Citation:

j.envsci.2012.12.007

Name: Environmental policy and knowledge. Copying with complexity through inclusive management
Published: 2013
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Abstract:

Scholars agree that governance of the public environment entails cooperation between science, policy and society. This requires the active role of public managers as catalysts of knowledge co-production, addressing participatory arenas in relation to knowledge integration and social learning. This paper deals with the question of whether public managers acknowledge and take on this task. A survey accessing Directors of Environmental Offices (EOs) of 64 municipalities was carried out in parallel for two regions - Tuscany (Italy) and Porto Alegre Metropolitan Region (Brazil). The survey data were analysed using the multiple correspondence method. Results showed that, regarding policy practices, EOs do not play the role of knowledge co-production catalysts, since when making environmental decisions they only use technical knowledge. We conclude that there is a gap between theory and practice, and identify some factors that may hinder local environmental managers in acting as catalyst of knowledge co-production, raising a further question for future research.

Comment:

Public policies and management of the local environment can be defined by the attribute "wicked", used in the literature to mean "unstructured, multi-stakeholder, relentless issues" (Weber and Khademian, 2008; Robert 2002). Thus, they ought to be based on an integrated knowledge, which may enatil public managers and decision-makers' effort to co-produce knowledge. We proposed a research project to investigate the behaviour of public managers and the practices of public administrations, responsible for environmental policies, regarding this argument.

The project is titled: "Knowledge management and sustainability in urban public environment: public participation as tool for social learning. The Municipal Environmental Officers (EOs) perspective in a comparative case study Italy - Brazil".

In this on-line data set, we provide the elaborations and others empirical materials (questionnaire, variables and labels). They consist of the following attachments : 1) a pdf file containing a translated version of a questionnaire sent to both Brazilian and Italian EOs; 2) a pdf file containing a table reporting the labels used for each mode of the variables extracted from the questionnaire; 3) an Excel file containing the data and the results of a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) used to elaborate the survey data.

Parameter(s):

#	Name	Short Name	Unit	Principal Investigator	Comment
1	File content	Content		Maiello, Antonella
2	File content	Content		Maiello, Antonella	continued
3	File format	File format		Maiello, Antonella
4	File name	File name		Maiello, Antonella
5	File size	File size	kByte	Maiello, Antonella
6	Uniform resource locator/link to file	URL file		Maiello, Antonella

License:

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-3.0)

Size:

17 data points

Data

Download dataset as tab-delimited text — use the following character encoding:

1 Content	2 Content (continued)	3 File format	4 File name	5 File size [kByte]	6 URL file
Include five worksheet: 1. questionnaire with the 64 observations (Environmental Directors of 64 Municipalities, 32 from Tuscany-Italy, and 32 from Porto Alegre Metropolitan Region-Brasil).	2. multiple correspondence analysis of the data related with routines variables. 3. corresponding chart. 4. multiple correspondence analysis of data related with attitudes variables. 5. corresponding chart.	raw data, xlsx	Maiello_etal_2012_Data_MCA	168	hdl:10013/epic.38667.d004
The Pdf file contains a table which presents and classifies the 16 variables extracted from the questionnaire and distinguished between routine related variables and attitude related variables.	For each variable are presented the corresponding modes and the labels assigned to each mode for the multiple correspondence analysis.	PDF	MCA_Variables_Labels	57	hdl:10013/epic.38667.d002
The Pdf file contains the questionnaire of 24 questions administered to a sample of Environmental Directors, chief of the environmental offices in 64 different municipalities, equally distributing between Tuscany and Porto Alegre Metropolitan Region.		PDF	Questionnaire_survey_TuscanyPorto_Alegre	57	hdl:10013/epic.38667.d003