Mapping Engagement for Emerging Technologies: Decision Phases, Stakeholders, and the Genetically Engineered American Chestnut Tree

• In Event: Reflecting on Reflexivity in Practice: Responsible Innovation, Engagement, and Governance - II

Abstract

Decision making that informs development pathways for emerging technology occurs across diverse contexts that are often black boxed as discrete, disconnected elements. This complexity has the potential to overwhelm any strategy for meaningful and ongoing stakeholder and community engagement. As a potential solution, we have clustered these diverse contexts into three key decision phases: 1) research and development, 2) regulatory review, and 3) deployment, management, and monitoring. Using Responsible Research and Innovation dimensions like reflexivity as modes of conceptualizing practice, this paper presents a framework that uses detailed deconstructions of these decision phases to situate engagement practices at specific sites of decision making. The application of this framework for mapping engagement practices is empirically demonstrated through a workshop that was held at North Carolina State University in April of 2018 about the development and potential deployment of a genetically engineered American chestnut tree. Lessons learned from this workshop demonstrate how a decision phases “roadmap” can effectively imagine the role and structure of engagement practices across the many contexts of technological development cycle.

Authors

• Dalton George, North Carolina State University

• Jason A. Delborne, North Carolina State University