However, such shared understandings need to be handled with care, as they are typically restricted to a certain community or “thought collective” as Fleck put it (Fleck 1979). Thus they are not necessarily clear to outsiders (Pohl et al. 2010b). Researchers who include sustainability orientations

in their work and embrace value-related questions for their part risk taking a position themselves. AZD1208 mouse The results further suggest that, in order to consider actors’ and stakeholders’ perspectives on sustainable development, these need to be known or to be readily identifiable. This is of course not always the case. The researchers that encountered such a situation coped with it in two different ways: they either turned investigating people’s positions into an object of research, or approached stakeholders’ perspectives in a participatory process, i.e., by means of involving community members in the research. Thus, considering relevant actors’ perspectives does not necessarily demand participatory research approaches. Whether applying participatory approaches is necessary and possible thus seems to depend on the problem situation, e.g. for the state of the discussion and the degree of Tanespimycin concentration consensus among important actors, as well as, most importantly, on how familiar scientists are with the different positions. Basic guidelines for evaluating sustainability conceptions of research projects The

empirically identified characteristics of how sustainable development is conceived and handled in research projects relate to the adequacy of such conceptions in different

respects. The following sections illustrate in what ways they can support evaluating sustainability conceptions of research projects additional to the two basic requirements derived from the Brundtland definition, namely to (1) consider the overall meaning of sustainable development, as well as (2) reflect relevant actors and stakeholders’ perspectives on sustainable development (Fig. 1). Fig. 1 Basic guidelines for evaluating sustainability conceptions of research projects comprise: considering the overall meaning of sustainable development and reflecting relevant actors and stakeholders’ perspectives 17-DMAG (Alvespimycin) HCl on sustainable development (basic requirements); deliberating underlying sustainability conceptions and making them explicit (instrumental preconditions); as well as checking the contextualization of the sustainability conception and its relevance to the project (differentiating function) Deliberate how to conceptualize sustainable development Checking whether the position a project takes is in line with the overall meaning of sustainable development while covering relevant people’s visions, and where required adapting it clearly necessitates deliberation. Reflecting on underlying norms and principles also allows one’s own assumptions and positions to be revealed, and is thus a fundamental precondition for ascertaining the appropriateness of sustainability goals.