Dancing the two-step: Collaborating with intermediary organizations as research partners to help implement workplace health and safety interventions

Objective: To evaluate the effect of the involvement of intermediaries who were research partners on three intervention studies. The projects crossed four sectors: manufacturing, transportation, service sector, and electrical-utilities sectors. The interventions were participative ergonomic programs. The study attempts to further our understanding of collaborative workplace-based research between researchers and intermediary organizations; to analyze this collaboration in terms of knowledge transfer; and to further our understanding of the successes and challenges with such a process. Participants: The intermediary organizations were provincial health and safety associations (HSAs). They have workplaces as their clients and acted as direct links between the researchers and workplaces. Methods: Data was collected from observations, emails, research-meeting minutes, and 36 qualitative interviews. Interviewees were managers, and consultants from the collaborating associations, 17 company representatives and seven researchers. Results: The article describes how the collaborations were created, the structure of the partnerships, the difficulties, the benefits, and challenges to both the researchers and intermediaries. The evidence of knowledge utilization between the researchers and HSAs was tracked as a proxy-measure of impact of this collaborative method, also called Mode 2 research. Conclusion: Despite the difficulties, both the researchers and the health and safety specialists agreed that the results of the research made the process worthwhile.