Accounting for Knowledge Exchange: Stakeholder Impact Analysis Matrix (SIAM)

 

The Relu Director’s Office set out to explore and understand more about the programme’s stakeholder engagement by developing a new tool called the Stakeholder Impact Analysis Matrix (SIAM).

SIAM is a diagnostic tool which helps us to capture and understand the how of knowledge exchange – what works, what doesn’t – so that we can increase the efficiency of future approaches and the likelihood of mutual benefits.

SIAM tracks the annual involvement of several thousand stakeholders in Relu projects. The matrix holds data on all the stakeholder contacts of all Relu projects and records how they are involved – this is based on annual reporting by project leaders and has been designed to be light touch and a routine part of project data collection.

The tool can:
• Enable stakeholder mapping and identification of key gaps in linkages
• Offer insights into the scale and extent of short term impacts of research on stakeholders’ knowledge and practices and impact of the stakeholders on research quality and relevance
• Identify stakeholders around which to plan and seek feedback
• Help target and account for long term impact analysis

SIAM allows us to consider shorter term, formative effects before the links of causality are lost. In this way, processes of knowledge exchange can be revealed. An 'audit trail' of early encounters between researchers and stakeholders may give a clearer steer about where to look for longer term research impacts and a head start in chasing up causality.

There are a number of publications which explore the process of learning about and accounting for knowledge exchange within Relu in more detail:

Phillipson, J., Lowe, P., Proctor, A. and Ruto, E. (2012) Stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange in environmental research, Journal of Environmental Management, 95, p. 56-65.

Telling Stories: Accounting for knowledge exchange

Common knowledge? An exploration of knowledge transfer

Adventures in Science: Interdisciplinarity and knowledge exchange in the Relu Programme

Example of SIAM data collection template