By David López García
Researchers in the field of public policy face considerable ethical dilemmas. Warwick and Pettigrew (1983) offer a review ranging from the choice of research method to the publication of their findings and the public debate in which they engage. Ethical dilemmas can also spring from the kind of scholarship that public policy researchers practice. While some approaches deactivate ethical concerns by taking distance from the subject of study –like positivist quantitative methods–, others engage with the studied stakeholders trying to have an influence in the research setting –like action research. In addition, researchers of public policy operate within institutional frameworks that can potencially make ethical decisions for them. By analyzing the case of the Mexican National Researchers System (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, or SNI, in Spanish), I will discuss how institutional arrangements can influence researchers’ choice of the scholarship they’ll practice by creating incentives for researchers to disengage from ethical conundrums.
There are different approaches to how knowledge is created and what its goal should be. Greenwood (2008) resorts to the scheme proposed by Aristotle to distinguish between three kinds of knowledge, those of epistêmê, téckhnê, and phrónêsis. Epistêmê focuses on knowing the eternal and unchangeable operations of the world to achieve the status of general truth. For tékhnê, knowledge should be action oriented and socially productive by focusing on what should be done, and experimenting in the real world to design the ways to achieve precisely what should be done. Finally, phrónêsis is a collaborative arena for knowledge development in which researchers and stakeholders have legitimate knowledge claims and rights to determine the outcomes of the knowledge production process (Greenwood, 2008). To Greenwood, in the first two kinds of knowledge researchers take distance from their object of study aiming to remain as objective as possible, while in the latter approach researchers and stakeholders engage in the co-construction of knowledge that will serve a purpose in the real world.
Greenwood (2008) argues that phrónêsis is the intellectual basis for activist research, as “it is a democratizing form of context-specific knowledge creation, theorization, analysis, and action design in which the goals are democratically set, learning capacity is shared, and success is collaboratively evaluated” (p. 329). He then makes the argument that activist research has a greater potential for knowledge creation than does conventional social science. In line with phrónêsis, and by analyzing the scholarship of Piven and Cloward, Schram (2002) advocates for a radical incrementalism approach to policy research, in which researchers engage in activist research “pushing for substantial change while learning to take what the powerful will concede” (p. 50).
An activists approach through action research and the praxis of radical incrementalism are not an easy position to take by researchers, as the institutional arrangements of academia tend to shut down such attitudes. As Greenwood (2008) points out, “the promotion of action research would require fundamental changes in university structures, in the disciplines, and in the ways in which research and teaching are organized” (p. 320). Thus, in addition to the ethical conundrum that researchers face, they also face the challenge of navigating through an institutional setting that favors the adoption of the mainstream approach of taking distance from the subjects under study and avoid ethical concerns.
The case of the SNI is a useful one to discuss how institutional frameworks constrain researchers’ activities towards selected goals and discipline them in the cases in which researchers fail to follow institutional pathways. To be part of the SNI, researchers have to file an application that has to be approved by a review board of peers, who will decide whether the applicant is a suitable candidate to become an SNI member or not. Being part of SNI then entitles researchers to a monthly fellowship and another kind of resources that complement their professor’s income and support their research activities.
An SNI review board will then assess an application focusing on published articles, books, and book chapters, and on the human resources development activities of the researcher such as teaching or being part of dissertation committees. A key feature of this process is that the SNI review board will concentrate in what the ordinance defines as generated production, meaning literally the amount of work generated by the researcher by the moment of the application, or the time period under evaluation. To assess the quality of the generated production, the SNI review committee focuses on criteria related to 1) the work’s originality, 2) its influence in training new human resources, 3) the degree to which production helps solving scientific problems, 4) its repercussion in social problems, 5) the leadership of the researcher at the international level, and 6) its innovation.[1] Researchers that succeed to be part of the SNI are subject to a revision every 3 to 5 years, in which they have to navigate the peer review board process once again in order to get their SNI status confirmed.
The process that I just outlined has two major consequences hampering the emergence of activist scholarship in Mexico. First, by placing the evaluation in the generated production, it creates incentives for researchers to produce and publish the biggest amount of work as possible by the time of their evaluation. These rules incentivize the production of what Greenwood (2008) calls “armchair speculation”, that limits itself to the search of epistêmê and tekhnê because the kind of action research that seeks phrónêsis takes a considerable amount of time and most likely won’t yield tangible results by the time of the SNI evaluation. Second, the criterion used by the SNI review committee says nothing about the ethical positions of researchers. In any case, these criteria deactivate the ethical conundrum by creating incentives for researchers to remain as distant as possible from their human subjects and to favor the use of research methods that expedite publication.
These institutional arrangements have an effect on the way researchers decide to conduct their careers. On the one hand, those researchers opting to be part of the SNI have to concentrate on having a significant amount of generated production by the time of their peer review evaluations –often at the cost of selecting the research methods that will yield publishable results as soon as possible. On the other hand, those that opt to engage in activist research and radical incrementalism resort to research methods that take a significant amount of time to yield results –often at the cost of being out of the SNI system.
References
Greenwood, D.J. (2008) Theoretical research, applied research, and action research. The deinstitutionalization of activist research. In Charles R. Hale (ed.) Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of activist scholarship, University of California Press.
Schram, S.F. (2002) Praxis for the poor: Piven and Cloward and the future of social science in social welfare, New York University Press.
Warwick, D.P. & Pettigrew, T.F. (1983) Toward ethical guidelines for social science research in public policy. In Daniel Callahan and Bruce Jennings (eds.) Ethics, the Social Sciences and Public Policy. Plenum Press.
[1]http://conacyt.gob.mx/index.php/el-conacyt/sistema-nacional-de-investigadores/otros/marco-legal-sni/reglamento-sni/841-reglamento-sni-reformado-el-26-de-julio-2016/file
Researchers in the field of public policy face considerable ethical dilemmas. Warwick and Pettigrew (1983) offer a review ranging from the choice of research method to the publication of their findings and the public debate in which they engage. Ethical dilemmas can also spring from the kind of scholarship that public policy researchers practice. While some approaches deactivate ethical concerns by taking distance from the subject of study –like positivist quantitative methods–, others engage with the studied stakeholders trying to have an influence in the research setting –like action research. In addition, researchers of public policy operate within institutional frameworks that can potencially make ethical decisions for them. By analyzing the case of the Mexican National Researchers System (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, or SNI, in Spanish), I will discuss how institutional arrangements can influence researchers’ choice of the scholarship they’ll practice by creating incentives for researchers to disengage from ethical conundrums.
There are different approaches to how knowledge is created and what its goal should be. Greenwood (2008) resorts to the scheme proposed by Aristotle to distinguish between three kinds of knowledge, those of epistêmê, téckhnê, and phrónêsis. Epistêmê focuses on knowing the eternal and unchangeable operations of the world to achieve the status of general truth. For tékhnê, knowledge should be action oriented and socially productive by focusing on what should be done, and experimenting in the real world to design the ways to achieve precisely what should be done. Finally, phrónêsis is a collaborative arena for knowledge development in which researchers and stakeholders have legitimate knowledge claims and rights to determine the outcomes of the knowledge production process (Greenwood, 2008). To Greenwood, in the first two kinds of knowledge researchers take distance from their object of study aiming to remain as objective as possible, while in the latter approach researchers and stakeholders engage in the co-construction of knowledge that will serve a purpose in the real world.
Greenwood (2008) argues that phrónêsis is the intellectual basis for activist research, as “it is a democratizing form of context-specific knowledge creation, theorization, analysis, and action design in which the goals are democratically set, learning capacity is shared, and success is collaboratively evaluated” (p. 329). He then makes the argument that activist research has a greater potential for knowledge creation than does conventional social science. In line with phrónêsis, and by analyzing the scholarship of Piven and Cloward, Schram (2002) advocates for a radical incrementalism approach to policy research, in which researchers engage in activist research “pushing for substantial change while learning to take what the powerful will concede” (p. 50).
An activists approach through action research and the praxis of radical incrementalism are not an easy position to take by researchers, as the institutional arrangements of academia tend to shut down such attitudes. As Greenwood (2008) points out, “the promotion of action research would require fundamental changes in university structures, in the disciplines, and in the ways in which research and teaching are organized” (p. 320). Thus, in addition to the ethical conundrum that researchers face, they also face the challenge of navigating through an institutional setting that favors the adoption of the mainstream approach of taking distance from the subjects under study and avoid ethical concerns.
The case of the SNI is a useful one to discuss how institutional frameworks constrain researchers’ activities towards selected goals and discipline them in the cases in which researchers fail to follow institutional pathways. To be part of the SNI, researchers have to file an application that has to be approved by a review board of peers, who will decide whether the applicant is a suitable candidate to become an SNI member or not. Being part of SNI then entitles researchers to a monthly fellowship and another kind of resources that complement their professor’s income and support their research activities.
An SNI review board will then assess an application focusing on published articles, books, and book chapters, and on the human resources development activities of the researcher such as teaching or being part of dissertation committees. A key feature of this process is that the SNI review board will concentrate in what the ordinance defines as generated production, meaning literally the amount of work generated by the researcher by the moment of the application, or the time period under evaluation. To assess the quality of the generated production, the SNI review committee focuses on criteria related to 1) the work’s originality, 2) its influence in training new human resources, 3) the degree to which production helps solving scientific problems, 4) its repercussion in social problems, 5) the leadership of the researcher at the international level, and 6) its innovation.[1] Researchers that succeed to be part of the SNI are subject to a revision every 3 to 5 years, in which they have to navigate the peer review board process once again in order to get their SNI status confirmed.
The process that I just outlined has two major consequences hampering the emergence of activist scholarship in Mexico. First, by placing the evaluation in the generated production, it creates incentives for researchers to produce and publish the biggest amount of work as possible by the time of their evaluation. These rules incentivize the production of what Greenwood (2008) calls “armchair speculation”, that limits itself to the search of epistêmê and tekhnê because the kind of action research that seeks phrónêsis takes a considerable amount of time and most likely won’t yield tangible results by the time of the SNI evaluation. Second, the criterion used by the SNI review committee says nothing about the ethical positions of researchers. In any case, these criteria deactivate the ethical conundrum by creating incentives for researchers to remain as distant as possible from their human subjects and to favor the use of research methods that expedite publication.
These institutional arrangements have an effect on the way researchers decide to conduct their careers. On the one hand, those researchers opting to be part of the SNI have to concentrate on having a significant amount of generated production by the time of their peer review evaluations –often at the cost of selecting the research methods that will yield publishable results as soon as possible. On the other hand, those that opt to engage in activist research and radical incrementalism resort to research methods that take a significant amount of time to yield results –often at the cost of being out of the SNI system.
References
Greenwood, D.J. (2008) Theoretical research, applied research, and action research. The deinstitutionalization of activist research. In Charles R. Hale (ed.) Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of activist scholarship, University of California Press.
Schram, S.F. (2002) Praxis for the poor: Piven and Cloward and the future of social science in social welfare, New York University Press.
Warwick, D.P. & Pettigrew, T.F. (1983) Toward ethical guidelines for social science research in public policy. In Daniel Callahan and Bruce Jennings (eds.) Ethics, the Social Sciences and Public Policy. Plenum Press.
[1]http://conacyt.gob.mx/index.php/el-conacyt/sistema-nacional-de-investigadores/otros/marco-legal-sni/reglamento-sni/841-reglamento-sni-reformado-el-26-de-julio-2016/file