Report prepared for the Canadian Water Network by Katrina Goreham Hitchman, PhD.

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Executive Summary

Organizational structure and functions within intermediary organizations: A comparative analysis

The Canadian Water Network’s mission is to provide Canadian water managers and decision-makers with the research-based knowledge they need to address complex water management issues. As CWN approaches the end of its Networks of Centres of Excellence funding in 2015, a great deal of thought is being given to what CWN’s legacy will be, and how its organizational structures and functions might be adapted to achieve continued impact beyond 2015.

To help inform CWN’s options for the future, a comparative organizational analysis was conducted to examine the organizational structures, functions, and funding sources of other organizations with missions similar to CWN’s. Specifically, the analysis targeted “intermediary organizations” working between research and research-user communities, with a mandate of using research to inform practice and policy. The primary goal of this analysis was to identify what structures and funding sources were being used by other organizations to accomplish functions that had been identified by prior research as being central to intermediary (knowledge translation and brokering) work.

Participants were employees of 14 Canadian and 1 Australian organization operating in various sectors, including health, environment, public policy, and social innovation. Organizations focused on the health sector represented almost half of the sample, outnumbering organizations devoted to all other sectors, including water. Given the rising importance of water as a political and environmental issue, this finding suggests there may be room for additional intermediary organizations dedicated exclusively to the water sector.

Organizations in the current analysis filled one of four major roles in the larger space between researchers and the research-user (practitioner) community: researcher-driven research funders, practitioner-driven research funders, knowledge translation/brokering specialists and tool developers (“KT/KB organizations”), and research institutes. In this schema, CWN was classified as a practitioner-driven research funder. However, there were some indications that CWN may have recently transitioned from an earlier role as a researcher-driven research funder, and was currently edging into a practitioner-driven research funder role.

The most common and largest funder of intermediary organizations in the analysis was the Canadian federal government. This funding took various forms, including annual funding, public endowments, and grants. Federally funded organizations typically had larger budgets than their non-federally funded counterparts, and research funders — particularly those in the health sector — had substantially higher annual budgets than KT/KB organizations. Member contributions were among the least common sources of primary funding, and in the current sample, organizations that were primarily member-funded reported modest annual budgets.  Although a “user-pays” model may be part of the equation for funding future CWN legacy work, other forms of funding — including public endowments — may be worth exploring.

Across the entire sample, participants acknowledged the importance of five previously identified intermediary functions: involving users in the planning and management of projects and programs, interpretation of research into user-accessible formats, appropriate communication of research results to users (reaching), establishing relationships and engaging with users and stakeholders, and evaluating the uptake of research by users and its impact on practice and policy. Of these five intermediary functions, evaluation of impact was found by prior studies using other samples to be the most neglected. This finding was not supported within the current sample of intermediary organizations. Instead, several organizations had impact-evaluation processes in place, while others were in the process of developing new evaluation frameworks or improving old ones.

The findings also suggested that two additional functions may be designated as separate and important intermediary functions: convening researchers and practitioners to facilitate a mutual understanding of goals and perspectives; and capacity building to train practitioners how to use research effectively, as well as to train young leaders who are equipped to break down barriers between researchers and practitioners.

Various organizational structures existed in the current sample, and tended to reflect intermediary organizations’ specific roles. The primary focus of researcher-driven research funders was research program management, resulting in relatively flat organizational structures. In addition, intermediary functions were often outsourced to researchers or confined to a specific initiative. By contrast, practitioner-driven research funders tended to accomplish more of these functions in-house or through governance structures such as advisory committees, and placed a higher priority on involving users in program planning and management. Compared with other practitioner-driven research funders, CWN’s in-house staff was less involved in intermediary functions. One way to advance CWN’s transition from a researcher-driven to a practitioner-driven model may be to increase in-house resources devoted to intermediary functions.

KT/KB organizations were primarily focused on producing knowledge translation-related publications, products and tools in-house, although some also played a significant knowledge brokering role. As a result, KT/KB organizations tended to have groupings of staff around various intermediary functions. They were also more practitioner oriented in their approach to the capacity-building function than other types of intermediary organizations in the current sample. Whereas research funders tended to focus primarily on student development, KT/KB organizations were also concerned with training practitioners. Moreover, KT/KB organizations showed the greatest commitment to evaluating uptake and impact on practice and policy. If CWN wishes to increase the profile of its knowledge translation and brokering activities relative to other research funders, building practitioner capacity and ensuring evaluation of uptake and impact may be two ways to accomplish this.

Two of the three research institutes in the sample operated as evidence-generation arms for their funding agencies, whereas the third operated independently on a public endowment. This independence allowed the third research institute to establish its own priorities, regardless of changes in government leadership and commitment to research funding. If CWN were to consider pursuing federal funding in the future, an independent endowment may provide funding stability as well as freedom in setting program and project objectives.

Despite the many uncertainties and challenges in determining CWN’s legacy post-NCE funding, the results from this comparative organizational analysis suggest that CWN shares many structural and functional commonalities with other intermediary organizations. In addition, evolution was a common theme across many organizations in the current analysis. Like CWN, other intermediary organizations are constantly adapting to fit the needs of their business environment as well as their audience. It is hoped that this analysis will help inform CWN’s evolution as it strives to bring research-based knowledge to bear on practice and policy in water management.