The Role of Stakeholders in the Context of Responsible Innovation: A Meta-Synthesis

Abstract

This paper contributes to the sustainability debate by analyzing the inclusion dimension in the responsible research and innovation (RRI) process. RRI is claimed to be an important tool for addressing global challenges and achieving sustainable development goals. While stakeholder involvement is considered to be imperative for the RRI process, there is little empirical evidence on (1) who the stakeholders participating in the RRI process are; (2) when stakeholders participate; (3) how stakeholders’ inclusion contributes to the sustainable innovation process; and (4) who the agents are who orchestrate stakeholders’ inclusion. This paper addresses the issue of stakeholder involvement through the lens of innovation management literature by attempting to link the innovation process to the responsibility concept. We employed a meta-synthesis of empirical studies of RRI to develop a deep understanding of stakeholder inclusion. After screening 139 articles, we identified seven empirical papers highlighting RRI process, mainly from projects nested in academic contexts. The findings indicate that multiple stakeholders are included at a late stage of the innovation process—during the market launch. To some extent, this allows for the adaptation of the solution, but such adaptations are limited in nature. This study also identifies the agents who stimulate stakeholder inclusion as being mainly academic researchers and researchers linked to multi-institutional projects. Our findings indicate that innovation management thinking is rarely applied in the governance of research and innovation projects ‘born’ in academia. We suggest enhancing RRI theoretical development by incorporating elements of innovation management such as early inclusion of users in the innovation process. For practitioners, this means an extension of the design space to allow early stakeholder inclusion in the innovation process to ensure responsible outcomes. We also identified avenues for future research. There is a need to systematically investigate which tools and frameworks for deliberate stakeholder inclusion are relevant at the various stages of the innovation and development process.

Responsible for Responsibility? A Study of Digital E-health Startups

“…Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has become an all-encompassing concept, leveraging sustainability transformation on a societal level [2]. It is often viewed as a tool to address challenges such as poverty, inequality, aging populations and the availability of care for achieving the SDGs [3,4]. RRI first relates to governing the innovation process and involves governments, which can act through policies and regulations.…”

“…The theoretical development has focused on normative models of responsibility and there are scant empirical studies which support this development. Even the empirical literature on RRI mostly concerns research projects rather than their implementation at the firm level [3,14]. Thus, the RRI concept may follow the same path as the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, which has been criticized for being employed at the level of corporate philanthropy [15].…”

Responsible Research and Innovation: Using the Requirements Tool for Stakeholder Engagement in Developing a Universal Design for Learning Guidelines for Practice

“…For example, in industry, to obtain a 'social licence to operate' [26], or to undertake mining operations, local communities would be engaged at the initial concept stage so that the most important concerns and assurances can be identified and addressed earlier. In this way, communities are able to directly influence local industrial development thereby minimising opposition and building relationships [27] Within research and innovation projects, the wants, needs, and concerns of stakeholders can be better understood [22,36,50,54] rather than assumed or imposed, thereby avoiding the development of inappropriate or useless artefacts, imposing unworkable policy, or devising unsatisfactory working practices.…”

“…RRI is constantly evolving and changing, which evidences its efficacy within the research community continues to grow and the body of literature that directly addresses RRI increases [36]. Amongst the aims for promoting further embedding of RRI into everyday practice is to provide tools that enable researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers to include RRI principles into their approach when undertaking organisational change.…”

Exploring the Systematic Attributes Influencing Gerontechnology Adoption for Elderly Users Using a Meta-Analysis

“…The meta-analysis is a statistical analysis method that synthesizes the results of multiple experiments or quasi-experiments and obtains the average experimental effect value [11]. It is an exploratory analysis compared with narrative literature reviews by integrating the effect amount into the analysis and then obtaining inferred results [12,13]. Prior studies have noticed the important value of the meta-analysis method in the field of health care studies.…”