Responsible Research and Innovation

From Concepts to Practices

Robert Gianni, John Pearson, Bernard Reber, Robert Gianni, John Pearson, Bernard Reber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315457277
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Ricerca e sviluppo
• Index: Business

Responsible Research and Innovation provides a comprehensive and impartial overview of the European Commission's Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework, including discussion of both the meaning and aims of the concept, and of its practical application.

As a governance framework for research and innovation, RRI involves four key perspectives: ethical, economic/business, legal and governance and political. The book is organised into chapters covering these different dimensions. The authors provide different viewpoints on these aspects, in order to offer guidance from experts in the field, while at the same time acknowledging the interpretative openness of the RRI frameworks.

Part I

Ethical features of Responsible Research and Innovation

1The discourse of responsibility

A social perspective

Robert Gianni

Introduction

The notion of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), recently launched by several national funding agencies and adopted by the European Commission (EC) in 2011, has become increasingly important for the development of publicly funded research (Pearson Ch. 5). The EC is the major financier for research in Europe, and its guidelines play a crucial role with regard to the objectives and methodology that different stakeholders involved in research practices should and will pursue. However, the understanding of how a single general framework can and should work in different domains still represents one of the main challenges for scientists and policy-makers. The necessary level of abstraction of a regulatory policy must come to terms with its application and the specific measures that it requires.

It is not an easy task to disentangle the complexity of RRI because of the different perspectives it needs to embrace and the necessary flexibility it requires in order to be adapted to different contexts. Furthermore, such flexibility can undergo attempts at instrumentalization, generating an ambiguous and counterproductive scenario. However, a flexible pattern does not imply that RRI-related words are unconstrained or totally arbitrary. The meaning of the acronym RRI can and should be decided according to a political vision put in place through dedicated actions (van Oudheusden 2014; Gianni 2016).

At first sight, innovation, research and responsibility can be seen as belonging to at least two clashing conceptual paradigms. On the one hand, the dimension of research and innovation tends, although with clear differences, towards the construction of a more technological future according to strategic and technical rules (Schumpeter 1934; Bessant 2013).¹ On the other hand, the dimension of responsibility is strongly anchored to a normative ground, defining duties and barriers for actions (Vincent et al. 2011). This presumed heterogeneity then raises some doubts about the possible convergence of two paradigms following divergent methodologies. How can we facilitate the integration of these two methodologies without losing their aims and spirit? How can research and innovation be boosted if we burden them with too many rules and other normative features? At the same time, what kind of Research & Innovation (R&I) are we going to promote if projects are constructed while ignoring what society stands for and considers valuable?

The discrepancies in the interpretations of RRI and the difficulty in reaching a shared perspective (Owen et al. 2013) are the fruits of the ambiguity and cross-disciplinary nature of the words embedded in it. Thus, beside the useful analyses on the framework as such (Owen et al. 2013; Van den Hoven 2014; Grunwald 2011; Kuhlmann et al. 2016; Jacob et al. 2013; Spaapen et al. 2015), several authors have started to propose alternative perspectives, in order to clarify issues that are often simply due to a common crystallization of the concepts.

From my perspective, such a hermeneutical operation has been taking two main paths. The first one is formed by those contributions that highlight the normative bases of R&I in order to show some implicit features and the benefits of the adoption of a normative framework. These attempts have been brought about by some authors who have tried to redraw the galaxy of innovation in socio-ethical terms (Godin 2015; Blok and Lemmens 2015; Bessant 2013; Pavie 2014; Van Den Hoven 2013; 2014; Moldashl 2010). A second track has been one of proposing an analytic reading of responsibility that tries to distinguish all its different senses (Vincent 2011). These operations have the great merit of having clarified all the differences embedded in such a polysemic concept. However, I see few examples of how to integrate the different acceptions of responsibility in a way that could be fruitful for R&I (Pellé & Reber 2015; Pellizzoni 2004; Pavie 2014). Accordingly, this chapter attempts to propose a picture of responsibility that is stronger in tackling the problems arising from its terminological ambiguity without dismissing such fertile plurality.

We will achieve such an attempt by making explicit the underlying sense and scope of the concept of responsibility. By defining the relation between its different meanings, we will obtain an ethical understanding of responsibility. In the last part, I will suggest that the political and institutional nature of the discourse on responsibility should be the actual grounds for implementing RRI.

Responsibility: The construction of a polysemic concept

Subjective efforts and objective rules

Certain recurrent ethical and political terms are inclined towards inflation, which can increase their role but often also brings a loss of value. The concept of responsibility is surely one of the main victims, having undergone such a process in recent years (Ricoeur 2000). If, on the one hand, its flexibility represents a powerful aspect in order to cope with social pluralism, on the other hand this pluralism often appears in terms of idiosyncrasy, generating doubts about the possibility of a consensual understanding of responsibility and thus of its utility. Not only different social domains may interpret responsibility in different ways, but also, within the same domain, an understanding of responsible practices can be subject to differing interpretations. Societal actors are now called to be responsible in different occasions and with different meanings according to concrete situations and the related social dimension. Alain Ehrenberg, for instance, has highlighted how individuals are so exposed to quests for responsibility that they often perceive it as an unreachable model, generating psychological pathologies (1998). Responsibility is growing not only in quantitative terms but, increasingly, also in terms of quality. Ibo van de Poel and Nicole Vincent have listed several meanings in the wake of Hart’s famous example (2011). According to Pellé and Reber (2015), we can find even more understandings of responsibility than those listed by Hart. Being used with major frequency in different domains, these applications have also contributed to a semantic multiplication, which makes it hard for stakeholders to hold onto a common understanding of responsibility.

On the basis of the different usages of responsibility, we can identify two major conceptual paradigms, which are often seen as difficult to integrate.

The first one is probably the strongest, even in our daily comprehension, and applies a classical reading of a deontological character. It relies on the perspective that, in order to assess concrete effects and to prevent bad consequences, actions need to be imputed to an actor who is accountable for the outcomes. This understanding is mostly retrospective and defines the limits of what an agent should do. A particular closeness to the realms of law and deontological morality, highlighting what should or must not be done, has often contributed to shedding a negative light on the concept. Among this range of perspectives, we can include the different legal and moral models aimed at establishing the borders of individual duties.² Stemming from a strong European juridical tradition of scholars interpreting Kantian deontological doctrines, the aim of this conceptual framework is to define the objective cognitive conditions for identifying an actor with an action so as to guarantee a common ground for justice (Kelsen 2005; Hart 2008; Kant 1997; Vincent et al. 2011). Therefore, the main focus is on the distinction and the definition of terms like accountability, liability and blameworthiness.

A significant variation of this understanding of responsibility, which, in many respects, still belongs to an ‘objective’ framework, is that of trying to assess actions according only to consequences. Agents assume a responsible perspective when they make decisions according to the criterion of maximizing the positive outcomes of an action. Although we can list several different interpretations of what counts as a positive outcome, the common ground is the necessity to adopt objective, often quantifiable, criteria.³ This stream has the great merit of defining limits and attributing specific actions to agents so to maintain a general understanding of duty. In this sense, it regulates existing relationships and aims at guaranteeing fundamental justice. It is mostly retrospective or, eventually, framed by a risk assessment methodology.

However, because of their strong relation to an objective framework, these attempts have to prescind from contextual or existential considerations. Similarly, they tend to focus on the rules within which an individual can move, and by doing so, they often overlook the rules themselves, the value-based clashes arising in societies, and most of all, they cannot provide stable indications about those interactions not yet regulated by a normative framework. The complex patterns in which R&I is embedded in their activities must surely rely on objective normative criteria, but they also require softer regulatory forms as well as policies aimed at constructing a common future.

A second conceptual paradigm in the exegesis of the concept of responsibility has been entering more and more into our daily comprehension, to the point that it has become a solid conceptual counterpart to the objective paradigm. According to this framework, it is not sufficient to regulate through objective criteria based on abstract norms and rules for two main reasons. The first is that negative effects are already present, proving a sort of incapacity of objective criteria to protect society from negative outcomes (Jonas 1984; Beck 1992). The second is that these kinds of frameworks are, in principle, neutral with respect to moral pluralism and unable to account for uncertainty, which is the core issue of R&I (Nowotny 2013; Reber Ch. 3; Gianni & Goujon Ch. 8). Consequently, abstract normative frameworks need to be overcome or at least integrated by subjective efforts. Thus, agents are exhorted to recognize their individual role in the determination of the future and in taking care of it. The consequences of individual actions are extended to the point that they become, in principle, infinite, increasing the sense of responsibility not only in quantitative but also in qualitative terms (Ricoeur 2000). This understanding is prospective; it looks at the future, and focuses on what can be done, generating a positive aura around itself (Pellé & Reber 2015). Within this conceptual framework, we can include all those attempts aimed at contrasting a technocratic drift through the shift towards a more emotional and more existential effort. We can group these contributions in their promotion of behaviours based on care and virtue. The importance of this paradigm is its focus on the need to extend responsible behaviour beyond the borders of deontological rules in order to cover all those private and unregulated spaces of human action. It also matches the orientation towards the future, typical of R&I, and holds great rhetorical power by promoting subjective and existential values (Jonas 1984; Beck 1992; MacIntyre 2007; Blok 2016; Pavie 2014; 2017).

The limit of these kinds of...