Assessing the change trends affecting one’s organisation (Chapter One) and the initiatives already in place or planned pertaining to RRI and OS (Chapter Two) are two preliminary steps for deciding if, how and to what extent the research organisation should get engaged with RRI and OS.

RRI and OS are not policy systems which can be applied as they are. Rather, they can be understood as a stock of theoretical and practical knowledge which can serve as cultural background and a source of inspiration for managing and orienting the transformations of science and innovation as they manifest themselves in the organisation. Therefore, it is up to the leaders, managers or staff to decide how and which part of this stock of knowledge can be usefully applied, thus developing an RRI/OS profile tailored on problems, needs, and objectives of the organisation.

There are no established procedures to suggest for building up a self-tailored RRI/OS profile. It can however be useful to clarify some of the components which come into play in this decision process.

First, deciding on RRI and OS necessarily means deciding whether to take a path aimed at introducing some institutional changes within the organisation.

Secondly, for taking this kind of decisions, it could be also useful to “locate” the organisation within a clear pathway towards institutional change, thus defining, so to say, a starting point to move from. In the Resources an example concerning RRI is given (but it can be easily adapted to OS).

Moreover, in making the diagnosis, it can be useful to get some ideas about the benefits and drivers usually attached to RRI and OS. In this perspective, it is also important to connect RRI and OS with the main changes the organisation is facing (some suggestions are given here). Often, it could be practical starting from specific problems requiring a responsible and open approach (some examples are given here drawn from the experiments conducted under the FIT4RRI project).

Finally, it is to consider that rarely research organisations develop a comprehensive action plan or programme encompassing all the keys and dimensions of RRI. Quite often they adopt policies or measures focused on each of them. In this regard, examples pertaining to public engagement, gender equality, and Open Science are given.

It is also important to take into consideration the scale and the scope of the RRI/OS profile.

The scale concerns the parts of the organisation which are involved in the governance setting process. One can decide, for example, either to start a programme directly involving the organisation as a whole, or to start a small pilot programme involving only some units of the organisation to then assess whether to scale up the process.

The scope concerns the components of RRI or OS concerned in the governance setting process. Once again, one can decide to develop a policy action embracing RRI or Open Science as a whole, developing specific actions for each component, or to start with some specific aspects of Open Science or one key of RRI (gender equality, public engagement, etc.) to then decide whether to enlarge the scope.

In the great majority of cases, research organisations are somehow already involved with RRI and OS, even though their leaders and staff are not necessarily fully aware of it. This may concern the RRI keys (research ethics and integrity, gender equality, public engagement, science education, and open access), the RRI dimensions (inclusion, anticipation, responsiveness, reflexivity) or measures more related to Open Science (pertaining to publication, data, evaluation, protocols and workflows, and open infrastructure).

Therefore, the key decision to make is not whether to implement RRI and OS or not, but whether it is worth developing stronger, wider, and, if necessary, unitary strategies inspired to RRI and OS. In this same framework, other aspects should be also considered, such as the costs to be incurred, possible internal conflicts, and the distribution of the actions over time.

What is at stake with this decision to get the organisation more engaged with RRI and OS is, ultimately, the possibility to increase control over the transformations which are occurring in the organisation as well as in the environment the organisation is immersed in, also with the aim of identifying, preventing and managing the risks they could produce and the opportunities they offer. Hence the importance to keep in mind the results of the analysis carried out on the organisation (see Part One), considering them as part of the same diagnosis.

Making decisions about the engagement of the organisation with RRI and OS likely requires to consider at least three major issues.

Why the organisation should start a process of institutional change based on RRI and OS

The first issue to consider is obviously why (i.e., to address which issues) the organisation should enhance its level of engagement in RRI and OS. The question may appear trivial, but it is not. As we already said, research organisations are facing many changes which need to be somehow managed. Understanding how RRI and OS could be helpful for addressing them can be a quite complicated exercise, especially when the organisation is large. It is also to consider that science is an increasingly globalised and competitive domain. Research organisations which do not succeed in updating their culture, motivations, practices, and structures risk being left behind. Therefore, the focus should be that of the usefulness of RRI and OS, avoiding to consider them as merely prescriptive or normative approaches.

Which are the priority areas of RRI and OS, to achieve which goals and to manage which risks

Secondly, it is also important to establish which are the areas of RRI and OS which should be addressed first. This prioritisation exercise should lead to defining, for each of them, specific and hopefully realistic goals which can be achieved in a reasonable lapse of time, thus establishing the building blocks for designing an action plan or a long-term policy programme. All of this should take into due consideration the risks the research organisation is mainly exposed to because of the transformations affecting science systems.

Which constraints and obstacles should be considered before starting the process

The third key issue proposed here is the need for timely assessing risks, constraints, and obstacles before the process of institutional embedment of RRI and OS actually starts. Constraints, and obstacles may pertain to different dimensions, like the organisational dimension (e.g., endangering existing RRI and OS experiences which work well, creating new organisational structures for managing RRI and OS when they are not necessary, bureaucratising RRI and OS procedures, etc.), the policy dimension (e.g., creating conflicts within the organisation, failing in embedding new measures and procedures in the existing policy frameworks, etc.), the economic dimension (e.g., unnecessarily increasing costs for doing research), the social and cultural dimension (e.g., arousing cultural resistance and explicit opposition, causing insecurity and discontent among the staff) or the legal dimension (e.g., ignoring or overlooking existing internal or national norms and regulations).

Three main recommendations connected to the definition of a self-tailored RRI/OS profile can be done.

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As mentioned in the introduction, these guidelines are aimed at providing research organisations with some orientation on how to start or to enhance the process of institutional embedment of RRI and OS in the organisation.

To develop this aspect, the concept of “governance setting” has been introduced.

This expression simply refers to a “favourable environment” for RRI and OS to be developed. More practically, it is used here to refer to a short-term programme or a set of actions serving as a trigger for longer-term institutional changes towards RRI and OS in the organisation. Different types of governance settings may be adopted. Thus, the focus of this chapter is on how to choose the governance setting that best fits features, needs, and objectives of the organisation and makes the most of RRI/OS experiences already in place.

In general terms, on the basis of an empirical analysis carried out under FIT4RRI on around 300 programmes and projects targeting RRI and OS, the governance settings can be operationally distinguished from each other on the basis of two variables.

The first variable can be referred to as the triggering agent, i.e., who starts and manages the process of change, i.e.:

• The organisation itself
• An entity external to the organisation (consultancy firm, funding organisation, etc.)
• A network of actors the organisation is or becomes part of.

The second variable is the focus, i.e., the aspects in the life of an organisation which the governance setting addresses first, i.e.:

• Directly changing the organisation firstly addressing social patterns
• Directly changing the organisation firstly addressing existing norms
• Indirectly changing the organisations firstly addressing the ways in which scientific knowledge is produced.

Additional information about the distinction between social patterns and norms are given in the resources.

The nine-type typology developed by crossing these two variables is perhaps rough. A real governance setting process is unlikely to exclusively fall within a specific type, and mixed situations are common. Nonetheless, the typology is helpful for taking appropriate decisions about the best general strategy to start the change process.

Within this general typology, governance settings can be also distinguished from each other on the basis of many other elements, mostly dependent on the features of the RRI/OS profile (such as the scale and the scope).

It is also to highlight that not necessarily a unique governance setting should be adopted. For example, one can decide to choose a governance setting for, e.g., promoting gender equality and another one for approaching ethical issues or Open Science.

To exemplify the variability of these situations, different types of governance setting drawn from real cases are presented in the resources.

Focusing the attention on the governance setting should help devise a realistic approach to RRI and OS. Indeed, the process of defining an RRI/OS profile for the organisation – which usually involves different internal actors within the organisation – may lead to overambitious objectives and impractical plans, which do not take in due consideration constraints, limits, and the overall complexity of the process. This tendency can be also observed when actions focusing on specific RRI keys (for example, gender equality action plans) are concerned.

Deciding about how to start is the first step for verifying and testing the feasibility conditions for implementing an RRI/OS profile, primarily on the basis of what actually is already in place. This is the reason why the decisions about the development of an RRI/OS profile (see Chapter Three)and those pertaining to the choice of the governance setting should be ultimately understood as part of the same decision-making process, in which the RRI/OS profile defines the objectives to pursued and the governance setting helps define the pathway which can be followed to attain them.

What is at stake is the actual contextualisation of RRI and OS in a given organisation, and therefore the possibility of turning ideas and expectations pertaining to RRI and OS into real, feasible programmes.

Three major key issues should be considered about how to make decisions on the governance setting to develop for embedding RRI and OS in the organisation.

To what extent the organisation is equipped
for autonomously activating RRI and OS processes

This issue concerns the first of the two variables which contribute to defining the typology of governance settings, i.e., the variable pertaining to the triggering agent. The core of the question is whether in the organisation there are the necessary skills and resources (of different kind, such as funds, physical spaces or equipment) for autonomously activating or accelerating the process of institutional embedment of RRI and OS. If not, external support (a consultancy firm, single experts, other research organisations, external funds, etc.) should be looked for. This does not mean for the organisation to lose control over the process, but to back the implementation of RRI and OS with external inputs so as to prevent risks of failure.

Which aspects of the organisation’s life
can be more easily modified

This second issue concerns the second variable characterising governance settings, i.e., the focus. As mentioned above (see Chapter Three), institutional change cannot be interpreted either as the modification of the norms of the organisation or a change of the mindset, attitudes, values, and behaviours of the staff. Both components are concerned. Moreover, as mentioned, it is also possible to have different entry points to the change process, such as trying and directly changing the organisation or addressing how it fulfils its core business, i.e., the production of scientific knowledge. The key question here, therefore, is which of these aspects can be modified more easily and with fewer risks. The answer depends on many factors, such as quality and the authoritativeness of the leadership, leadership style, quality and intensity of the internal dialogue, cohesiveness of the staff, sensitiveness of research leaders, not to mention other features such as size of the organisation or previous experience on RRI and OS. The features of the RRI/OS profile, such as its scope and scale, strongly influence the decision.

Which (internal or external) opportunities can be exploited
for developing an effective governance setting

We reasoned so far imaging a more or less planned process which, starting from a diagnosis of the changes affecting the organisation (Chapter One) and an analysis of already implemented RRI/OS actions (Chapter Two), allows defining a self-tailored RRI/OS profile (Chapter Three) and choosing the appropriate governance setting in order to make this profile real (subject of this chapter). However, it is infrequent that a process like this can be so linearly planned. In many cases, the decision to start developing RRI and OS is an unplanned effect of, e.g., the participation of individual researchers in conferences and networks or the application for accessing opportunities or research funds connected to responsible and open science. Hence the importance of not overlooking internal or external existing opportunities for facilitating the establishment of a governance setting, be they policies, incentives, committed people or funds.

Three main recommendations connected to the definition of a self-tailored RRI/OS profile can be made.