"Knowledge mobilization addresses how external knowledge (outside of the organization) is sought out and combined with internal knowledge to create new knowledge that meets the needs of target users/clients."
I am a long-time Scope lurker, and often feel on the fringes of debates. This is because my knowledge and experience feels only loosely related to the conversations that take place on the forum.
Knowledge translation and knowledge mobilisation - now there's something I have loads of experience of, and on which I would like to comment. I understand Stephen's points about the danger of institutions legitimising predjudiced authority through knowledge mobilisation.
The context within which I adopt a knowlede mobilisation / translation approach is not institutional. It is relational and used as part of a dialogue.
I have deep experience, over approximately 8 years, of co-designing and facilitating work-based learning programmes with and for senior executives. My current work includes intensive engagement with director-level, post-MBA executives in Russia. The country is developing rapidly and the people I am working with are creating, revising, implementing and adapting the business stragegies of the companies for which they are responsible.
Complex is not the word! The operating environment (legislative, social, business opportunities, labour markets, financial ...) changes at a speed that would make your head whirl. Add to this the fact that Peristroika was only 17 years ago. These people are super-smart, and they do not want us coming to Russia and telling them what they should do.
What they do want to know is, what is already known about organising principles, what does research and practice indicate can be effective in mediating organisational dynamics, under what conditions etc? And this is on a whole raft of strategic topics.
Rather that being shoe-horned into a pre-designed learning programme, we turn the process of engagement on its head. We begin with the company and executive (or team of executives) and a joint diagnostic of the strategic business issue. A programme of activities is co-designed, which the executives set about implementing. Specialist knowledge (from people, modules, research, theoretical literature, industry reports etc) is accessed in a just-in-time fashion, and introduced exactly when it is needed.
Because the learning framework is so customised and focussed on the executives' strategic business challenges, the information they are offered is divergent. I am able to draw on my (by now) extensive knowledge of sources and act as a knowledge broker. Again, both the executives and I know that they are receiving my biased selection in the sources I offer them. It is at least a start, and once set off on a train of thought, they go and explore for themselves. I benefit from their exporations because they in turn pass their sources on to me.
The knowledge mobilisation process is then two-way, and that includes the practical and privileged insights I gain from their work.
As far as knowledge translation is concerned, this is the executives' responsibility. The academic research, frameworks and models offered to them have been developed within a US or European context. The executives are accutely aware of this cultural bias, and they constantly question and adapt frameworks amd models to their own specific cultural and business contexts.
I realise that this conference is about pan-Canadian e-learning. For work-based learning, especially at the level of strategic learning, the narrow focus on Canada is, in my view, misplaced. There are many more fundamental issues around learning in the workplace that are crucial for Canada's future, and the globally fragmenting nature of business structures is one of them.
I hopped on a plane from London to Toronto last October, to the University of Waterloo for the Workplace 2017 conference. This was the best conference I have ever attended; the quality of the speakers was outstanding. Several key messages came through, one of which was that work is becoming increasingly devoid of meaning (businesses are increasingly risk-averse). In turn, this lack of meaning is leading to widespread employee disengagement. What role might e-learning (whatever that might mean) play in re-engaging a disengaged workforce? And I bet knowledge mobilisation and knowledge translation, through online conversations, will be an important component in re-engagement.
I hope so - that is what I am building my business around. Fingers crossed!