- Title
- Effectual self-transformation: the learning capabilities of elite policy entrepreneurs
- Creator
- Watts, Simon Clarence
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Policy entrepreneurs create innovation that engages the social, economic, and environmental policy opportunities and challenges of the 21st Century. Increasingly local challenges have international or global causes and so require large scale collaborative solutions including, for example, the Covid-19 pandemic or global warming and climate change. Understanding the learning of policy entrepreneurs as a group presents opportunities for increasing the innovation expertise of policy workers more broadly. This thesis examines how policy entrepreneurs learn and identifies the domains in which their capabilities are developed. The research approach is eclectic, with sequential and synchronous elements deploying methodological bricolage, theoretically probing a continually expanding literature, in-depth research interviews, and a worked policy case. The interview participants comprised nine extremely successful elite policy entrepreneurs who are skilled, effective, and influential. This group engage with policy challenges through their roles leading governments, public service agencies, as public intellectuals, and as partners in professional services firms. The literature provided a deep understanding of policy entrepreneurship, informed the interview approach, and subsequent analysis of data. The interviews explored how the subject’s learning is linked to their effectual and innovation thinking and practice, to create their policy entrepreneurship and create innovation. The case study was a policy entrepreneur driven social innovation, utilising a Timebanking initiative and led by the author, open to both presentation of rich description and personal reflection. The thesis describes cognitive, affective, and behavioural capabilities of elite policy entrepreneurs—and the place of learning of these entrepreneurs, that goes to the heart of their innovation work. It then describes and expands on the way policy entrepreneurs utilise effectuation and effectual logic as a leading entrepreneurial method, particularly in social learning spaces. Effectual learning is identified as a critical tool in the practice of policy entrepreneurs and in the pursuit of policy innovation and the work offers a heuristic encapsulating key aspects of the ‘method’ of effectual learning. The research contributes to the field in several ways. First it offers greater depth of insight into the capabilities of elite policy entrepreneurs and how these are developed. Secondly, it expands understanding of the effectual learning that supports and develops policy entrepreneurship practice. These findings can inform teaching and learning to advance these capabilities for policy workers with varying levels of skill and in many different contexts and offer a method for engaging the capabilities of policy entrepreneurship. Thirdly, understanding the role of social learning spaces provides a clear model for fruitful collaborative policy entrepreneurship that supports innovation. Lastly the findings point to a transformational phenomenon, that acting as an effectual policy entrepreneur is self-transformational. This finding is particularly pertinent to designing curriculum.
- Subject
- policy entrepreneurship; effectual learning; innovation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1486403
- Identifier
- uon:51841
- Rights
- Copyright 2023 Simon Clarence Watts
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 295 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |