Reflexive Governance for Research and Innovative Knowledge by Maesschalck Marc;

Author:Maesschalck, Marc; [Maesschalck, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2017-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

4.3. Deconstructing governance narratives

One might wonder whether the elements to “govern” using a reflexive approach are the same as those that are generally only subject to post hoc sociological attention, with the aim of understanding the recurrence of actors’ identity rigidification or the ways in which it may be overcome. Several examples highlighted by Donald Schön in relation to intervention practices may, at first glance, appear to confirm this judgment. Schön notably considers the evolution of the relationship between professionals and their action identities, such as the action identity of permanent members of a consumer association or that of agents in a public health monitoring institution [SCH 96]. In both cases, one fundamental element of such an identity lies in a capacity for responsiveness and vigilance with regard to the environments, which these professionals are supposed to monitor or control, in order to defend either the public interest or the interests of their own mandates. Collaboration with the environments in question thus appears to go against this identity, as the primary aim is to achieve a distance from their existing practices in order to evaluate them from a totally independent position. The idea that cooperation might add value for all parties in question thus appears unrealistic; cooperation would imply improper collusion, adopting as one’s own the interests of those actors who are supposed to be subject to independent judgment and arbitration. From this perspective, collaboration with producers to improve quality labels for the benefit of consumers, for example, would be unthinkable without selling one’s soul to the devil. A concerted approach to defining accreditation procedures in association with government agencies, in order to increase the transparency and efficiency of information procedures for public policy decisions, would also be impossible. These roughly drawn examples are characteristic, insofar as they may lead to sociological readings of the relationship between groups of professionals and their identities. Different modes of fixation may be seen, which may evolve in a generational manner and lead to intergenerational conflicts, through which institutions appear to evolve despite these fixations, moving, for example, from militant intransigence to a proactive attitude promoting the diffusion of ethical values. Semantics are modified, the language of combat gives way to that of collective responsibility, criticisms give way to propositions, defensive attitudes are transformed into constructive approaches, etc.

Schön and Argyris [ARG 78, ARG 96], along with other authors cited above, such as Innes and Booher [INN 03] and Laws and Rein [LAW 03], focus instead on acting on processes in the present, rather than interpreting them retrospectively along the lines of generational adaptations. From this perspective, a particularly decisive element in the cited examples is the thematization of attention through narrative focalization. A gap is depicted between a rigid attitude toward identity beliefs and the possibility of challenging these beliefs in order to experiment with another way of acting. In this situation, we are not overly concerned with whether this new way of acting might be better, automatically guarantee an added value, or produce more satisfactory results.

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