Rethinking Social Barriers to Effective Adaptive Management

Area of Science:

• Environmental Management
• Social Science Research
• Ecological Monitoring

Background:

• Adaptive management, despite theoretical acceptance, faces practical implementation challenges.
• Social barriers are often cited as reasons for the difficulty in enacting adaptive management.
• There is a need for social science contributions to understand and overcome these barriers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the development of an ecological monitoring program within an adaptive management framework.
• To investigate the practices used to enact the monitoring program and their impact on learning.
• To understand how social and organizational factors influence the implementation of adaptive management.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative approach utilizing extensive interviews with a key individual.
• Thematic analysis of interview narratives.
• Exploration of practices within an Australian public land management organization.

Main Results:

• Enacting the monitoring program is influenced by competing scientific, public, and corporate logics.
• Implementation involves translation practices to manage tensions between different knowledge types and norms.
• Adaptive management is viewed as a social knowledge practice, not merely an external barrier.

Conclusions:

• Successful adaptive management requires navigating and translating between diverse organizational logics.
• Practices of translation are crucial for integrating experimental learning with accountability and efficiency demands.
• Adaptive management is fundamentally a social knowledge practice, shaped by organizational context and interactions.