Professional development with Professor Michael Austin
An interactive workshop with Distinguished Professor Austin of the University of California looked at 'knowledge brokers' in health and human service organisations.
Workshop participants learned about three different models of practice research and had the opportunity to reflect on the application of these models in their own contexts.
In this interactive workshop, Professor Austin presented the results of a survey of 137 Canadian and UK link officers that capture the characteristics, major activities, and perceptions related to three pioneering intermediary organisations. Health and human service organizations can benefit from the assistance of intermediary organizations in the dissemination and utilization of research through the use of internal knowledge brokers called link officers. The participants had the opportunity to be in conversation with Professor Austin on the topic and reflect on their own experiences and challenges in supporting knowledge brokers.
Professor Austin is the Milton and Florence Krenz Mack Distinguished Professor of Nonprofit Management and director of the Mack Center on Nonprofit and Public Sector Management in Human Services at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley. He is the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Work. His areas of research include the social psychology of organisational role taking, building organisational knowledge-sharing systems to support evidence informed practice, and expanding the methodologies of practice research. His publications reflect a long-standing interest in the management of non-profit and public sector organisations. He is the author or co-author of 20 books, over 100 articles and numerous reports.