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This paper introduces interactive research as an emerging approach within a broad family of collaborative research approaches in management and organization research. Interactive research is a way to contribute to the dual tasks of long-term theory development and innovation and change processes in organizations. One of the distinguishing features of interactive research is a focus on continuous joint learning processes between the researchers and the involved practitioners.

The basic concepts, contributions and challenges of the interactive research approach are presented and illustrated in the present paper through a practical case, the HELIX Centre.

Interactive research is a way to advance scientific knowledge about the development of new types of work organizations and the development of sustainable operations. The multi-disciplinary and interactive research approach at HELIX has made it possible to reach a high degree of both rigour and relevance in research questions and projects. The authors identified five principles from the HELIX case that were instrumental in accomplishing the dual tasks of interactive research.

The interactive research approach is a powerful method of collaboration between different stakeholders throughout the research process. This type of research makes it possible to interact at various levels of research, from the programme level, to research and development projects, to the individual level. The results from interactive research should not only be considered traditionally valid but also valid in relation to organizational and societal needs.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the competence in use when working with interactive research, which is a continuation and elaboration of action research.

A qualitative research approach was adopted for the study. The main body of empirical material in this paper is based on two sources of data – a survey comprising open-ended questions, followed by a series of focus group interviews. The respondents were researchers with varying degrees of experience in using interactive research.

The findings provide illustrations of what characterises interactive research as work and identify an additional set of activities that go beyond traditional research activities. Some activities are relatively easy to describe, while others exist in the gaps between other activities – e.g. boundary spanning – and are harder to explicitly define in terms of implications for the involved researchers’ competence. The work activities reaching beyond the traditional research boundaries are implicit and are not a common shared practice. From a competence point of view, this implies that the competence in use for these implicit tasks of interactive research becomes individually carried. Based on these findings, a number of individual aspects of what constitutes competence in use are suggested.

In future studies, it would be valuable to use a mixed-method approach that also includes longitudinal observations of the actual work of conducting interactive research.

The findings and suggestions for how to understand the competence of interactive researchers can be used as guidance for training in research education.

This study contributes to previous research by describing important requirements and critical elements of competence in use when conducting interactive research.

This study observes the organisational environment of fostering citizen participation in the context of local government. Creating systems of influential citizen participation requires the consideration of organisational prerequisites. This study asks which organisational elements contribute to successful citizen participation in local government.

The data consist of interviews with 14 key actors who work for the city of Helsinki. The interview content was subjected to abductive content analysis and reflected in the analytical framework based on previous literature on citizen participation. The analysis complements and adds insights to the existing literature.

This study illuminates three crucial elements of influential citizen participation: organisational structures, organisational culture and adequate resources. Additionally, the results revealed management to be a crucial enabling element. The findings highlight the importance of seeing citizen participation as an issue of governance and as a systemic part of the administration requiring intentional management efforts.

The study illustrates the key elements (structures, culture and resources) that should be considered when creating an influential citizen participation system. Additionally, the empirical analysis highlights the importance of management, which has been understudied in previous studies concerning citizen participation.

Develop a comprehensive framework for assessing the knowledge organization systems (KOSs), including the taxonomy of Wikipedia and the ontologies of Wikidata, with a specific focus on enhancing management and retrieval with a gender nonbinary perspective.

This study employs heuristic and inspection methods to assess Wikipedia’s KOS, ensuring compliance with international standards. It evaluates the efficiency of retrieving non-masculine gender-related articles using the Catalan Wikipedian category scheme, identifying limitations. Additionally, a novel assessment of Wikidata ontologies examines their structure and coverage of gender-related properties, comparing them to Wikipedia’s taxonomy for advantages and enhancements.

This study evaluates Wikipedia’s taxonomy and Wikidata’s ontologies, establishing evaluation criteria for gender-based categorization and exploring their structural effectiveness. The evaluation process suggests that Wikidata ontologies may offer a viable solution to address Wikipedia’s categorization challenges.

The assessment of Wikipedia categories (taxonomy) based on KOS standards leads to the conclusion that there is ample room for improvement, not only in matters concerning gender identity but also in the overall KOS to enhance search and retrieval for users. These findings bear relevance for the design of tools to support information retrieval on knowledge-rich websites, as they assist users in exploring topics and concepts.

The dynamics of modern life lead to societal changes that affect innovation systems. Entrepreneurship is an important driver for fostering adaptive capacities of innovation systems in such uncertain and complex environments. This study aims to gain a detailed understanding of how (innovative) entrepreneurship can promote innovation systems, leading to more sustainable societies. A particular focus is placed on migrant entrepreneurship in the digital economy, as a concrete implication of innovative entrepreneurship, and its role within the Austrian innovation system.

In order to develop a shared system understanding from a scientific and practical perspective, transdisciplinary multistage system modeling was applied. The transdisciplinary discourse involved 14 experts, and several system models were iteratively co-created during the course of the research.

The main result demonstrates the interrelationship between the innovation system and migrant entrepreneurship in the digital economy, which includes six core reinforcing loops: (1) the mindsets of entrepreneurs, (2) the role of international collaboration, (3) the role of entrepreneurial education, the financial sphere in regard to (4) government and (5) private funding, as well as (6) the impact of formal procedures.

The authors present and discuss the relational dynamics of this complex phenomenon as well as the applied transdisciplinary approach, with the aim of identifying a potential way to improve the sustainable impact of (migrant) entrepreneurship considering the case of the Austrian innovation system.