There is an emerging view that strategies and interventions aimed at promoting research use are most effective when underpinned by an appropriate theoretical framework. The previous chapter identified what some of these may be and summarised some of the evidence for their effects from research studies of research use. However, theorising in this area is not yet well developed. This chapter considers three additional bodies of theory and evidence that can inform the design of strategies to promote research use but which have not yet been widely applied in this area. These are learning, knowledge management and the diffusion of innovations.

Considering research use from a learning perspective encourages us to think carefully about processes of knowledge acquisition within individuals and across groups and organisations. Alternatively, if knowledge management is our perspective then attention is drawn to the ways in which knowledge is captured and shared within organisations. Finally, a diffusion of innovations perspective focuses attention on the spread and adoption of ideas across populations of individuals and organisations. Learning, knowledge management and the diffusion of innovations are then all concerned to a greater or lesser extent with understanding the acquisition, spread and enactment of ideas and knowledge, concerns that are central to understanding research use. Of course there are other bodies of theory and evidence with the potential to offer further insights into strategies for improving research use, such as the literature on marketing and communication, which could also be explored. However, we concentrate on learning, knowledge management and the diffusion of innovations because they seem particularly relevant to understanding the complex, dynamic and interactive nature of research use.

Our purpose is to broaden and deepen our understanding of research use by connecting it with a wider social science literature in each of the three areas. We examine the potential insights offered by this literature and highlight its implications for strategies to promote research use. Our overview is relatively brief and necessarily selective. Nevertheless, we draw on a diverse range of theoretical and empirical studies, which emanate from a number of disciplinary perspectives (for example, psychology, organisational sociology, information science and cultural anthropology).