This blog post serves as an exploratory and developmental process for my PhD. Its focus is on the academic literature I engage with, presented in a blog format, against the backdrop of professional contexts. A blogging approach enables exploration of the ties between research and practice, supporting reflexivity.
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Lately, I’ve been continuing to read about relational approaches across various fields, including impact and business, public policy, and international relations, each involving governance dynamics. This is set against the context of my research (at the intersection of higher education, knowledge production, libraries, and open research) and my professional endeavours.
At their core, relational approaches are about recognising interconnectedness and, often, interdependence. Transactional approaches focus on short-term exchanges and immediate goals. 1 In contrast, relational approaches prioritise building trust, respect, and dialogue to achieve shared goals.
Relationality in open knowledge
In my research on open knowledge diplomacy, I’ve previously described how:
“Models of open scholarship and an academic system that reinforce self-serving interests as the justification for knowledge production miss the local and relational contexts, and positioning of libraries within community (Moore, 2023), that drive equitable and collaborative approaches.” (Bell, 2025, p. 12).
To expand on this, ‘open knowledge diplomacy’ embodies values of reciprocity, mutuality, and collaboration, and enacts these values as relational norms.
Yet, knowledge diplomacy as a concept exists in spaces where discrepancies in motivations toward open knowledge also exist.
When relationality meets competition
Looking to ‘Open science: One term, five schools of thought‘ by Fecher and Friesike, the pragmatic school is one school of thought that aligns with the concept of open knowledge diplomacy. 2 The pragmatic school is about “making research more efficient,” through opening knowledge production up to more collaborative processes. 3
The alignment here is in collaborative processes, something open knowledge diplomacy espouses. Yet, the pragmatic school also focuses on efficiency.
When I think about relational values, efficiency is not usually the first thing that comes to mind. Efficiency is often positioned in contrast to relational approaches, as it is associated with optimisation and the immediacy of achieving discrete goals. It appears to support more transactional approaches.
For example, in sectors like social services, relational approaches have been described as emphasising “systems, collaboration and connectedness,” in contrast to new public management, focusing on “efficiency and competition.” 4
This is not to say that relationality and efficiency can’t work within the same process (indeed, relational approaches could support efficiency by building trust in decision-making and processes); rather, it is to recognise the different priorities they represent and which value takes priority in shaping our processes.
A similar tension surfaces in higher education, where we find knowledge diplomacy (a collaborative model) positioned in contrast to soft power (a competitive model).
One example of such competitiveness is in “how scholarly publishers wield soft power.” Publishers recognise knowledge resources as strategic assets that can be used to influence. Yet, soft power holds different values than knowledge diplomacy, and emphasises competitive advantage.
And, with a focus on soft power comes differences in how we enact access to knowledge. The contrast between soft power approaches and other models that emphasise relationality (such as knowledge diplomacy) is not merely theoretical. It contributes to processes that have a tangible impact on outcomes.
Open knowledge governance
So, can soft power promote a “culture that adheres to shared and core values of open science, such as collective benefit and equity?” 4
Collective benefit and equity are values highlighted in the UNESCO (2021) Recommendations on Open Science report. Yet, soft power justifications for open knowledge may “reduce access to representative knowledge,” diminishing equity in knowledge production and its potential for addressing shared global challenges. 5
Such questions about values, power, and collaboration in open knowledge aren’t unique to scholarly publishing, though. They are, in effect, governance questions – and ones that appear across different sectors, levels of scale and analysis, and types of governance.
The purpose of exploring such questions is not to create a false dichotomy between seemingly variant values and framings, but to recognise the element of choice they represent in decision-making.
Relationality in governance systems
Within governance systems – whether organisational, global, or any other – decision-making often operates with efficiency pressures and within competitive landscapes.
So, what does a relational approach look like in governance systems? And how are perceived disparities between relational approaches and realities addressed?
Considering how relational approaches function in governance contexts starts to answer both of these questions. Briefly turning to examples across a variety of literatures:
- Bartels et al. (2024) (addressing public policy) describe relational leadership as being built on trust and power-sharing. Relational leadership is about creating “conditions for collaboration rather than competition,” and it is through this that social change outcomes are achieved.
- Pache and Spencer (2024) (addressing institutionally diverse boards) study how relational leadership processes facilitate understanding of peer perspectives and a board’s connection to a hybrid organisation’s mission, building trust and mutual respect.
- Deloffre and Quack (2025) (addressing NGOs in global governance) explore how a relational approach accommodates legal and organisational realities by understanding social interactions and their effects, including power dynamics. For example, competing, co-opting, or cooperating. Relations are part of the processes that underlie global governance outcomes.
- Moon et al. (2025) (addressing conservation governance) extend scholarship on ‘the commons‘ to emphasise the cultivation of conditions for “mutual flourishing” and principles such as power-sharing. This means viewing all actors as having an active role in governance rather than being passive resources to manage.
- Qin (2016) (addressing international relations) presents relationality as context-oriented, with behaviour, identity, roles, and power informed by relations. Processes are significant (including global governance as a process) and dynamic, meaning they shape outcomes in ways that may be unexpected.
While these governance contexts may have different traditions and concerns, the examples presented here share a common thread. Consistent across each example is how relational approaches cultivate particular conditions or processes. Governance principles and relational norms are then enacted through these processes and mechanisms.
Shaping outcomes
Relationality isn’t naive when it comes to realities. In the global governance examples, relationality doesn’t pretend that power or competition don’t exist. Instead, it surfaces such processes and power, revealing how outcomes are shaped. In the organisational and conservation examples, relational approaches provide a basis for collaboration and trust, while also recognising power balances and structural inequities.
Returning to open knowledge contexts, there’s a need, as Moore (2023) explains, for community-based “norms of trust” that extend beyond typical governance structures. Relationality contributes to supporting such norms. In a global knowledge landscape, relationality helps to examine global power structures (the “geopolitics of scholarly knowledge production”), 6 and relational approaches then contribute to local assurance and trust.
It’s in acknowledging relationality that relational approaches help to create the conditions for norms of trust and collaboration in open knowledge contexts.
- Empson (2024) ↩︎
- Bell (2025, p. 10) ↩︎
- Becher & Friesike (2014, p. 32) ↩︎
- Sabah & Lawental (2022) ↩︎
- Bell (2025, p. 7) ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 4. ↩︎