Competente besluitvorming: het management van meervoudige kennis in ruimtelijke ontwikkelingsprocessen

This Ph.D. thesis gives more insight in the way knowledge can be managed in the context of dynamic, complex, long- term spatial development processes. Knowledge management in spatial development processes have to acknowledge the multiplicity of knowledge. Knowledge embraces factual knowledge, socially constructed perceptions and values, and know-how (competencies of actors, social and institutional capital). Policy-processes consist of three parallel tracks which develop sometimes independently and sometimes in mutual interaction. These tracks are a track of fact-finding in which factual knowledge (e.g. impact assessments, costs-benefits analyses) is produced; a track of image building in which actors construct (more or less shared) interpretations of the policy-problem and the preferable solution; and a track of consensus-formation in which actors try to find a collective and feasible ambition and concrete measures. Knowledge management has to do with organizing the tracks of fact- finding and image-construction independently in order to realize qualitative, independent facts and an open and democratic process of frame reflection and deliberation, but also with organizing these tracks in coherence with the track of consensus-formation in order to realize effective, well-reasoned, and supported decisions. Competent decision-making consist of balancing between investments in the unity of the policy process as a whole and in the power of the constituting tracks. These three tracks and their (independent and interrelated) development can benefit from different sources of governance capacity (actor capacity, social capacity, institutional capacity) within the governance network in which they take place. The task for knowledge management in governance processes with regard to this knowledge form is to mobilize and utilize these "sources of competence" in a policy round and to consolidate their development through subsequent policy rounds.