The RRI Challenge

4EU Institutional Rationality on RRI

4.1. On ends and means: EU institutional discourse on the instrumentality of RRI

Within the overall evolution of the EU policies on RTD, RRI comes as a novel approach, which advances the principles of new governance and good governance in the realm of EU-funded research and innovation. As we will see in this section, it is instrumental not only in bridging the gap between science and society by advancing the “With and For” mode of cooperation, but also in promoting a research culture which aims to expand researchers’ commitments and responsibilities beyond the laboratory and to the broader societal context. Below we will see that it is used as a means of promoting more adequate temporal management of research and innovation, integration of societal needs and desires by pursuing “by-design” policies, achieving efficiency and minimizing transaction costs as to the knowledge-creation process, advancing soft-law regulatory instruments in the spirit of the new governance approach, and engaging the business community with responsible behavior. At the same time, it is contributory to the establishment of a new research culture that is oriented towards addressing societal challenges, using new epistemological configurations (through interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity) and pursuing impact and relevance rather than “the objective and ultimate truth”.

The first official recognition of these many aspects of the expediency of responsibilization ...