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Despite a plethora of emerging alternatives under the broad rubric of agroecology, sustainable transitions in Indian agriculture are caught between institutional inertia and lock-ins of its vast agricultural establishment on the one hand and a pro-active state promoting a natural farming. This push for Zero-Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), while welcome as an alternative, also raises several questions on the nature of knowledge production and dissemination. This paper explores the knowledge politics around top-down "skilling regimes" and the principles and paradigms that emphasize social learning. We explore the multiple practices, meanings of agroecology among farmers, government agencies, and civil society organizations in the state of Gujarat. The action research included a survey of practices of 250 farmers in 12 districts, interviews, and stakeholder workshops. Insufficient investments in community-based extension mechanisms and lack of collaboration between state and civil society were features of the policy implementation. The absence of innovative platforms to facilitate knowledge dialogs and learning among actors to advance agroecology increases the gap between policy goals and its actual realization in practice. Programs for upscaling agroecology, we suggest, need to embed the diversity of technical and institutional processes through creating learning alliances to facilitate knowledge dialogs across dissimilar actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uganda's Vision 2040 aims to modernize rural water supply through a transition from community-managed point sources to professionally managed piped water services. At the start of the transition period, a learning alliance established in Kabarole District participated in action research to develop scenarios predicting possible future development trajectories. The diversity of its membership, whose formal institutional roles spanned national, district and niche levels, increased the robustness of the strategies proposed for the adaptively managed transition of the public water service. The learning alliance has been facilitated by a non-governmental organization providing funding and expert advice; the effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how intersecting identities, stigma and health-based infrastructures are spatially affiliated and territorialised in the South East of England through the findings of three research projects aimed at understanding health inequalities among urban Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities including Gypsies and Travellers (BAME and GT) groups. It problematises Wacquant's approach to territorial stigma by explaining how Butler's notion of vulnerability and Castoriadis' notion of autonomous agency help to expand our understanding of the interplay between stigma and health infrastructures. Moreover, it suggests that such interplay requires an intersectional approach to identity as performative and embodied practice using illustrative examples. We propose that these health settings and infrastructures can be characterised as 'transbordering assemblages', following Irazábal who describes its embedded notions of pluri-locality (here and there: '[T]Here'), pluri-identity and practices of bordering (being in or out/in and out/in between) when experiencing health needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The therapeutic working alliance by Bordin has been demonstrated as a ‘common ground’ variable attributable to change in identified change enterprises, including education. In this context, working alliance (renamed learning alliance) has been empirically demonstrated to predict positive on-campus student outcomes. However, minimal research investigating whether learning alliance predicts blended student outcomes has been conducted. A measure of on-campus student teaching alliance (the learning alliance inventory, LAI; Rogers), which operationalises (measures) learning alliance using three subscales (collaborative bond, teacher competency and student investment) was administered to 199 Australian tertiary students, enrolled in a counselling program delivered in the blended learning modality (online learning coupled with synchronous tutorials and an on-campus intensive). The aim of the study was to investigate if this on-campus measure of learning alliance can validly measure learning alliance in blended student populations as well. Results revealed that learning alliance in the blended student population is best operationalised as a two-factor model (collaborative bond and student investment) only. Thematic analysis of an open question revealed learning alliance in the blended teaching environment is understood as four themes: qualities of the teacher, teacher style, mastery of the technology and unique online factors. These results were interpreted as evidence that the bond factor of the original learning alliance construct as operationalised by Bordin (1979) continues to be important in the blended teaching space, but other factors unique to blended learning are important for online learning alliance, including content relevancy, currency and validity, as well as a transparent and structured course delivery style, flexibility when technology fails and online objectivity. Study limitations, implications and future research recommendations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of corporate venture capital (CVC) investment on startup innovation performance has been examined in the extant literature. However, when this effect is enhanced is the important but relatively understudied question in strategy and entrepreneurship research. We build on the idea of regarding CVC investment relationships as learning alliances and introduce two situational factors as boundary conditions on the performance effect of CVC investment. In order to handle the endogeneity of CVC investment, we employ propensity score matching and differences-in-differences techniques. Based on the sample of startups in the human biotechnology industry in the United States, we find that CVC funding is beneficial for startup innovativeness when CVC investment is established after initial independent venture capital funding. Moreover, a startup’s patent stock before CVC funding also influences on that effect. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main challenge for researchers and project staff when implementing inclusive approaches in agricultural innovation is how learning and technology adaptation interact and how to reach jointly set targets. We provide a comparative analysis of the learning process induced by adaptive research (AR) in one case and a combined AR with Learning Alliance (LA) approach in another. The AR approach bridged farmers and researchers, but its implementation where researchers controlled experimentation, was not optimally conducive to experiential and discovery learning. The combined AR and LA approach expanded the number of stakeholders with whom farmers interact. This broadened the learning agenda beyond the initial objectives of the project. Although a LA provided added value in increasing the scope for learning with other stakeholders, limitations also emerged from the autonomy and informality of the learning process. Our analysis, based on the notion of situated learning, revealed practical concerns were a major driver in the participatory process. Incorporating insights and skills developed from experimentation to support the reconfiguration of practices, not only farming but also trading and milling, is needed. Lastly, the approaches have complementary value. Inclusion of more actors, as in a LA should not merely facilitate deliberations between actors but also support the reconfiguration of different practices and the functional linkages between these practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research projects employ the learning alliance (LA) approach but there is scepticism that its rhetoric is not evident in practice. The authors examined a case of an implemented LA, comparing its outcomes with assumptions from the project and its conceptual design to evaluate the implementation of an LA. Data were from interviews and network maps of actors involved, as well as farmers and town-level actors in Battambang and Pursat, Cambodia. An LA approach can promote actor–network processes that target social, technical, and institutional reordering. Assumptions about the approach, however, may lead projects to emphasize scaling out and direct efforts away from processes that enable innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Volvo Robust Engineering System (VRES) is an adaptation of the robust design concept in an industrial context. It consists of five different principles as a basic value system, and eight practices that contribute to the implementation of system, parameter and tolerance design. VRES was developed through a learning alliance between Volvo and Chalmers University of Technology. This paper presents VRES and discusses it in relation to the literature-based robust design methodology, which has been a major inspiration for VRES development. VRES has expanded and validated the concepts previously developed in the literature by adding the elements needed for practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief communication, we offer one perspective - the contextual psychoanalytic supervision model (CPSM) - on how psychoanalytic supervision works. The CPSM, a supervisory extrapolation of Wampold's contextual psychotherapy relationship model, accentuates four psychoanalytic supervisor-supervisee relationship variables as crucial and change inducing: the learning alliance bond, supervisor-supervisee real relationship, creating supervision expectations/providing an expectation-consistent form of supervision, and the supervisee's engagement in facilitative educational actions. The CPSM is presented in hopes of stimulating further discussion about what makes psychoanalytic supervision work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper argues that the Ford-Mazda and Renault-Nissan relationships may represent a forerunning pattern of the learning alliance, whereby ongoing close interaction of horizontal alliance partners at multiple hierarchical levels can be used to facilitate the mutual accumulation of superior organizational capabilities within the alliance firms. Our observations suggest that for this pattern of cooperation to function effectively at least the following three conditions must be met. The alliance partners must: (1) co-exist as separate learning organizations, (2) be able to evaluate accurately a partner’s relative organizational capability strengths and weaknesses, and (3) have the motivation and ability to facilitate a partner’s inter-firm learning.

Although the use of robust design within product development (PD) has a large potential, its practical application in industry has been limited. Learning from an earlier less-successful trial, the Volvo Group developed an initiative that was successful in making robust design part of development engineers' regular work. This initiative was conducted in 2006–2009 as action-research collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology, involving researchers and 22 master students. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse this initiative. Data have been gathered through formal interviews, participation and observation in formal and informal meetings and through master theses. The initiative's design included a broader robust design concept, emphasising robust design principles, and the creation of local learning processes involving PD engineers and their supervisors. The company–university collaboration functioned as a ‘learning alliance’ on different levels. First, a learning relationship was created between individual engineers and master–students resulting in reflection-in-action and iterative mutual learning. Second, the learning alliance also included professors/researchers from Chalmers interacting with company representatives in an open learning environment, as well as reflection-in-supervision in the interaction with master–students. This interaction also supported the company in its process of creating structure and practices for organisational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the course of psychotherapy supervision history, the supervisor-supervisee alliance has increasingly emerged as a variable of preeminent importance in the conceptualization and conduct of the supervision experience: It has come to be embraced as the very heart and soul of supervision. But after a half century, what evidence do we actually have to justify that highly favorable outlook afforded to the alliance? What do we really know about the supervisory alliance? What do we need to know about it? As we mark the first 50 years of supervisory alliance and look toward its future, I thought it might be useful to examine those questions and provide a current status report about the construct itself. In what follows, I (a) describe the two supervisory alliance visions that have been (and remain) dominant in the supervision literature and (b) provide a review of 20 plus years of supervision alliance research. While the supervisory alliance has accumulated solid clinical support, its empirical support appears to be more tentative and less robust. I consider why that is so, identify some missing elements in the alliance research conducted thus far and propose possible remedies to move inquiry in this area forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Multiple use systems' are systems that allow efficient and effective supply of water from different sources to communities for their domestic and for their productive purposes and that allow interaction with providers of water related services. Such systems are probably highly desirable from the perspective of using scare water efficiently and also from the perspectives of gender equity and improving livelihoods. It is therefore useful to carry out scientific research to validate this statement about a water-innovation. The mode of research must be 'action research'. The specific form and management of multiple use systems depends on local biophysical and socio-economic factors, as well as on local institutions and legislation. Eleven 'cornerstones' need to be in place to realize a full multiple use system. Since a blue print cannot be made and many parties are involved, 'learning alliances' are to be set up in specific geographic areas and at national level to identify how much of these cornerstones of multiple use systems are still lacking, and to work together to create or implement these. Guidelines for setting up Learning Alliances and for actually implementing systems of multiple water use are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regular cycle of conducting research when applied to human services is considered linear and rarely beneficial to all stakeholders involved directly or indirectly in a research project (service users, policy-makers, funders, local authorities, taxpayers). Funders of research, taxpayers, policy-makers and governments are increasingly questioning the linear process of conducting research and are demanding a higher socio-economic and scientific impact. New approaches seeking to re-think the utilisation, appropriation and impact of research outcomes in the health services area in more integrated ways, include the Learning Alliance (LA) methodology. Formally defined, an LA is "a series of connected multi-stakeholder platforms or networks (practitioner, researchers, policy-makers, service users) at different institutional levels (local, national) involved in two basic tasks: knowledge innovation and its scaling up. Methods: The methodological tools in an LA are various and can be used according to the convenience, context, theme and needs of a project. The most common ones are stakeholder analysis, research or action research, process documentation, dissemination and capacity building, among others. By applying the LA, the three projects briefly mentioned here sought to demonstrate that this approach could contribute to increasing their scientific and socioeconomic impact while simultaneously generating learning among all stakeholders in more integrated ways. Results: Three projects using the LA have been completed as recently as 2017 and have covered different health themes, services and locations: identification of health needs of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups in the South East of England; perpetration of Intimate Partner Violence by Males in Substance Abuse Treatment in Brazil and England; and Attitudes to Palliative and End of Life Care Services among BME Groups in the South East of England. Overall, the three research experiences in combination with the use of stakeholders' participation and documentation revealed that the role of the LA methodology demonstrates significant issues. First, it contributed to narrowing the dominant gap between research and practice that is so common in health services by bringing together several stakeholders (policy-makers, service users, service providers) who are not involved in research on a daily basis. Through knowledge sharing, all stakeholders benefited from the research projects' outcomes. Second, the documentation of events in the projects become a significant source of additional data in which impact and the know-how got captured. Similarly, documentation and dissemination of preliminary findings in the three cases comprised a tool for promoting changes in attitudes and mindsets that translated faster into adoption of integrated changes in practice. Third, the work undertaken as a network, enabled all stakeholders to understand that the research projects could be more than the traditional linear processes. The research projects' outcomes benefited stakeholders in different ways beyond the traditional research products (academic papers or technologies) to include other social, personal and institutional processes that occur in a project, and demonstrated a better impact. Conclusion: The application of the LA methodology maximised the value of conducting research as a network by including various stakeholders and not only researchers to integrate research, practice, learning and policy issues in health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues relating to the formation of The Learning Alliance, a non-profit utility launched by the University of Pennsylvania and involving 11 organisations in total, are examined. The alliance was formed in order to help universities learn how to remain 'mission centred' after becoming 'market smart' in a market that is becoming increasingly fractured into a collection of semi-autonomous business units.