This comprehensive report on CWN’s Consortium Program was prepared for the Canadian Water Network by
Dr. Dimitrina Dimitrova of York University and Dr. Emmanuel Koku of Drexel University.

Download the full report (3.7 MB pdf).

Executive summary

The Canadian Water Network’s Consortia Program is a key part of its strategy for the future.

The program has two purposes — it is both a tool to help CWN better achieve its mandate to foster innovation in water management, as well as model for research partnerships and co-funding to help ensure CWN’s sustainability after 2015, when the network’s core funding from NCE ends.

Understanding how the Consortia Program functions can help prepare CWN for the future.

The study’s main aim was to determine whether its consortia are more successful than traditional research models in creating end user–driven networks to support innovation in water management.

The study’s objectives were —

• To map relationships among participants in the Consortia Program, focusing on the role of end users and CWN’s staff
• To examine how the networks arising from these relationships differ from networks in CWN’s Core Program, which follows a traditional research funding model
• To solicit the views of consortia members on the benefits of the Consortia Program and the efficiency of its procedures.

Study methods included an online social network survey, semi-structured interviews with participants in CWN’s Consortia Program, and review of organizational documents.

Survey respondents included members largely from CWN’s Canadian Municipal Research Consortium and Pathogens-in-Groundwater Research Consortium, with a few members from CWN’s Canadian Watershed Research Consortium.

The consortia study built on a 2005–7 study of participants in CWN’s Core Program. Although these studies had different goals and methods, the results from the 2005–7 study can approximate the patterns characterizing CWN’s Core Program, allowing a comparison between the networks created by consortia-based funding with those by traditional research funding.

Socio-demographic profile and personal networks

Consortia Program participants and their personal networks are broadly similar to those of the Core Program participants. Members are experienced and highly qualified professionals with diverse disciplinary backgrounds across different organizations and sectors.

However, the proportion of end users is higher in the Consortia Program, a finding consistent with its intent to give end users a prominent role in the development and conduct of research.

The consortia network also includes a higher proportion of people in senior decision-making positions, indicating the potential of the consortia network to foster change and innovation.

Participants in the Consortia Program know more people in the program than do participants in the Core Program, although they have known them for a shorter time. As knowing someone is a precondition for other relationships, the high number of ties amongst consortia members suggests they are in a good position to exchange resources with each other.

Consortia participants know, work with, and exchange advice and networking help not only with members of their own consortium, but also with members of other consortia. They are connected to a broader and more diverse pool of people and have access to more diverse information and ideas than those from a single consortium. Such diversity of ties is essential for access to new knowledge and learning.

Knowledge exchanges and interpersonal processes

Consortia Program members work together on projects, in committees or in workshops, and receive networking help from other members.

Exchanges in the consortia network are intertwined. Participants tend to receive advice and networking help from the same people; they also tend to give advice and networking help to the same people. This suggests that giving advice may lead to stronger networking — or vice versa.

Exchanges are also reciprocal. Consortia members both give and receive advice from the same people; the same is true for giving and receiving networking help.

Exchanges across sectors

Compared with CWN’s Core Program, government employees in the Consortia Program tend to have more ties with consortia members outside their sector or level of government. By contrast, the ties of academics in the Consortia Program — just as in the Core Program — are predominantly with other academics.

Clique and interview analyses revealed cohesive, well-connected, supportive sub-groups within the Consortia Program. In most of these cliques, work, advice and networking exchanges stretch across sectors, locations and organizations.

Interviewees considered dialogue across sectors to be a huge success of the Consortia Program.

The predominance of cross-sectoral ties suggests knowledge transfer is occurring across sectors. These ties are expected to foster diverse and novel ideas.

The role of end users

CWN’s Consortia Program is designed to engage end users, and findings confirm that they are actively involved. End users and academics are about equally represented among the most-connected participants in the Consortia Program.

The most prominent collaborators in the consortia are senior-level end users. These findings are in sharp contrast to CWN’s Core Program, where academics are the most central members and senior academics are the most prominent collaborators.

Core-periphery analysis suggests similar levels of engagement of end-users and academics. Core members are people who actively connect with each other and engage with less connected and less active members of the periphery. In the Consortia Program, end users and academics are equally represented in the core. Further, end users represented in the core of the network vary widely by sector, level of government and geographic location. This indicates a dialogue among core members that reflects different viewpoints and takes place on a national level. Such a dialogue was mentioned by a number of participants and is considered one of the major achievements of the Consortia Program.

Benefits, successes and challenges

Both end users and academics alike perceive that they derive significant benefits from the Consortia Program.

For end users, the most salient benefits are access to new information, networking and uptake of research results.

The national scope of knowledge exchanges and the presence of international experts provide broader information than end users could collect on their own.

Intertwined with access to new information is networking with other end users and academics that not only provides access to experts, but also enables developing a better understanding and trust among participants.

Another important benefit is uptake of research results. Because of the early and active engagement of end users in the research process, adoption and uptake parallel research. Practitioners use interim research reports, summaries from workshops, and the new understanding gained during the meetings.

Academics benefit from unique networking opportunities and from opportunities to leverage funding to sustain their research programs.

The networking benefits for academics are two fold — connecting to peers in the international professional community and connecting to senior decision-makers.

The later facilitates the societal impact of their research and is often cited as the most significant benefit.

Among its main achievements are the increased coordination and sharing of information, the uptake of consortia research, and the dialogue between end users and academics. Because the uptake of consortia research and a dialogue between practitioners and academics are closely related to CWN’s mandate, such a feedback suggests that the Consortia Program is on the right track.

The Consortia Program has proved the viability of the consortia model for water research in Canada. It has emerged as a distinctive program with its own role in the research conducted by CWN. While sharing important characteristics with the Core Program, the Consortia Program has created a network with a higher potential for change and innovation, as well as a higher potential for knowledge transfer across different groups of participants.