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Research that focuses on changing problems of poverty, inequality, and food security may not always listen to what people who live in areas with sustainability problems need in order to make those changes. In our analysis of development research projects, we reflect on the challenges of participation faced by different actors in transdisciplinary science. For a decolonial turn, people need to be involved in making decisions about resources, research topics, and how to use knowledge.Transdisciplinary research is considered to offer contributions of science to sustainability transformations, partly because transdisciplinary approaches aim to increase the relevance, credibility, and legitimacy of scientific research by ensuring the active participation of non-academic actors in research. However, the possible impact of transdisciplinary research on decolonial sustainability science - understood as actively undoing Euro-North American centricity, dispossession, racism, and ongoing power imbalances in inequitable social-ecological systems - and simultaneous response to scientific rigor remain under debate. Thus, this article assesses the contributions of transdisciplinary research projects to decolonial sustainability science based on empirical information. To do so, we analyze a sample of 43 development research projects of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We found that despite significant differences in approaches, Global-North-dominated sustainability science still has far to go to achieve the decolonial potential of transdisciplinarity, enabling different actors' participation.

   With the movement towards recovery-oriented mental health (MH) services, individuals with MH lived-experience are increasingly employed as peer providers (peers). Peers are unique in that they bring knowledge from experience and eye-level connection to service users that enhance the quality of services and humanize MH systems’ culture. In Israel, hundreds of peers are employed in various roles and settings across the MH system. However, peer integration into MH services faces challenges. One issue involves the use of self-disclosure (SD) in MH services which varies with explicitness across roles and settings. This study sought to understand perspectives and experiences regarding peers’ SD (use & sharing of knowledge from experience) among different stakeholders in MH health services. Six focus groups and 4 semi-structured interviews (N = 42) were conducted as a part of a larger international project (UPSIDES; ERC Horizon 2020, Moran et al., Trials 21:371, 2020). Data was transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. Four categories and 7 themes were identified regarding current perspectives and experiences with peers’ SD in MH organizations: (i) Restrained or cautious organizational approach to SD; (ii) Attitudes of peers to SD approach; (iii) The influence of designated peer roles on SD; and (iv) Unwarranted SD of peers working in traditional roles. The findings reveal that peers’ SD in MH services is a complex process. Organizational approaches were often controlling of non-designated peers’ SD practices; participants had diverse attitudes for and against peers’ SD; SD occurred according to personal preferences, specific peer role and the director’s approach to peers’ SD; Conflictual SD dilemmas emerged in relation to service users and staff. SD sometimes occurs unwarrantely due to ill mental health. The presence of peer-designated roles positively impacts peers' SD. We interpret the current mix of views and general conduct of peer SD practice in statutory MH services as related to three aspects: 1. The presence of a traditional therapeutic SD model vs. a peer SD model – with the former currently being dominant. 2. Insufficient proficiency and skill development in peers’ SD. 3. Stigmatic notions about peer SD among service users and staff. Together, these aspects interrelate and sometimes create a negative cycle create tension and confusion. A need to develop professionalism of peer SD in statutory services is highlighted alongside enhancing staff and service user acknowledgement of the value of peer SD. Developing peer-designated roles can positively impacts peer SD in MH statutory services. Training, support, and organizational interventions are required to further support for peer-oriented SD and the enhancement of a person-centered and recovery orientation of MH services.

An innovation system can be defined as a network of organizations, enterprises, and individuals demanding and supplying knowledge and bringing it into a social and economic use. This book's primary aim is to focus on the largely unexplored operational aspects of the innvoation systems concept and to explore its potential for agriculture.

The 1997 Bank reforms that introduced the matrix management concept aimed to adapt the organization to changing circumstances and address concerns among external stakeholders about the role of aid in development. The reforms were motivated largely by widespread recognition that the Bank's development programs were excessively driven by a culture of lending, with insufficient attention to client needs and the quality of results, which are crucial to development effectiveness. A previous round of reforms in 1987 had strengthened the country focus, but quality remained a concern. Furthermore, access of developing countries to development finance from the private sector had increased significantly, leading to a decreasing share of official development aid, including Bank financing, in total flows to developing countries. This trend has continued after slight interruption by the Asian financial crisis. In 1987, World Bank lending represented 15 percent of all external financing for developing countries. By 2002 Bank lending had declined to 4 percent of external financing (organizational effectiveness task force: final report, 2005). Changes in the external environment indicate that the matrix system is even more relevant today than when it was introduced. Client needs have diversified, with greater differentiation among countries, even within the regions; the growth of global public goods and corporate priorities is creating tensions and has given rise to new challenges which need to be reconciled with the country model; demand for cutting-edge knowledge is growing, both to enhance quality of lending and as a business line for policy and program advice to clients; and new global practices have emerged to meet needs such as information, communication and technology, and disaster management. The Bank's ability to renew itself and function as a truly global Bank is critical to its success.

PurposeEnabling and incentivizing organizations to act based on their local knowledge is an important aspect of entrepreneurship. The significance of local knowledge in the context of schools is well recognized, but very little research has been done to investigate how to provide discretion and incentives to schools to use this knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to build a model to guide this understanding for policy makers who may wish to foster entrepreneurship for schools and also use it to critique the literature and provide an alternative approach.Design/methodology/approachThe paper applies fundamentals of principal-agent theory to the ownership and governance of schools, the use of teacher incentive pay, and school reform efforts. Focus is on use of teacher incentives and on school choice initiatives.FindingsThe author found that many public school teachers will have attenuated incentives, but mandates to increase test score rewards may be counterproductive. Institutional reform via school choice seems more promising. The author identifies several institutional features that are expected to induce more entrepreneurial and productive activity by schools. The author discusses and critiques school reform efforts in this regard, including Tiebout competition, charter schools, voucher programs, and use of “best practice.”Originality/valueReform efforts often lack in addressing critical aspects of institutional empowerment and incentives, and research in this regard also is mostly absent. The author contends, however, that dealing and addressing such issues is a key to effective reform.

There is a massive global momentum to progress toward the sustainable development and universal health coverage goals. However, effective policies to health-care coverage can only emerge through high-quality services delivered to empowered care users by means of strong local health systems and a translational standpoint. Health policies aimed at removing user fees for a defined health-care package may fail at reaching desired results if not applied with system thinking. Secondary data analysis of two country-based cost-of-illness studies was performed to gain knowledge in informed decision-making toward enhanced access to care in the context of resource-constraint settings. A scoping review was performed to map relevant experiences and evidence underpinning the defined research area, the economic burden of illness. Original studies reflected on catastrophic costs to patients because of care services use and related policy gaps. Poverty diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) may constitute prime examples to assess the extent of effective high-priority health-care coverage. Our findings suggest that a share of the economic burden of illness can be attributed to implementation failures of health programs and supply-side features, which may highly impair attainment of the global stated goals. We attempted to define and discuss a knowledge development framework for effective policy-making and foster system levers for integrated care. Bottlenecks to effective policy persist and rely on interrelated patterns of health-care coverage. Health system performance and policy responsiveness have to do with collaborative work among all health stakeholders. Public-private mix strategies may play a role in lowering the economic burden of disease and solving some policy gaps. We reviewed possible added value and pitfalls of collaborative approaches to enhance dynamic local knowledge development and realize integration with the various health-care silos. Despite a large political commitment and mobilization efforts from funding, the global development goal of financial protection for health-newly adopted in TB control as no TB-affected household experiencing catastrophic expenditure-may remain aspirational. To enhance effective access to care for all, innovative opportunities in patient-centered and collaborative practices must be taken. Further research is greatly needed to optimize the use of locally relevant knowledge, networks, and technologies.

Automakers have been emphasized as an important source of technological knowledge for vehicle parts suppliers. However, the situations in which such technological knowledge can be applied more effectively are unclear. Thus, theoretical instructions for suppliers' strategic decisions on the use of this important knowledge in different situations are lacking. To reveal the different effects of suppliers' use of automakers' technological knowledge in different situations, this paper differentiates the situations based on two criteria: (1) the nature of the inventions (i.e., exploitation and exploration) and (2) the level of the suppliers' knowledge-creating capability. Using patents from 47 suppliers of the US automobile manufacturing industry as the sample, we explored the characteristics of using automakers' technological knowledge in vehicle parts suppliers' inventions in different situations. Automakers' technological knowledge is most useful in exploitative inventions or for suppliers with a lower level of creation capability. This finding implies that automakers' knowledge is a preliminary element in suppliers' inventions.

This article discusses the implementation of the principle of the governance of life in Colombia, as part of an analysis on the forms of social and political uses of knowledge, in particular of hygiene. The practice and discipline of hygiene is considered to have provided the State with useful resources for forging new links with the population, especially during the process of its consolidation, from the end of the 19th century until the middle of the twentieth century. These possibilities enabled the State to create, and at the same time, control citizens' bodies, in various ways and among diverse social groups. Hygienic practice brought together international scientific knowledge with regional efforts toward homogenization, as well as national and local needs for differentiation. In order to study these links, the text focuses on the interaction between the hygiene discipline, its professionals, the international networks of knowledge exchange, and the principal hygiene mechanisms that were introduced to manage the population. Finally, the article reflects on some differences between the national situation and the most distinctive characteristics of the genealogy of biopower.

The unauthorized use of pesticides applied at inappropriate times and/or in unregistered crops is a potential risk to the environment and also to human health. The aim of this study was to assess the level of knowledge and awareness of farmers on the use, risk, and hazards associated with the exposure to pesticides in the agricultural region of Sancti Spíritus, Cuba. To comply with the objective, 124 farmers of this province were surveyed. The results were analyzed initially through a descriptive analysis and then, performing an association analysis using the Chi-Square test and Spearman ́s correla-tions, employing the statistical package SPSS version 20.0. The results showed that only 28.3 % of the farmers had received specific training on pesticides. Personal experience was the main driver for de-cisions about which pesticides to use and how it would be applied. About 35.8 % of the farmers stored pesticides in unmarked containers, such as soft drink bottles. The empty containers are stored to be incinerated (31.7 %) or reused (42.6 %) for pesticides, water, or fuel. Around 90 % of the farmers surveyed do not use personal protective equipment. The study concludes that the lack of knowledge and use of personal protective equi-pment, the inability to understand the labels and also the low risk-perception are the main causes of exposure to pesticides and the health risk for workers and nearby residents, as well as the damages caused to the environment. El uso no autorizado de plaguicidas, como la aplicación en momentos inadecuados o en cultivos no registrados, es un riesgo potencial para el medio ambiente y la salud humana. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar el nivel de conocimiento y concientización entre los agricultores sobre el uso, riesgo y peli-gros asociados con la exposición a plaguicidas en la región agrícola de Sancti Spíritus, Cuba. Para el desarrollo del objetivo se encuestaron 124 campesinos de la provincia. Los resultados fueron analizados a partir de un análisis descriptivo inicial y luego a través de un análisis de asociación mediante la prueba Chi-Cuadrado y Correlaciones de Spearman, empleando el paquete estadístico SPSS versión 20.0. Los resultados mostraron que solo el 28,3 % de los agricultores había recibido capacitación específica en plaguicidas. La experiencia personal es el principal impulsor de las decisiones sobre qué plaguicidas usar y cómo utilizarlo. El 35,8 % de los agricultores almacenó plaguicidas en recipientes sin marcar, como botellas de refrescos. Los contenedores vacíos se almacenan para ser incinerados (31,7 %) o reutilizados (42,6 %) para plaguicidas, agua o gasolina. Alrededor del 90 % de los agricultores no utiliza equipos de protección personal. El estudio concluye que la falta de conocimiento, el no uso de equipo de protección personal, la incapacidad para entender las etiquetas y la baja percepción de riesgos son las principales causas de la exposición a los plaguicidas y el riesgo para la salud de los trabajadores y residentes cercanos, así como de los daños al medio ambiente.