Policymakers increasingly emphasize knowledge collaboration between academia and society as important means to generate innovations and solve complex issues. However, while recent literature on such collaboration suggests that knowledge needs to be integrated and generated across disciplines and sectors, there are surprisingly few studies that define what is meant by ‘knowledge’ or focus on the process of generating knowledge. Subsequently, the aim of this paper is to unbox ‘knowledge’ in knowledge collaboration by focusing specifically on how knowledge is understood by heterogenous actors during the process of generating knowledge. We build on insights from an in-depth case study and contribute to the literature on knowledge collaboration by bringing in theory on boundary work that specifically addresses the knowledge generation process. We argue that to better meet the expectations of collaboration, there is a need for more discussions and focus on the participating stakeholders’ heterogenous epistemological as well as ontological understanding.

中文翻译：

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学术界与社会合作的拆箱知识：关于概念和认知不确定性的故事

政策制定者越来越强调学术界和社会之间的知识合作是产生创新和解决复杂问题的重要手段。然而，尽管最近有关此类合作的文献表明需要跨学科和部门整合和生成知识，但令人惊讶的是，很少有研究定义“知识”的含义或关注知识生成的过程。随后，本文的目的是通过特别关注异质参与者在知识生成过程中如何理解知识，来解开知识协作中的“知识”。我们以深入案例研究的见解为基础，并通过引入专门针对知识生成过程的边界工作理论，为知识协作的文献做出贡献。