Enhancing research collaborations: Three key management challenges

Abstract

This conceptual paper explores three areas of research collaboration: (a) effectively harnessing differences, (b) setting defensible boundaries and (c) gaining legitimate authorization. The focus is on their potential lessons for individuals leading and managing research collaborations, evaluation of research partnerships and areas for further investigation. Examples from three partnerships – building the atomic bomb, the Human Genome Project and the World Commission on Dams – are used to highlight key elements of the ideas presented. The paper provides a framework for systematically thinking about integration of different perspectives and other elements essential to any particular collaboration. It also sketches out ideas for (1) managing differences which may destroy partnerships, (2) deciding what the collaboration should encompass, (3) understanding and accommodating forces which may distort what the collaboration is able to achieve, and (4) enlisting necessary supporters while preserving research independence.

Introduction

For research to contribute to addressing major social, environmental and technical problems, collaborations across disciplines and between researchers and practitioners (including government policy makers, business leaders, and community advocates) are increasingly being seen as essential. Significant policy attention has been paid to funding such interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations. For example, the European Union aims to promote cross-national, cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations through its seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/pdf/fp7-inbrief_en.pdf). Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations are also fostered by funding arrangements such as the Australian Research Council Research Networks (www.arc.gov.au/ncgp/networks/networks_default.htm) which target national priorities and the US Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (www.tturcpartners.com), which focus on one specific area. There are also specific funding programs to enhance industry–science partnerships, such as Australian Cooperative Research Centres (https://www.crc.gov.au/Information/default.aspx) and the US National Science Foundation funded Engineering Research Centres (www.erc-assoc.org).

To complement these policy initiatives there is a growing body of research on collaborations. In this journal alone, papers have covered a range of areas, such as examinations of the increase in collaborations and team sizes (Adams et al., 2005), patterns of collaboration networks (Wagner and Leydesdorff, 2005), motives, choices and strategies for collaboration, (Bozeman and Corley, 2004, Katz and Martin, 1997, Landry and Amara, 1998, Lee, 1996, Melin, 2000), the measurement of collaboration (Katz and Martin, 1997), how collaborations are organized (Chompalov et al., 2002, Corley et al., 2006, Hackett et al., 2004) and collaboration success (Corley et al., 2006, Porac et al., 2004, Rigby and Edler, 2005).

Nevertheless there are some key practical issues about research collaborations which seem to have received little attention, so that investigators funded to lead partnerships are often left to learn by trial and error, making success a hit-or-miss affair. This paper starts by focusing on a primary challenge of research collaborations, namely effectively harnessing differences, and provides a framework for integrating the core elements relevant to the collaboration. It then sketches out a range of ideas flowing from that starting point. It first covers differences which may impede partnerships, and then branches out to two related areas—setting defensible boundaries and gaining legitimate authorization.

Although the primary target audience is individual researchers who are collaboration leaders and managers, the three strands of ideas covered in the main sections of the paper – harnessing differences, setting defensible boundaries and gaining legitimate authorization – are brought together in the fourth section to reflect on their implications for the evaluation of research collaborations, both in terms of the focus of evaluation and the processes for conducting it. The paper also sets out to stimulate research on these practical issues and concludes with some key areas for further investigation.

As outlined above, the starting point is effective harnessing of differences. Collaborations occur for a range of reasons. For example, Bozeman and Corley (2004) and Katz and Martin (1997) summarize substantial literature on this, citing reasons which include: access to expertise or particular skills, access to equipment or resources, cross-fertilization across disciplines, improved access to funding, learning tacit knowledge about a technique, obtaining prestige, visibility or recognition, and enhancing student education. I suggest that most of these reasons can be boiled down to one overarching consideration, namely that the point of working with someone else is that they have a perspective, skills, resources or some other attribute that contributes something relevant to addressing the research problem, either in improving understanding about it or in implementing that understanding in decisions and action. In other words, collaborations generally aim to draw together partners with diverse relevant attributes. If we look at collaborations through the lens of harnessing differences, it quickly becomes evident that the distinctions between research partners cannot be confined to those which progress understanding of or effective action on the problem. Variations in ideas, interests and personality will also provide potential sources of unproductive conflict. I propose that a critical element of collaboration is to recognise that differences between research partners fall into these two categories. One involves the differences that are key to and underpin the partnership, which must be effectively harnessed. The second is the differences that are incidental to the collaboration and that may undermine the achievement of its goals. These differences must be effectively managed. Understanding and dealing with these two types of differences is important when researchers want to work together, but even more so when collaboration is motivated by funding rather than the desire of the researchers. Such collaborations of convenience to meet the requirements of funders are now common. The first section of this paper presents a framework for integrating relevant differences and lays out ideas for how the differences that may be seen as incidental to the partnership can be managed.

The second section moves on to a related issue, namely which relevant differences to include in a research collaboration. The challenging problems that societies currently face involve a complex web of interconnections. For example, tackling an environmental issue like human-induced global climate change involves altering industrial, agricultural and personal practices, which are intertwined. Relevant considerations include economic growth and prosperity, employment, energy supplies, food security, transport, and population growth. It is impossible for any one research project or even program to consider everything that may possibly be relevant. Such a system-based view highlights the importance of boundary setting, in other words determining what will be included and excluded in any particular research collaboration. The second section of this paper covers ideas about how defensible boundaries can be set. This involves matching boundaries and the objectives of the research, while coping with inevitable restrictions in funding, personnel and other resources.

Consideration of research collaboration boundaries, in turn, may raise questions of legitimacy and authorization and these are tackled in the third section of the paper. First, the objectives and research design need support from funders, peer-reviewers and participating stakeholders. Second, research which addresses complex problems and which aims to involve researchers from many disciplines, as well as various stakeholders often requires a range of inter-institutional agreements about use of data, funding allocations, responsibility for outputs, publication rights and so on. Three key challenges here are to determine what sort of authorization is essential, to minimise transaction costs and to minimise the loss of research independence. This paper explores the first and last of these, namely ideas about gaining legitimate authorization, while minimising the loss of research independence.

As outlined earlier, these ideas are then used to reflect on the evaluation of research collaborations, both in terms of the focus of evaluation and the processes for conducting it. In addition, the ideas presented show there are many areas where the collation of evidence and new empirical studies are warranted and the conclusion focuses on a number of key research areas this paper aims to stimulate.

Three case studies are used as illustrations. They are: building the atomic bomb (1941–1945), the Human Genome Project (1986–2001) and the World Commission on Dams (1998–2000). They were selected as examples of very large-scale collaborations which illustrate three different types of partnerships: (1) involving only researchers, (2) involving researchers and powerful practitioners and (3) bringing researchers together with practitioners from opposite ends of the power spectrum. While these do not illustrate the full gamut of types of research collaborations that now exist, they do tease out one important dimension of research collaborations, namely whether they are largely based in the academy or if they also engage with stakeholders. The focus here is on engagement with politically and economically powerful stakeholders, and whether or not this is balanced by the inclusion of powerless stakeholders who are affected by, but generally have little ability to influence, the decisions made.¹

The Human Genome Project involved only researchers, although as the project progressed competition from, rather than partnership with, one company became important. The atomic bomb project involved researchers and powerful practitioners, particularly the military and private industry. Researchers at the World Commission on Dams worked with powerful business and funding interests, such as proponents of companies building dams and the World Bank, as well as representatives of those with little power, such as people displaced by dams. While individuals adversely affected by dams lack power on their own, they had become a force to be reckoned with through collective action.