The Why and How of Enabling the Integration of Social and Ethical Aspects in Research and Development

Abstract

New and Emerging Science and Technology (NEST) based innovations, e.g. in the field of Life Sciences or Nanotechnology, frequently raise societal and political concerns. To address these concerns NEST researchers are expected to deploy socially responsible R&D practices. This requires researchers to integrate social and ethical aspects (SEAs) in their daily work. Many methods can facilitate such integration. Still, why and how researchers should and could use SEAs remains largely unclear. In this paper we aim to relate motivations for NEST researchers to include SEAs in their work, and the requirements to establish such integration from their perspectives, to existing approaches that can be used to establish integration of SEAs in the daily work of these NEST researchers. Based on our analyses, we argue that for the successful integration of SEAs in R&D practice, collaborative approaches between researchers and scholars from the social sciences and humanities seem the most successful. The only way to explore whether that is in fact the case, is by embarking on collaborative research endeavours.

Testing the Social Innovation Construct: An Empirical Approach to Align Socially Oriented Objectives, Stakeholder Engagement, and Environmental Sustainability

“…We also found a clear relationship between companies' environment and their daily innovation-related activities, as stated by Utterback and Abernathy (1975) and Abernathy and Utterback (1978), and a relationship with ethical management decisions (social innovation orientation), the basis of the stakeholder approach and later discussions (Bowen et al, 2010, Flipse et al, 2013, confirming the third hypothesis. It suggests that, together with the internal sources, the companies' linkages with their environment are relevant, competitors, clients, and external consultants.…”

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“…In the best case scenario, in accordance with RRI as an ideal, societal values would serve as an inspiration, rather than as mere restrictions. As Flipse et al (2013) have also previously stated that through the integration of social and ethical aspects in collaborations, more and better research options, goals and priorities can be generated, which could otherwise have been overlooked.…”

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“…Although there appeared no direct competition between the Dutch food companies and their non-commercial stakeholders, most companies were concerned that critical information could leak to their competitors through non-commercial stakeholders. As pointed out by Blok and Lemmens (2015) and Flipse et al (2013b), concerns about the loss of competitive advantage in the private sector challenge the ideas of increasing transparency and reducing information asymmetries. Complementarily, one of the Dutch food companies expressed that differing interests (e.g.…”

“…Yet, by the time the concept would be explicit enough to allow diverse societal reflections, it is already locked-in to certain trajectories so that steering the innovation is difficult, costly and time consuming (e.g. Flipse et al, 2013b; Noorman et al, 2017; Owen et al, 2012) Moreover, the dilemma seemed to be exacerbated by the constant pressure from funders to rapidly produce a proof of demand for the product, driving Datashare to proceed while the long-term picture was not yet clear (Noorman et al, 2017). In the private sector, tight schedules commonly challenge appropriate monitoring of uncertainties (Pavie et al, 2014).…”