Global Environmental Change Understanding the Human Dimensions (1992) / Chapter Skim
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7 Human Resources and Organizational Structures
7 Human Resources and Organizational Structures
Pages 223-234
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From page 223... ...
The problems are fundamentally interdisciplinary and require an understanding of diverse perspectives and methods that transcend the traditional disciplines: research agendas must incorporate perspectives from the social and natural sciences, as well as from humanist scholars. In many cases, individuals will be required to reorient their careers to make global change a major object of study.
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From page 224... ...
With respect to global change research, the most successfuT plan is likely to be the one that incorporates both these options. The "war on cancer" and other major initiatives in biomedical research offer examples of strategic decisions to build specialized multidisciplinary research resources to sustain a field of priority research.
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From page 225... ...
Under these circumstances, agencies promoting research on global change have an opportunity to encourage institutions to hire in this area. Chaired professorships, salary support, and research funding as well as more modest investments, such as underwriting special journal issues focusing on global and/or environmental change, special conferences, workshops, seminars, and lecture series are important in establishing
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From page 226... ...
Centers have also served to overcome some of the institutional impediments to progress in interdisciplinary fields of study discussed above. It is our judgment that the field of the human dimensions of global change, like these other fields, requires interdisciplinary communication beyond what typically occurs in universities.
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From page 227... ...
Independent centers have shown a tendency to focus their energies more on applied research and, in some cases, to become associated with one or another perspective. It is noted, however, that there are topics relating to the human dimensions of global change that are most appropriately conceived at the intersection between basic and applied research.
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From page 228... ...
Annual conferences would represent a lost opportunity if geologists talked only to geologists, ecologists to ecologists, economists to economists, and so on yet this is exactly what will happen unless conference planners ensure that individuals from different disciplines plan projects requiring their active joint participation. Meetings should be designed to mix individuals from different disciplinary backgrounds to promote precisely the kinds of intellectual crossfertilization that often do not occur in more traditional settings.
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From page 229... ...
t is likely that many universities would be interested in Unless global change emerges as a new specialty in its own right, which seems unlikely, the people wno study it are likely to retain their principal intellectual identities as geologists, economists, climatologists, historians, ecologists, political scientists, and so on. They thus face the classic problem of designing research agendas that address interdisciplinary questions while yielding results that will speak to disciplinary interests.
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From page 230... ...
INSTITUTIONALIZING COOPERATIVE RESEARCH Major research projects on global change should incorporate the perspectives of both the natural and the social sciences, to say nothing of the humanities. Funders should look askance at any research proposal on the human consequences of global change that fails to include scholars with suitable expertise in social science, and we trust they will be similarly dubious about proposals that address human consequences without some grounding in the ~ Em., v ~ natural sciences.
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From page 231... ...
Possible ways of doing this include special conferences organized within a targeted discipline but including participation by outside scholars, special issues of leading disciplinary journals devoted to discussing global change as a research area, and discussions within the major scholarly and scientific associations about ways in which they might put global change onto their institutional agendas. In our judgment, the social science professional associations can play significant roles in this area.
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From page 232... ...
A two-step review process in which disciplinary panels evaluate the particular disciplinary contributions of a major collective project, and interdisciplinary panels evaluate its overall significance as a contribution to understanding of global change may be desirable in some instances. ORGANIZATIONAL BARRIERS TO RESEARCH IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT So far, this chapter has addressed issues relating to researchers and research institutions.
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From page 233... ...
might delegate important human-environment issues to NSF, or to particular mission agencie.s with the requirement that they bring on new staff or outside expertise to help with research agenda setting and management. We recommend that mission agencies that usually support only applied research in the social sciences but have basic research programs in the natural sciences dealing with global change initiate support of basic research in the social sciences targeted on specific topics relating to global change.
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From page 234... ...
CONCLUSION The necessary advances in theory, methodology, and data discussed in the earlier chapters will not be made without taking into account the concerns about human resources and organizations discussed in this chapter. In particular, we need to foster stronger partnerships between social and natural scientists and to stimulate social scientists to transcend the perspectives and methods that guide disciplinary research.
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