RAAKS: multi-stakeholder learning in agricultural innovation systems

are systems and infrastructures which ensure that knowledge is created, captured, shared, and leveraged. These include culture, technology, infrastructure and measurement.

refers to what people have done and what has happened to them in the past.

is the knowledge that is there for all to find and use in, for example, databases and publications. It can be found in structured repositories and unstructured repositories of knowledge. See also tacit knowledge.

comprises the capabilities of the individuals required to provide solutions to the people with whom the organization does business.

is information which provides guidance for action. It comprises a fluid mix of experiences, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experience and information. It originates and is applied in the mind of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices and norms. Key related concepts are experience, truth, judgement, and rules of thumb. The set of concepts, meanings, skills and routines developed over time by individuals or groups as they process information. Knowledge is in people, 'between the ears'. It is intrinsically related to social practice. Actors generate, transform, integrate, exchange, disseminate and utilize knowledge while going about their daily business.

There is no "one suits all" definition of knowledge managment. A fairly wide definition could be as follows: "Knowledge management is the creation and subsequent management of an environment which encourages knowledge to be created, shared, learnt, enhanced, and organization for individual, social, or organizational benefits."

comprises a process which provides and organisation with a picture of the specific knowledge it needs in order to support its business processes.

are where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. The concept originated from Peter Senge's 1990 book The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. See also the related terms mental models, team learning, systems thinking and personal mastery.

 is a meeting or workshop where people are invited from other teams within an organization to share their experience.

are shortcuts to solutions to new problems that resemble problems previously solved by experienced workers.

 is an ability by which a person prefers to identify himself or herself professionally.

comprise databases, expert systems, and the like. They are characterised by their ease of searchability. See also unstructured repositories of knowledge.

an approach to analyse and understand how things influence one another within a whole. In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to survive or perish. In organizations, systems consist of people, institutions, structures, and processes that work together to make an organization effective or not.

 resides in people's heads. See also explicit knowledge.

include project reports and other non-indexed sources of information. See also structured repositories of knowledge.

The perceptions, preoccupations, judgements and understanding of the principal stakeholders.

A process that may take place when people or groups of people exchange information, including symbolic information, with each other. The information involved in such exchanges can take many different forms - for example, it may be spoken or written, on video or radio, or electronic. In describing the process, any one or combination of various aspects may be emphasized, such as the communications media, the participants, the cultural issues involved or the rules that govern the exchange process.

Patterns of communication that arise as a direct consequence of actors' decisions to search for, to exchange and to make use of the experiences, knowledge and ideas of others. This leads to increases in both formal and informal communication - perhaps through e-mail exchanges, meetings, newsletters, workshops, journals, conferences or courses. These communication patterns are one of three 'social forms' that emerge from interactions among actors in their search for new ideas.

When a number of actors begin to share ideas and define relevant problems, alternatives and solutions in similar ways, their views can be said to be converging. In a team or network, actors whose views converge to some extent can work together more effectively - for example, it becomes easier to narrow down the scope of their inquiries and the range of issues and alternatives they see as relevant to innovation. (However, strong convergence can be a disadvantage, leading actors to ignore important information that does not match their perceptions!) Convergences are one of the three 'social forms' that emerge from interaction among actors in their search for new ideas. 

Individual people who join together to deliberately generate, share and use ideas, knowledge and information; each participant is both a source and a user of information. Often existing local knowledge networks can be identified and encouraged.

A particular arrangement of actors. An innovation configuration appears when actors work together to achieve innovation. It is made up of the convergences (see below) and networks (for both communication and resource sharing) that emerge as a part of this process. Mutually accepted views, procedures and ground rules for collective behaviour with respect to innovation come into being, making joint decision making and coordinated action - and eventually the steering of innovation processes - possible. Basic configurations are models that can be used to help identify prime movers and dominant relationships among actors in a situation that is under study. They provide one way of looking at innovation configurations. 

A social process of interactive inquiry that actors carry out in order to construct or reconstruct their practices. The main elements are experimentation and networking, which may result in developing new methods and materials (technical, social or other) or in adaptation of ideas, practices and other elements developed by others. Because innovation requires interaction among actors, it can be seen as the outcome of a process of mutual learning.

A social competence. A collective capacity to learn: to generate, identify, obtain, develop and put to use technologies that are appropriate to specific conditions and societal objectives. The capacity for innovativeness is embedded in the social relations and interactions of a large number of semi-autonomous actors - individuals, groups, organizations and institutions.

A shared boundary between actors where interactions may occur. One way to increase relevant interactions (and therefore communication) is to identify strategic interfaces, and encourage or build linkages at these points.

A linked set of actors - individuals, organizations, institutions and networks. Multiple linkages emerge (or are strengthened) as a result of their networking in search of innovation. System performance depends heavily on elements such as cooperation among actors, effective communication, agreement with respect to objectives and interests, and how well the system defines and coordinates its tasks. RAAKS involves actors in looking at their existing system or systems, studying for example communication patterns, convergences, resource coalitions and configurations to see how the system is put together. This makes it possible to consider what changes might be useful - perhaps new networks or other types of linkages that could be improved or established to promote innovation - and to work towards commitments to achieve this.

A complex activity that manifests itself in a relatively stable change in behaviour of a person or a group of persons. Learning is rooted in the human capacity to improve one's understanding and skills on the basis of day-to-day experience. Such a change is sometimes also observed after a person or group has been involved in an organized learning activity or has gone through some kind of 'critical' experience.

Organizational arrangements (e.g. liaison offices, meetings or administrative relationships) that help to link up the parts of the system. This facilitates the exchange of resources - perhaps by contributing to communication (meetings among farmers, with extension workers or liaison offices are some examples), coordination (e.g. mutual adjustment of activities, such as water distribution or publicity campaigns) or resource transfers (perhaps credit, salary payments or shared labour).

A short concise statement setting out the essential purpose of an individual or organization; ideally, this statement specifically describes objectives, relevant constituencies and activities, plus other stakeholders and/or partners, rather than being 'beautiful but vague'! Different actors strive for different kinds of development: they may have widely differing views of what must be achieved, how and by which actors. What an actor sees as a mission sets the stage for their activities; it affects their expectations, the ways they search for information, and their impact. Similarly, the degree of diversity among the mission statements of relevant actors has a strong influence on the system.

An active process of building and maintaining meaningful interactive relationships with relevant actors; one of the most important ways actors organize themselves to search for the ideas and information they need to change their practices - that is, to innovate. Within a system, networks link relevant sources and users of knowledge and information or other resources. Therefore, the more effective and efficient the networking among stakeholders in development, the better the chance of innovation. The process of networking leads in turn to more or less stable patterns of relationships: convergences, communication networks and resource coalitions; in short, innovation configurations. This makes actors increasingly capable of supporting the purposeful generation, use and transformation of innovations.

Because the composition and integration of a network affect communication and resource linkages, they impact the availability and relevance of these resources and the extent to which the system achieves its objectives. Networks are thus an important part of knowledge management strategies.

Even when a problem is stated in their assignment, a team must look carefully at the way they will define the area of human activity (see above) and problem (Window A1) to be considered. The fact that different stakeholders have different ideas about the definition of any problem is a key element in a RAAKS study, encouraging stakeholders to assess and re-assess their understanding of the problem situation and their own role in it. The picture of the underlying problem evolves as a variety of actors work together.

These definitions determine the objectives the team will work towards and, critically, the participants in the study. For example, the problem may seem to be that farmers do not participate actively enough in extension programmes; or it may seem more institutional, such as a lack of coordination between research and extension. In either case, the importance of this decision makes clear that the way the problem is stated must be critically examined! Either of these problems might not be the real issue.

Alliances among actors who decide to pool their resources to improve their performance. These alliances are one of the three social forms (see below) that emerge as a result of interactions among actors as they search for new ideas. Such alliances can be used as a means of wielding power and influence.

Patterns that emerge as a result of networking for innovation. With continuing contact, these may stabilize and persist. The existence of these social structures influence later behaviour/interactions of the actors involved; they may have either an enabling or a constraining influence. Engel identifies three such social forms: convergences, resource coalitions and communication networks.

This phrase recognizes innovation as taking place within a social context; this context can thus either facilitate or impede the process. Further, if the context is sufficiently well understood, the actors involved can work together to organize themselves in ways that are more beneficial to their objectives - that is, they can organize to search for ideas and information that will allow them to change their practices.

The activities we all engage in are largely socially defined. That is, the society in which we function - whether within the family, a particular type of work, or a country, region or tribal group - tends to have rules (written or unwritten) about what makes a competent 'X', where X may be a mother, a doctor, a farmer, a particular sort of business, a teacher, a policymaker and so forth. Any set of actions can be seen as a 'social practice', in the sense that actors socially define and reinforce rules of competence as they relate to each other. A social practice can then be defined as a discernible set of actors, who define and uphold performance through some form of rule-governed social interaction.

Interplay in-and-between diverse social practices is a breeding ground for innovation; networking is a way of encouraging this interplay among relevant practices. Further, this concept can be useful in understanding the differences in the rules that govern different practices - for example, farmers in comparison to researchers or extension workers. A clearer perception of each others' activities as social practices in their own right could help to improve the interplay between groups and to generate more effective networking practices among them.

Actors whose interests are affected by a particular area of human activity, whether as victims or beneficiaries. In a RAAKS study, generally those who are concerned with maintaining or changing performance in this area. (See 'The AKIS perspective' in Chapter 1.) As with actors, stakeholders may be individuals, organizations, legal entities, etc.

This is an appraisal of constraints and opportunities, leading to a joint definition of useful strategies for improvement.

An effect arising from the cooperative activity of two agents that, when working together, produce a combined result greater than either one could have achieved alone. When actors whose resources (see linkages above) complement each other work together, the collaboration increases the effectiveness of all. Each actor then achieves more than they could alone.

Volition emphasises both sense-making (creating comprehension and purpose) and commitment to stick to decisions that have been made. It also involves fluidity: an informed and thoughtful volition which is never in error and which is always subject to challenge and re-formulation. In addition, volition shows purpose and determination, even if no objects and results are specified in advance.

An analytical perspective that focuses on particular issues relevant to understanding a problem situation. Windows provide a framework for the use of a RAAKS team.

RAAKS (rapid appraisal of agricultural knowledge systems) is a diagnostic framework and participatory methodology for analysing complex multi-stakeholder situations and for designing effective co-operation and communication strategies. It is an important methodology for facilitating innovative performance in agriculture, natural resource management and rural development.

Return to the RAAKS dossier.

In general terms, the purpose of an agricultural knowledge and information system (AKIS) is to facilitate agriculture-related practices to be innovated continuously. The system integrates farmers, agricultural educators, researchers and extensionists to harness knowledge and information from various sources for better farming and improved livelihoods. Even when such a broad intentionality is recognized, the specific mission of an AKIS is permanently debated amongst social actors in one way or the other affected by agricultural performance. AKIS can be improved, e.g. made more sensitive to the needs of poor smallholders, using RAAKS, see http://www.kit.nl/4616?tab=2.

Participation (by both men and women) could be either direct or through legitimate intermediate institutions or representatives. Participation also means freedom of association and expression on the one hand and an organized civil society on the other hand.

SSM as a methodology lends itself particularly well for dealing with complex situations where those involved lack a common agreement on what constitutes the problem that needs to be addressed. The aim of SSM is to bring about improvements in a situation perceived as problematical. As such, it does not seek to solve ‘the problem’ but to facilitate a learning process which allows its users to gradually develop a more comprehensive understanding of the situation under study. In contrast to hard systems, such as computer or transport systems, soft systems are mental constructs for human understanding. When applied to agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKIS), the AKIS could be described as a system to help farmers escape poverty, or a system to increase agricultural production, or a system to develop technologies that have a high theoretical yield potential. SSM supposes a systems approach as described in systems thinking.