Putting Responsible Research and Innovation into Practice: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach

282 Pages·2022·6.822 MB·English

by  Vincent Blok

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 40
Vincent Blok   Editor
Putting
Responsible
Research and
Innovation
into Practice
A Multi-Stakeholder Approach
Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy
Volume 40
Editor-in-Chief
Hub Zwart, Faculty of Science, Radboud University Nijmegen Faculty
of Science, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Editorial Board Members
David Copp, Social Sci & Humanities Bldg, 2281, University of California, 
Davis, CA, USA
Nancy Fraser, Politics, 7th Fl, New School for Social Research,
New York, NY, USA
Martin V. B. P. M. van Hees, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen,
Groningen, The Netherlands
Will Kymlicka, Dept of Philosophy, Queens University, Kingston, ON, Canada
Philippe Van Parijs, Chaire Hoover d’Ethique Economique,
Universite Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Samuel Kerstein, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Thomas Hill, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
Renzong Qiu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Peter Schaber, Philosophisches Seminar, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Thomas Schmidt, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
The Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy addresses a broad range of topical
issues emerging in practical philosophy, such as ethics, social philosophy, political
philosophy, philosophy of action, It focuses on the role of scientific research and
emerging technologies, and combines case studies with conceptual and
methodological debates. We are facing a global crisis, which raises a plethora of
normative issues, but also poses a challenge to existing conceptual and
methodological resources of academic philosophy. The series aims to contribute to
a philosophical diagnostic of the present by exploring the impact of emerging
techno-scientific developments on zeitgeist, collective self-image, and worldview.
Concrete and urgent emerging issues will be addressed in depth and from a
continental philosophical perspective, which may include dialectics, hermeneutics,
phenomenology, post-phenomenology, psychoanalysis, critical theory and similar
approaches.
Vincent Blok
Editor
Putting Responsible
Research and Innovation into
Practice
A Multi-Stakeholder Approach
Editor
Vincent Blok
Philosophy Group (PHI)
Wageningen University
Wageningen, The Netherlands
This work was supported by Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (741402).
ISSN 1387-6678 ISSN 2215-0323 (electronic)
Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy
ISBN 978-3-031-14709-8 ISBN 978-3-031-14710-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14710-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023. This book is an open access publication.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all individuals and organizations that contributed to this vol-
ume. As this volume can be seen as the scientific fruit of several years of intense
collaboration in the NewHoRRIzon project from 2017 to 2021 under the inspiring
leadership by Erich Griessler from the Institut für Höhere Studien in Vienna,
I would like to thank all partners involved in the project in particular. I also greatly
appreciate the financial support provided by the NewHoRRIzon project, funded by
the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant
agreement no. 741402. The views expressed in this volume reflect only those of the
authors and in no way reflect the European Commission’s opinions. I would like to
thank my former colleague Peter Novitzky with whom I originally started this jour-
ney but had to leave the project at an early stage. I would like to thank Robert Braun
for his role as editor for the chapter in which I was involved as author.
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Vincent Blok and Lucien von Schomberg
Part I Responsible Research & Innovation as EU Policy
2 The Drama of Responsible Research and Innovation:
The Ups and Downs of a Policy Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Erich Griessler, Robert Braun, Magdalena Wicher,
and Merve Yorulmaz
3 The Institutionalisation of a New Paradigm at Policy Level . . . . . . . . 35
Stephanie Daimer, Hendrik Berghäuser, and Ralf Lindner
4 Democratic Experimentation with Responsibility:
A Pragmatist Approach to Responsible Research
and Innovation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Joshua B. Cohen and Robert Gianni
5 Cultural Particularities and Its Role in the “Innovation Divide”:
A Closer Look at the Origins of “Spreading Excellence
and Widening Participation” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Raúl Tabarés and Antonia Bierwirth
6 Joining Forces – Staying Unique: Adapting RRI to Different
Research and Innovation Funding Agency Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Ulrich Schoisswohl, Ulrike Wunderle, Luboš Studený,
Lieke Michiels van Kessenich, and Pia Weinlinger
vii
viii Contents
Part II P ublic Engagement for Responsible Research & Innovation
7 Public Engagement in the Tradition of Participatory
Approaches – An Approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Philine Warnke, Tanja Bratan, and Ulrike Wunderle
8 Social Labs in Public Engagement Processes for RRI . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Ilse Marschalek, Lisa M. Seebacher, Elisabeth Unterfrauner,
Katharina Handler, and Margit Hofer
9 Exploring the Ambivalent Nature of Diversity in Social
Experimental Settings: First Insights from Social Labs
Established to Promote Responsible Research and Innovation . . . . . 171
Merve Yorulmaz and Susanne Bührer
10 Engaging Stakeholders by Implementing RRI in the Social
Lab Process – A Single Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Elisabeth Frankus and Helmut Hönigmayer
Part III Governance of Responsible Research & Innovation
11 Implementing Responsible Research and Innovation:
From New Public Management to New Public Governance . . . . . . . . 211
Anne Loeber, Michael J. Bernstein, and Mika Nieminen
12 Stakeholders in Research and Innovation: Towards
Responsible Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Robert Braun and Johannes Starkbaum
13 Managing the Responsibilities of Doing Good and Avoiding
Harm in Sustainability-Orientated Innovations: Example
from Agri-Tech Start-Ups in the Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Thomas B. Long and Vincent Blok
14 Conclusion: Implementation of Responsible Research
and Innovation by Social Labs. Lessons from the Micro-,
Meso- and Macro Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Erich Griessler and Vincent Blok
About the Editor
Vincent Blokis associate professor in Philosophy of Technology and Responsible

Innovation at the Philosophy Group, Wageningen University (The Netherlands). He
is also director of the 4TU. Ethics Graduate School in The Netherlands. In 2005, he
received his PhD degree in philosophy at Leiden University with a specialization in
philosophy of technology. Together with seven PhD candidates and four Post-docs,
he reflects on the meaning of disruptive technologies for the human condition and
its environment from a continental philosophical perspective. His books include
Ernst Jünger’s Philosophy of Technology: Heidegger and the Poetics of the
Anthropocene (Routledge, 2017), Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method
(Routledge, 2020), and The Critique of Management (Routledge, 2022). Blok pub-
lished over hundred articles in high ranked philosophy journals like Environmental
Values, Business Ethics Quarterly, Synthese, and Philosophy & Technology, and
in multi-disciplinary journals like Science, Journal of Cleaner Production,
Public understanding of Science, and Journal of Responsible Innovation.
See www.vincentblok.nl for more information about his current research.
ix
Chapter 1
Introduction
Vincent Blok and Lucien von Schomberg
After a period in which Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) stood as a
cross-cutting issue under the Eigth European Union Framework Programme for
Research and Innovation (R & I), Horizon 2020, its further development and imple-
mentation has reached a crossroad. It turned out that there is a lack of consistent
integration of RRI in Europe’s R & I practices (Novitzky et al. 2020), and dedicated
funding for RRI is almost entirely absent in the Ninth European Union Framework
Programme for R & I, Horizon Europe. At the same time, global challenges like
climate change become increasingly more urgent and thus continue to call for col-
lective efforts of scientific research and industry, policy makers and civil society.
Further, the emergence of disruptive technologies like synthetic biology, artificial
intelligence and robotics raises several new societal concerns. Finally, the growing
disbelief in science, as shown during the Corona pandemic, demonstrates the impor-
tance of aligning R & I policy and societal values all the more. For reasons as these,
the disinvestment in a dedicated Science With and For Society programme line for
RRI in Horizon Europe did not result in decreased academic attention for embed-
ding science in society. On the contrary, a dedicated research community emerged
that engages in the academic discourse of RRI and tries to contribute to projects on
topics such as responsible data governance, responsible AI, and responsible agro-
ecology within the Horizon Europe framework programme, sometimes even with-
out the use of the frame RRI.
If RRI is to have a future in the European Commission’s Open Science Agenda
and Horizon Europe Programme, it is important to focus on the implementation,
institutionalization and management of responsibility in R & I practices. One of the
V. Blok (*)
Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
L. von Schomberg
Old Royal Naval College, London, UK
© The Author(s) 2023 1
V. Blok (ed.), Putting Responsible Research and Innovation into Practice,
Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 40,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14710-4_1