Collaboration and commitment: common elements in the southern African and Canadian water demand management programs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Water demand management (WDM) was reconceptualized as part of a social innovation framework, understood as a conservation culture that included efficient water consumption. This social innovation framework exposed WDM to new questions about WDM practitioners' social networks and knowledge. These questions have been under explored in conventional WDM efforts and research. The research was also an attempt to reconcile the extensive WDM knowledge and the failed, or failing, programs. The research goals were to identify and assess individuals' tacit WDM knowledge and to examine the influence of WDM practitioners' social networks. The objectives were: (1) to map the regional WDM network structures; (2) to evaluate the transmission of WDM information, beliefs and values; and (3) to identify intervention opportunities using the social networks and tacit knowledge. The field research included data from Namibian, Ontario and South African municipalities. The results were that, first, significant commonalities underpin countries' water conservation and efficiency problems under vastly different socio-economic and environmental conditions; second, social networks are critical to WDM policy and program implementation; third, the influence of tacit knowledge is underestimated in the water-management process; and fourth, there is an interaction effect between social networks, tacit and explicit knowledge that contributes to WDM policy and program processes. The methodology used for capturing practitioners' tacit knowledge, while subject to revisions, will also be a useful tool for other qualitative resource management studies. These findings suggest multiple implications and recommendations. For theory and research development, WDM can be understood as part of a social innovation, rather than merely a technical innovation. This reconceptualization would require changes in how we use decision makers' tacit knowledge and support social networks for information exchange. In practice, these research findings suggest new ways to alleviate implementation barriers in resource policy and improve program sustainability.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.036 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".