Abstract
Increasingly, principal investigators are tasked by funding agencies not only to expand knowledge in a particular field of inquiry, but also to manage and coordinate sets of diverse actors, including researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds and with different institutional affiliations. This paper addresses how principal investigators organize and manage sets of diverse researchers in university research centers. The premise of the paper is that centers possessing “management knowledge”—as embodied in principal investigators themselves and in colleagues and subordinates (e.g. past experiences in centers, industry, formal management training and professional experience)—will demonstrate different structural and managerial characteristics when compared to centers without management knowledge. Based on interviews and documents for a purposive sample of centers established by the US National Science Foundation, the study investigates the organization and management of centers as a function of the presence and type of management knowledge of the center directors across multiple cases. Implications for addressing common challenges to team science in university research centers and comparable arrangements are discussed.
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Notes
This lack of guidance in our view is appropriate, however, insofar that there is so much variation across university research centers’ missions and goals—and oftentimes little to no precedent for organizing research collaborations towards these missions and goals (otherwise in theory the centers would not be established)—to render “best practices” from prior and/or extant university research centers potentially (but not necessarily) inappropriate. For further discussion of best practices and the organization and management of science see the 2012 Science of Team Science Conference (Chicago, IL) presentation by Craig Boardman: http://www.scienceofteamscience.org/scits-conference-2012.
To cite the classic example, though universities typically value “open” science and the publication of results in peer-reviewed journals, industry and sometimes government value more proprietary or restricted modes of dissemination (Merton 1957).
There have, however, been singular case studies of individual centers, e.g. Youtie et al. (2006).
Faculty participants who are affiliated with a center but who do not play an investigatory role are not counted. During the interviews center leaders were asked to identify faculty who were actively engaged in at least one center project as a researcher or principal investigator during the 12 months preceding the interview.
The NSF discipline classification scheme was used to categorize the academic departments.
The ERCs that did not agree to participate do not differ greatly across the case selection criteria from those that did choose to participate.
Attempts at internal formalization by principal investigators predominantly entailed prospective documentation of the contributions expected of faculty by the principal investigator for specific projects, though this documentation was limited to the articulation of “role structures” (Rethemeyer and Hatmaker 2008) that assigned tasks to researchers for particular center projects; none of such documentation was enforceable. Attempts at internal complexity by principal investigators also entailed vertical differentiation, albeit minimally given the non-routine nature of research, by establishing faculty advisory boards overseeing center project selection and portfolio planning, sometimes using techniques such as matrix management.
Attempts to access external structures and authorities entailed making ties to the university departments in which center faculty have full-time appointments. These principal investigators typically explained the decision to make ties to university departments in one of two ways. Some reported “passive” and “informal” ties to departments by communicating the accomplishments of academic faculty on behalf of the center to department chairs, sometimes with a formal letter but more typically less formally, for instance via email. Other principal investigators reported relatively “interactive” and “formal” ties to the departments from which they draw faculty, including input into decisions regarding the careers of academic faculty participating in the center, e.g., related to teaching loads, course buy-outs, as well as “appropriate” and “relevant” outlets for publishing center-related research. In some cases, these center leaders had input into tenure and promotion decisions, though not formal participation on such committees for center faculty.
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Boardman, C., Ponomariov, B. Management knowledge and the organization of team science in university research centers. J Technol Transf 39, 75–92 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-012-9271-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-012-9271-x
Keywords
- University research center cooperative research center
- University-industry interaction
- Technology transfer
- Research collaboration
- Team science
- Organized research unit
- R&D management