Organisational culture and its role in developing a sustainable science communication platform

Abstract

There is an ongoing tension for scientists when deciding to engage with the public about their research as many scientists view direct participation as peripheral to their role. Pressures of time, lack of support by management and a lack of communicative skills are identified by scientists as reasons for not committing to communicative initiatives. We aimed to explore and explain the organizational culture of a research community that activity communicates with the public and has an international research culture. The Centre for Brain Research (CBR) was identified as a model and was analyzed using the concept of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). Twelve participants (scientists (8), clinicians (1), community liaison people (2)) and an identified director of the organization were interviewed. Direct quotes from interview were used to provide examples of the characteristics of CAS for example a variety of agents interacting, adapting the learning within the organization, non-linear dynamic behavior that is a result of aggregates of groups with actions emerging from self-organizing behavior and the development of an emergent culture. This analysis showed that complexity theory was a suitable framework for analyzing the sustainable communicative organization within CBR.

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