Developing an individual actor perspective on Collective System Building activities: A set of Case studies in New Zealand’s Nutrient management

Abstract

To solve global issues of unsustainability requires the development of sustainability innovations as well as collective goal setting at international, national and even company level on implementing such innovations. From an Innovation sciences perspective, this requires changes at a systemic level, while simultaneously (individual) actors are needed to participate in reinforcing innovation systems around existing innovations and building up an innovation system around developing innovations. Planko and co-authors from the University of Utrecht developed a collective system building framework to identify a set (or clusters) of system building activities for entrepreneurial actors to do so. Henceforth, they identified ways for actors at the micro level to intervene at a systemic level. However, since actors need to collaborate instead of compete to a certain degree, with regard to their goals and resources to achieve results, it is argued that not just the activities, but also the factors for them to engage in the activities are important for setting in motion changes at a systemic level. Therefore a more individual actor oriented perspective is needed to include individual factors for actors to engage in building up the innovation system. Whereas the CSB framework focusses on “What needs to be done?” for entrepreneurs to collectively build up an innovation (system), in this research the focus is put on: “Why would actors be inclined to do so?”. The relevance of this question is found in the fact that there is not always a clear mutual benefit, more often than not, in a sustainability innovation for all parties involved at the start. And often interest in large sustainability issues is only carried partially by a variety of different actors, thereby spreading responsibility and spreading the interests in solving the issues. For example, for most entrepreneurial actors sustainability is just one out of many issues, whilst it is not often perceived as a single big issue for all actors individually, hence together. The research provided a conceptual framework for understanding and approaching larger sustainability issues than single actors have to or can deal with and therefore have to tackle through collaboration between a variety of different actors. This framework is tested in the field of more sustainable nutrient management at 19 dairy farms (3 case-studies). By providing an individual perspective this research provided insights into the reasons for the main actors, being mainly entrepreneurs (in these cases farmers), to become involved. In the research is hypothesised upon a set of factors, based on the interests, goals and resources held or obtained by individual actors, being mainly farmers but network-level actors (knowledge providing organisations) and system level actors (policy makers), with regard to the innovation. Henceforth, the developed individual actor-level factors incorporated systemic goals and resources at a network and system level, meanwhile addressing these from the individual level. The research thereby provided a link between the stimulating and hampering factors for individual actors (entrepreneurs) and actors working at a network or system level (policy makers, industry organisations) with the final goal of implementing innovations relevant at the innovaton system level. The factors and their interrelations are depicted in the conceptual model (chapter 2.5 p.12). When looking at the interests of individual actors leading up to the alignment of actor’s goals with the goals set at the innovation system level, for all cases strong empirical evidence was found for the presence of individual interests, the congruence (compatibility) of individual interests of the actors in the innovation and their engagement in a participatory approach. Individual interest and interest congruence played a large role, either through their engagement in a participatory approach or directly through the alignment of actor’s goals with the goals set at the innovation system level. While the engagement in a participatory approach was to differing degrees related to the alignment of goals of individual actors within the empirical data, the largest part of the empirical data showed it to be highly related to the relevant coordination of resources, those factors are on their turn related to the implementation of successful innovations. This confirms the hypothesised role of engagement of individual actors in a participatory approach and the factors individual interest and interest congruence as important factors for developing innovations relevant at a system level. When looking at the configurations of resources as identified at the three different levels, strong evidence was found in the cases for the hypothesised relations. First and foremost, the availability of individual resources for individual farmers, being finances and knowledge, proved to be highly important in order for them to be complemented with relevantly coordinated resources that allowed them to take up the innovation with relevance at the systems level. It is often stated that without such individual resources farmers were not able to understand (knowledge-wise) or to apply (financially) the coordinated resources. Secondly, also resource dependency between actors was found to be related to the coordination of relevant resources. Overall empirical evidence was found for the role of the individual factos. This evidence is provided within the limits of its empirical generalisability, being the on-farm more sustainable nutrient management.