Goals & Objectives
The main goal of ROWER is to boost the research on OHS Economics by supporting its first steps through a structured and supported “incubation period”, where the fundamental basis of OHS Economics will be agreed and set, in order to let new researchers to build upon. Further, ROWER aims at attracting new researchers and facilitating them in the beginning of their research by providing a complete and continuously updated on-line handbook and a thesaurus of related research papers and developments.
This objective is translated into a dynamic knowledge repository, starting with the existing State of the Art and developing throughout the 3 year long period of the project by absorbing contributions of leading researchers in the sector. These contributions will be stimulated and enhanced by a structure of conferences and planned WinG meetings in certain sub-topics of OHS Economics. Participation will be assisted by partly financing travelling expenses of distinguished researchers.
In addition, ROWER aims to proceed even further, by assisting and enhancing information and documentation of stakeholders, also taking input from them. On-line forums will give the opportunity to all stakeholders to be responsibly informed about certain issues concerning policy development. Additionally, ROWER will develop a newsmail group of stakeholders, sending its new developments, or promoting its content to stakeholders (governmental organisations, social partner organisations). This will be a direct activity of ROWER to enhance the achievement of its objectives, beyond its research scope.
In order to obtain these goals, certain requirements have to be satisfied in order to ensure the correct conditions for effective work.
International level of research is one of these requirements. The issue of OHS Economics cannot effectively be dealt with by-national level research, since national particularities will create confounding effects, whereas economy is open, especially in EU. Additionally, there are only a few researchers on OHS Economics that are spread throughout the world. Their expertise is required, however due to budget and management limitations this cannot be done via participation of their institutions in the Consortium. Therefore, ROWER’s first Objective (O1) is to attract experts individual participation so as to contribute to ROWER WorkiNg Group (WinG) meetings and Conferences. This involvement is a key requirement for high level research and networking.
Another requirement is the multidisciplinary approach. OHS Economics is a topic that can be found in modules both of Public Health and Health Economics courses. This is an indication of different aspects required in the economic dimension of a multidisciplinary topic as OHS. Even in the economic dimension, aspects of Engineering, Health Sciences, Psychology and Economics may contribute to a holistic picture that is required for a basis of policy development. ROWER’s second Objective (O2) is to satisfy this requirement by the nature of the participating institutions that combine all scientific disciplines involved in OHS.
Dissemination and openness to the research society and the social context in general (mostly involved stakeholders such as governments, social partners, NGO’s etc.) is another requirement, since in a policy-related social issue with different (even conflicting) interests and aspects as OHS is, involvement of the stakeholders is necessary. ROWER’s third Objective (O3) is to fulfil this requirement by providing openness of its activities to the relevant research community.
Speeding up ad facilitation of research activity in OHS Economics is another requirement. OHS Economics research needs to be promptly developed into a structured and independent research field, in order to catch up with rapid changes in work environment (new forms of employment, new technology, new risks, new demands), economy (globalisation, competition, weakening if trade unionism) and society in general (ageing, immigration, increasing interest in health, etc.) ROWER’s fourth Objective (O4) is to provide an “incubation cell” that will boost research development in this topic. This will be achieved by a 3-year continuous and circular process of producing and gathering research contributions, processing and embedding them into an on-line knowledge repository, which will assist researchers to find relevant scientific literature, facilitating their contributions.
Finally, continuation of research is another requirement. After providing an “incubation cell” ROWER’s fifth Objective (O5) is to attract new researchers to enter to this research topic. This entrance will be motivated and facilitated by the on line handbook (repository) and access to all relevant research provided by the repository, as well as by the potential for series of conferences and meetings on OHS Economics.
