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Ten Australians and one New Zealander provide reflections on the influence of Julie Thompson Klein's work on and in inter- and trans- disciplinarity. Even taking into account that this article is based on a small number of contributions from only one corner of the world, the reflections demonstrate the influence of a diverse array of Klein's academic work, the ground-breaking nature of her book "Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice," the meticulousness of her scholarship that makes her voice authoritative, and the added benefits of personal connections. The contributions also demonstrate the value of reflective narratives in providing a more rounded and richer picture of an academic's influence than traditional metrics, including -- in Julie Thompson Klein's case -- non-citable enhancement of thinking and orientation, catalytic effects when her ideas are combined with others, and practical value in making sense of events and circumstances. Most importantly, assembling reflective narratives provides a window onto the unique attributes and contributions of individual researchers, educators and practitioners, illustrating and affirming the richness of differences and the importance of valuing and capitalising on them. Recognition of such diversity is not only essential to help individuals identify the strongest contributions they can make, but also critical for good inter- and trans- disciplinary research, education and practice.

Reports on Aotearoa New Zealand's research, science, and innovation (RSI) system suggest the sector could improve its social responsibility and create more social value. However, researchers and innovators within the sector find this challenging. Through qualitative interviews and a national survey of RSI system participants, this study explores the current perceptions, practices enacted, and support given around responsible research and innovation practices. Findings indicate that researchers and innovators have diverse understandings of what responsible research and innovation entails, viewing anticipation and reflexivity-aligned practices as the most important aspects of responsible research and innovation. Participants feel most supported by research organisations and funding bodies to enact such aspects of responsible practice. However, they perceive a discrepancy, across all dimensions explored, between what researchers and innovators should do, and what they actually do in terms of enacting responsible practices. Thus, significant room for improvement is identified, particularly regarding practices that align with researchers' and innovators' obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and requirements under Vision Mātauranga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past decade, collaboration has been the preferred method of devising land and water policy in Aotearoa New Zealand to achieve agreed outcomes. However, the use of collaboration in policymaking is at a crossroads, as some argue it is unrealistic to expect stakeholders and tangata whenua with competing interests to work in partnership on contentious policy issues. To help clarify the future direction of collaboration, this paper provides authorising agencies (those with responsibility for the policy problems) with prompts to reflect ex ante on the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing collaboration. Based on a retrospective review of collaborations in New Zealand's land and water policymaking, and a two-day symposium with collaboration practitioners, we identify situations that are potentially less suited to collaboration owing to factors that are challenging to overcome through process design. Four issues that affect the success of collaborations are identified: the nature of the policy problem, the personal and collective qualities of those involved, power relationships, and the collaborative process. Finally, we draw together practical lessons from history, the symposium, and the literature to develop a list of questions for authorising agencies to use to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite one-third of New Zealand's landmass being protected as public conservation land, the country still faces significant conservation challenges. Nearly 50% of the country's landmass has been converted to pastoral farming, and biological invasions pose a sustained and growing threat to remaining biodiversity across all land tenures. Managing and protecting biodiversity on-farm provides vast opportunities to create nature-rich pastoral landscapes. A key step towards bringing about necessary behaviour change to achieve this is increasing insights into farmers' attitudes towards the value of native biodiversity on their farms. Using a questionnaire underpinned by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, we surveyed 500 sheep and beef farmers from around New Zealand as to their beliefs and attitudes and perceived barriers relating to the protection and management of native biodiversity on their farm. Although the survey respondents were largely homogenous, the surveyed group of farmers were heterogeneous in their responses. When asked about advantages associated with managing and protecting native biodiversity on their farms, 690 distinct responses were provided, spanning social (47%), environmental (34%), practical (10%), and economic (2%) themes. In contrast, identified disadvantages were fewer (530 distinct responses) and less wide-ranging in scope, clustering around economic (44%), practical (26%) and social (25%) themes. Nearly three times as many farmers stated there were no disadvantages (22%) than stated there were no advantages (8%). However, the most frequently cited disadvantages were cost and time, which were also commonly cited as barriers to managing biodiversity. Our study illustrates that sheep and beef farmers perceive may advantages in maintaining native biodiversity on-farm, but there is a clear desire for greater support in overcoming identified barriers and this will require a targeted policy response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Selwyn Waihora Project was a research project supporting a collaborative policy-making process to set environmental limits in the Selwyn Waihora catchment in New Zealand's South Island. In this Design Report we reflect on this project based on data collected from a range of project participants approximately two years after project completion. The data collection was guided by the Integration and Implementation Sciences framework (i2S). On the basis of participant responses, and the authors' first-hand experiences working on the project, we present insights for transdisciplinary research. Through the questions asked by the i2S framework insights emerged on: what it means to honour community values; the importance of context but that projects can pay too much attention to it; boundary objects to foster integration across multiple knowledge systems; the value of intra-team narratives for translation; the importance of considering the losers of the research; and sharing the burden of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexive monitors (RMs) have been found to be vital to the success of co-innovation projects. While the practices utilized by RMs have been examined in various contexts, we examine the roles they have played in a new cultural context in New Zealand (NZ) and how it has been possible to embed these roles in a diverse range of innovation projects in the primary sector. This article will address this gap in terms of explaining the case-specific behaviours that have been utilized in six different co-innovation projects in the NZ agricultural innovation system. Qualitative data from interviews with five RMs will be used to argue that RMs are a key component in the co-innovation process and are required to play diverse roles depending on project circumstances to enhance system innovation - for example, devil's advocate, project supporter, consensus seeker, conflict mediator, critical enquirer or encourager. The findings have implications for the characteristics that make a good RM in terms of openness to new ideas, facilitation and critical thinking skills and how they report on the practice of monitoring a project reflexively utilizing monitoring and evaluation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New Zealand, local governments are tasked with both sustainably managing natural resources and supporting adoption of practices and technologies for environmental outcomes. Unfortunately, farmers in New Zealand lack trust in advice on environmental performance provided by local governments. Hence, local governments may seek to partner with others to disseminate information about environmentally friendly practices and technologies to farmers. Empirical evidence indicates that New Zealand farmers are more likely to adopt new practices after seeing them successfully demonstrated; therefore, local government would do well to partner with those who have tried the practices themselves and those with large farmer networks. In this paper, we use unique survey data to identify the characteristics of such “innovators” and “connectors”. We also identify the characteristics of individuals who trust environmental information provided by local governments. We find that sex, age, education level, financial robustness, farm size, and the number of distinct land uses are correlated with both innovativeness and connectedness. However, among these characteristics, only education and financial robustness predict trust in environmental information provided by local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently implemented research and development (R&D) programme in New Zealand is attempting to implement co-innovation principles throughout the country's agricultural sector. It is based on an agricultural innovation systems (AIS) approach, using five innovation platforms (IPs) based in the leading industries, plus a national-level IP. This paper presents and analyses the emerging challenges of operationalizing transdisciplinary research connected to co-innovation in the context of the programme. The main challenges relate to managing the complexity of a multi-stakeholder network, aligning the formal procedures for research funding and IPs with a co-innovation approach that requires flexibility, and changing participants' framing of innovation from linear to interactive models. Our conclusion is that 'learning by doing' is essential in operationalizing coinnovation. Its practical implications still need to be translated into institutional changes in the national R&D structures so that policies, instruments and incentives enable co-innovation. It is envisaged that the higher-level innovation platform will drive these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exploratory study aimed to understand the range of community responses to three pest eradication technologies proposed for use in New Zealand and to examine community perceptions of past incursion responses, with the aim of improving future responses. Qualitative techniques were used to elicit information from a small group of people selected from the general public, the Department of Conservation and three government councils. Participants were fairly trusting of the basic information provided to them about the three technologies, and as a result were generally accepting of aerial spraying of pheromones and sterile insect technology. However, the use of aerial sprays presented some concerns. More in-depth information, the manner in which it was presented, and how the community was be included in the decision-making process were likely to be the significant influences in predicting the public response to eradication attempts in the future. Recommendations for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between biotechnology employees' beliefs about the moral outcomes of a controversial transgenic research project and their attitudes of acceptance towards the project? To answer this question, employees (n=466) of a New Zealand company, AgResearch Ltd., were surveyed regarding a project to create transgenic cattle containing a synthetic copy of the human myelin basic protein gene (hMBP). Although diversity existed amongst employees' attitudes of acceptance, they were generally: in favor of the project, believed that it should be allowed to proceed to completion, and that it is acceptable to use transgenic cattle to produce medicines for humans. These three items were aggregated to form a project acceptance score. Scales were developed to measure respondents' beliefs about the moral outcomes of the project for identified stakeholders in terms of the four principles of common morality (benefit, non-harm, justice, and autonomy). These data were statistically aggregated into an Ethical Valence Matrix fo the project. The respondents' project Ethical Valence Scores correlated significantly with their project acceptance scores (r=0.64, p<0.001), accounting for 41% of the variance in respondents' acceptance attitudes. Of the four principles, non-harm had the strongest correlation with attitude to the project (r=0.59), followed by benefit and justice (both r=0.54), then autonomy (r=0.44). These results indicate that beliefs about the moral outcomes of a research project, in terms of the four principles approach, are strongly related to, and may be significant determinants of, attitudes to the research project. This suggests that, for employees of a biotechnology organization, ethical reasoning could be a central mechanism for the evaluation of the acceptability of a project. We propose that the Ethical Valence Matrix may be used as a tool to measure ethical attitudes towards controversial issues, providing a metric for comparison of perceived ethical consequences for multiple stakeholder groups and for the evaluation and comparison of the ethical consequences of competing alternative issues or projects. The tool could be used to measure both public and special interest groups' ethical attitudes and results used for the development of socially responsible policy or by science organizations as a democratizing decision aid to selection amongst projects competing for scarce research funds.