability of research and innovation processes and outputs. Given the importance of private sector companies in funding and executing research and in particular innovation, it is important to understand how their practices map onto RRI. This paper describes the role of RRI in industry and then focuses on the way in which privacy can be considered. It draws on a workshop undertaken in the context of the IFIP Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management to develop some suggestions on future integration of privacy in RRI for industry.

Case study research to reflect societal and ethical issues: introduction of a research implementation plan for ICTs

The purpose of this paper is to provide the systematic procedures of case study research. A robust case study protocol in the context of societal and ethical issues with a relevant guidelines will set to show how data should collect, present, and analyze. This paper takes in particular the context of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as the phenomenon and investigates on how to apply the methodologies, which could assist us to identify the boundaries between societal and ethical issues and the emerging ICTs. As such, to interpret the collected data and build theory inductively, to have an excellent basis for further qualitative research within RRI context, systematic procedures are needed to conduct. This paper uses a holistic view to the literature for providing guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research for RRI context. It defines the information that needs to be gathered from the cases, the way this data is to be analyzed and the processes of reflections to be undertaken. Checklists for conducting the case study protocol are linked to each step of systematic procedures and applicable for researchers, ICT managers, reviewers, and readers to allow them taking account of societal and ethical aspects, in particular RRI principles in emerging ICTs in a proper way.