Journal of Social Development in Africa (1995), 10,2,93-102 
Book Reviews 
Research with a view to implementation, D J Gouws, Human Sciences Research 
Council, Pretoria, 1994,231pp, and 
Case studies in research with a view to implementation, D J Gouws (ed), Human 
Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, 1994, 248 pp(HSRC,P Bag X270, Pretoria, 
South Africa 0001, Fax: 27 12 202 2892). 
These two books, directed at people actively involved in research or research 
administration, provide some interesting case studies from a five-year programme 
of investigation into the implementation of research sponsored by the (South 
African) Scientific Advisory Council, and directed by the author under the 
auspices of the Human Sciences Research Council. The programme was launched 
due to mounting concern that the expected benefits from state-supported research 
were not being realised due to poor implementation. 
The investigation consisted of two phases. In the first a group of 58 researchers 
from a wide variety of disciplines and an assortment of state, university, industrial, 
and private research organisations were brought together to consider retrospectively 
the critical factors contributing to the implementation success (or otherwise) 
of research projects they had undertaken. 
In the second phase, another group of 50 researchers - with 55 research topics 
that had already been approved, but which had not yet been started as formal 
projects - participated in a two-day implementation workshop, based on the results 
of the first phase and on general principles of change management such as 
stakeholder analysis and involvement, before proceeding with their research 
projects. In this investigation, research with a view to implementation (R/I) meant: 
"...the assumption of personal responsibility by the researchers for attaining 
their chosen implementation objectives, by appropriate, collaborative 
involvement of the important stakeholders in team action to identify the 
relevant problems and opportunities, formulate the goals and plans, and 
execute the project - all within an action research framework. 
Implementation is (regarded as being) achieved to the extent that the 
chosen objectives are attained, as evidenced by changes in the target 
group's knowledge, skills, perceptions, beliefs and finally: by their actions 
- especially by their results in the stipulated effectiveness areas" (p 188). 
A consequence of this approach is that it also makes good sense to talk about the 
implementation of basic research - as is demonstrated by one of the examples 
described in the first book.
94 Book Reviews 
An important feature of the implementation workshop was that participants 
were divided into small, heterogeneous groups in which they took turns to explain 
their research objectives, rationale and method to six or seven fellow researchers 
from other disciplines, with an opportunity for questions followed by lively 
discussion. 
Participants subsequently reported favourably on this experience, mentioning 
in particular the freshness and originality of the comments from researchers in 
other disciplines. Many significantly revised their research plans. 
The progress of the various research projects was then monitored over the next 
few years, with some visits by programme staff and with such moral support and 
advice as proved feasible. 
After three years participants were asked to submit reports on the course and 
degree of implementation success of their respective research projects. (The progress 
of some projects which were of longer duration was assessed up to six years 
later). 
The final tally was that 40% of the assessed projects were regarded as highly 
successful, 23 % as partially successful, and 36% as unsuccessful. (It is noteworthy 
that 8 of the 55 projects originally registered never got started in any significant 
way). 
Gouws constructed a 17-item implementation effort assessment scale with 
satisfactory inter-rater reliability. Degree of implementation effort - as measured 
by this scale - showed a very strong association with implementation outcome for 
this group of researchers. This would seem to support one of Gouws' main 
contentions in designing and conducting the programme, ie that a major determinant 
of implementation success is the degree of personal responsibility taken for 
it by the researcher. Gouws sets out his approach to research with a view to 
implementation (R/I) in more detail in part II of the first book. There he discusses 
the notion of implementation in contrast to more passive concepts such as diffusion 
and dissemination, the role of mindsets andother individual differences-with their 
implications for R/I team work, the importance of considering and involving the 
stakeholders in innovation, factors that promote or hinder implementation, a 
methodological framework for R/I, and, finally, a critical overview of the R/I 
notion, with a consideration of common objections against the view that researchers 
should seriously concern themselves about implementation. 
This valuable conceptual analysis is supported and supplemented by the case 
studies in the second book, which provide the telling, concrete examples of R/I in 
action. The contributions by Augustyn, van der Spuy, Barnard, and du Plessis, for 
instance, demonstrate the power of a deliberate, proactive implementation R/I 
strategy in four widely different fields: wine-making, the collection and use of 
national medical trauma statistics, the teaching of high school mathematics, and the
Book Reviews 95 
introduction of water hydraulic power into the gold mining industry. An important 
point arising from these case studies is the potential economic significance of early 
implementation. For example, Augustyn's results, by being made available and 
implemented early, probably averted a wine industry loss of R3m due to stuck 
fermentation in 1989 alone (a sum, by the way, five times as large as the Scientific 
Advisory Council's grant for the entire implementation programme). 
Not all the case studies selected represent implementation successes. Some help 
to demonstrate how and why implementation so often goes wrong. 
The approach to research implementation set out in the first book and demonstrated 
by the case studies may be more appropriate in research situations where 
there is little emphasis on intellectual property rights, eg public health, education, 
and even in-house industrial research establishments. While Gouws' approach 
would still be relevant to hi-tech situations where the intellectual property stakes 
are very high, it will need to be complemented by adequate measures to protect 
intellectual ownership - an aspect not mentioned by him. 
Another feature missing from the South African programme is formal early 
involvement of the staff of the receiving organisation (eg, abusiness firm targeted 
as the most promising candidate for utilising the particular research findings) in 
implementation attitudes and skills training - something hinted at in the conclusion 
of the first book. 
We urgently needrepresentative information on the base rateof implementation 
success for different categories of research projects in different settings. The 
author's suspicion that such base rates could be quite low may well be right, in 
which case the claim of a demonstrated strong connection between implementation 
effort (on the part of the researchers) and implementation success warrants serious 
consideration. 
This ambitious programme and its results are a valuable contribution in an 
important and relatively neglected area. In these days of ever-tightening research 
funding and increasing demands for researcher accountability, Gouws' recommendations 
at the end of his first book certainly provide policy makers with food 
for thought He proposes that it will be beneficial to all concerned IF: 
" - Submission of a sound implementation plan and budget were to be 
required as an integral part of every application for research funding. 
— The implementation track record of a research team and organisation 
were to become one of the important criteria for the allocation of research 
funding" (p 206). 
With allowance for their inevitable local colour and biases these two books could 
form a very worthwhile basis for a short course or workshop in research implementation.
96 Book Reviews 
ReviewedbyDrR GABoland, cloDr Catherine dArcangues, Special Programme 
onResearch.DevelopmentandResearchTraininginHumanReproduction.World 
Health Organisation, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland. 
The Situation of the Elderly in Botswana: Proceedings From an International 
Workshop, Frank Jarle Bruun, Mbulawa Mugabe & Yolande Coombes (eds), 
Gaborone: National Institute of Development Research and Documentation, 
University of Botswana. Oslo: Centre for Development and the Environment, 
University of Oslo, 1994, ix + 136pp. ISSN 0805-3251. 
The papers in this volume are based on contributions to an international workshop 
on 'The Situation of the Elderly' which was held in Gaborone, Botswana, from 
March 29 to April 1,1993. 
Ageing is a process that has begun to attract increasing scholarly attention. What 
is popularly termed the "greying of the population" constitutes a major problem for 
many societies. Changes in the number and proportion of older people in the total 
population have implications for, inter alia, the social structure, family health care, 
housing and poverty. The multi-disciplinary team which participated in the 
workshop was composed of individuals who were technically well-positioned to 
tackle aspects of this neglected subject. 
The volume is divided into four parts. The papers included in Part I - 
"Information Needs and Policy at the National Level" - introduce readers to the 
subject of ageing and also explore the policy dimension. Alex Kalachi's paper 
serves as a backcloth in which he discusses the process of ageing in a regional and 
global framework. This contribution should help the reader to contextualise the 
more specific papers covered in the rest of the volume. 
Mbulawa Mugabe's paper focuses on the health and social policies related to 
elderly people in Botswana. He argues that the structure and organisation of 
existing health and social services are inadequate to deal with the multiplicity of 
problems associated with ageing. Coombes, Khulumani and Ngome's paper 
presents a profile of the elderly in Botswana. They examine the aged from a 
demographic dimension and highlight related factors. For instance, they show that 
the number of elderly people who are economically active had dropped from 8,5 
percentin 1971 to7,5percentin 1991. Theirfindings also reveal that elderlypeople 
tend to be resident in rural areas, and have low levels of literacy and formal 
education. They point out that the extended family network remains an important 
dimension in the lives of the aged. 
Part 2 of this volume focuses on the cultural and traditional factors affecting the 
elderly at the village level. Ingstad's paper deals with various aspects of the lives 
of elderly people in Mankgodi, a small village in the Kweneng District. She draws