Rather than seeking to transform and bring together both fields, this approach suggested that the problem of knowledge translation resided in the field of practice. Accordingly, while the applied health research funded by the Collaboration continued as usual, its efforts at change targeted organisations in the field of practice only, with a focus on building capacity to absorb and make use of research knowledge. Much has been made of changes in contemporary society that, since the late twentieth century, have challenged traditional forms of organisation and occupation. In public services, the challenges posed by ‘wicked issues’ mean that single-sector approaches to addressing societal needs are viewed as inadequate, and ‘joined-up’ approaches to social intervention seen as essential. The response has included new professional and proto-professional roles that work across established fields of social activity, and concomitant new trajectories for individuals embracing the opportunities and challenges of these roles.

More recently consultancy has been seen as a promising model for knowledge brokering with its’ focus on cross-pollination, matchmaking, translation, dissemination and linkage (Jacobson, Butterill et al. 2005; Sin 2008). However, the presence of a consultant-client relationship can call into question the extent to which consultants can really be impartial. To ensure knowledge products were relevant to stakeholder needs, KBs worked directly with stakeholders [30] to synthesize research findings with professional expertise [45]. KBs conducted environmental scans [15, 21, 32, 33, 45] and needs assessments [15, 21, 39, 46] to identify local needs [28, 37, 38, 47], gauge the scope of the project [28, 36], determine available resources [15], and analyze organizational capacity [32, 33]. The insights good knowledge brokers bring to a problem are conveyed in the personal stories and anecdotes they tell. These stories contain tacit information that is gleaned, often semiconsciously, from experience and is difficult to document and transfer by formal means.

The goal of translation is intellectual transparency, or making clear the models, values, defeaters, and trade-offs of arguments in and between disciplines. Many of them will be good at their job, though, as is the case in any profession, some will be better than others. Outsourcing this complicated legwork to professionals should ensure that a satisfactory deal is concluded seamlessly.

An unequal partnership between two fields, where the capitals (the resources, relationships, markers of prestige and forms of knowledge) valued in one are privileged over the other, left knowledge brokers without a prior affiliation to either field adrift between the two. Using knowledge brokers to link the users and producers of research is not limited to the public sector. In a conference paper Lind and Persborn describe a project to enhance interaction between a questioner (an organisation which needs knowledge) and a knowledge resource (an organisation that can deliver the knowledge) (Lind and Persborn 2000). The LINK Center is a business which supports the creation of contacts between questioners and knowledge resources. However, although the aim of the Center is to form linkages, there is less emphasis on interaction or interpersonal processes. Packaging, translating, spreading and commissioning research are brokering strategies which have been developed in response to the overwhelming quantity of research evidence and its lack of relevance to decision makers.

While the exact role and function of knowledge brokers are conceptualized and operationalized differently in various sectors and settings, a key feature appears to be the facilitation of knowledge exchange or sharing between and among various stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Informant 2 described the technical lead role as ‘somebody who acts as a piece of glue or an integrator’. Informant 4 explained the role as having a number of aspects, namely, science interface with internal and external people, project management and communication to a number of audiences. Informant 5 explained the role was to ‘basically co-ordinate a technical team and communicate the science information to the zone committee and the public’. The broker identity did not resonate with informant 3 who questioned the honesty and detachment the broker role implied in the midst of a policy-directed process, where values influenced decisions ‘made in the background’ all the time. Informant 3 saw the technical lead role as ‘having a significant leadership component’, ‘the person that holds it all together’ and ‘had to know the big picture’, which included digesting the information and presenting it in a way that was useful for communities.

THEORETICAL BASIS FOR KNOWLEDGE BROKERING

The greatest of these is the lack of evidence about how brokering works, the factors that influence it and its effectiveness. Using a clearly defined framework to plan and implement knowledge brokering interventions more consistently would be a significant step towards generating more evidence about the use of brokering in practice. It would also enable us to add significantly to the evidence-base on the effectiveness of brokering, leading to the growth and development of brokering theory and practice. In a large-scale project run by the Scottish Executive and NHS Scotland (Clark and Kelly 2005), a dedicated team was responsible for carrying out a range of brokering activities including consultation and research mapping exercises, developing networks and communities of practice and facilitating knowledge sharing events.

• This involved listening in the formative stages of the ZC process to hear everyone’s aspirations and ensure they were all on the table (e.g., via a modelled scenario), no matter how unrealistic or unpalatable it might be to others around the table.
• Some strategies discussed have been employed, while others are in planning or process (Tables 1–3).
• Given that this review did not aim to generate a comprehensive taxonomy of all possible brokering activities, we believe that the current description is appropriate.
• Alternately, a linking agent KB may focus evaluation efforts on assessing the number, nature and quality of relationships among stakeholders.
• A knowledge broker can extract his own knowledge, skills, and expertise to create products and services.
• After assessing track records, it’s worth picking one with relevant expertise in the same field as the company in question.

This involved constantly testing these with others to ensure they were defensible but also grappling with the uncertainties created by the assumptions that fed into the modelling. Pielke’s honest broker has become popular in policy and science circles in New Zealand through the work of Sir Peter Gluckman, the inaugural Prime Minister’s chief science adviser. Gluckman (2014, p. 165) cites Pielke’s work to argue in Nature (2014) that a ‘knowledge broker’ rather than an advocate has a better chance of building trust with policy-makers and politicians in providing science advice.

Knowledge Brokering: The missing link in the evidence to action chain?

Information products are popular, in high-demand, and people are looking for specialized knowledge and they really don’t care if this knowledge is provided by non-professionals or people without credentials. A message that attracts like-minded people who want to learn from someone that has been through what they deal with today. Alternatively, a knowledge broker can use life experiences as his vehicle to organize and create information products and services. First of all, a knowledge broker is an entrepreneur and as such he builds and runs businesses, but an entrepreneur is not just about running businesses.

Using knowledge brokering to improve business processes

A fifth and emerging role of KBs is that of an evaluator.24 This role encompasses evaluation of the context, of the processes and outcomes of KT at the research and clinical levels, and of the KB’s own knowledge brokering performance. This domain applies to and is critical for the success of brokering activities carried out within the 4 previous domains. Its identification as a distinct domain in the model mirrors the emphasis on evaluation across the KT frameworks, and highlights its importance throughout the brokering process. It also highlights the importance of increasing opportunities for KBs to engage in evaluation. From conducting a needs assessment and measuring KT impact to reflective self-evaluation, the evaluator domain of knowledge brokering is pervasive and continuous. In order to incorporate appropriate forms of knowledge at the appropriate times, KBs need to be attuned to their audience as well as their audience’s environment.

Authors’ contributions

I had also wondered how my own research could make a meaningful impact and how the findings could be accurately broadcast beyond the walls of the university. But that doesn’t mean I had any of the answers to these questions when I stepped into the KT office on day 1. DC, SH, RC, LO, KD, SM, and SH consulted on the intervention as it was designed and provided, and participated in review of the manuscript.

This perspective privileges the relationship between individuals and the social structures in which they act over inherent individual traits, seeing practices as the outcomes of relationships between field, habitus and capital (Bourdieu, 1977). The fields of research and practice – knowledge production and utilisation – exemplify these changes. Long subject to calls for greater interaction between research and innovation on the one hand, and practice and implementation on the other, efforts to bring the fields closer together have seen significant investment (Amara et al, 2019).

KBs worked to identify and connect with stakeholders with relevant expertise [28, 29], and key individuals or organizations who were working on similar problems [15, 30] or in similar areas of research [29]. Specifically, this task involved finding the ‘right’ people [15, 31] or organizations to support the KT objectives and then garnering their participation business broker definition [32–34] through telephone, electronic, or in-person contact [15]. To support stakeholder engagement, KBs identified common goals among stakeholders by helping to clarify their needs [30, 36, 37], identifying mutually beneficial opportunities [17], and bringing together individuals with common interests and relevant expertise to address the issue [15, 29].

Managers at all levels, for example, will increasingly need to become much more conscious of the social networks to which they do and could belong. Gone also are the days when they might simply have leveraged relationships within their own industries. Executives who can cultivate a variety of external networks will be vital to a company’s ability to innovate. In addition to helping the utility adopt better purchasing practices and strengthen the practices of its suppliers, the project enabled it to garner a prestigious trade association award for corporate social responsibility. The authors would like to acknowledge the significant intellectual contributions of Dr Linda Li, which shaped the evolution of the manuscript, as well as the collaborative learning offered by the Sunny Hill KBs, whose activities enriched the application of the model.

In contrast, at the operational level, for knowledge to be credible and legitimate with members of ZCs, as well as planners and the statutory process within which all were working, bridging boundaries was a critical part of the work. To contribute to an understanding of how brokers navigate situations involving different knowledges and epistemic practices and highly divergent values, we have examined brokering in collaborative water planning in New Zealand’s South Island region of Canterbury. Here, groups of scientists, planners, indigenous people and community representatives have been involved in collective decision-making to make recommendations for regional authorities to set water quality and quantity resource limits. The brokers in this study were traversing multiple boundaries to produce policy-usable and practically-intelligible knowledge in a value-laden context that had to be credible and legitimate for different audiences and across multiple domains.

Taking on the responsibility of what to include and what to leave out of the technical work outputs, as well as in the communication of it meant that our brokers were absorbing responsibility for uncertainty, not just for the ZC and policy-makers, but the technical team as well. These examples perhaps offer a template for how professional knowledge brokers might seek not only to transform the boundaries between existing fields, but also to gain status for themselves at these intersections. Applying a similar framework to a coordinated effort to mediate the boundary between healthcare research and practice, we focus on the degree to which habitus and capital endowment enabled professional knowledge brokers to achieve the lofty ambitions that have been set for such roles. These include the use of diverse sources of knowledge towards better decision making (Bornbaum et al, 2015; Elueze, 2015) and the reconfiguration or even elimination of boundaries (Glegg and Hoens, 2016), creating what might in Bourdieusian terms be understood as an emergent joint field with new rules, capitals and relationships between actors. Although knowledge brokering has been proposed as a positive mechanism for transferring research evidence into policy and practice, we have identified several challenges which threaten its development.