Research Methodology

This chapter emerged from an in-depth, two-year case study of an R&D Center. The primary purpose of the case study was to investigate how social processes and information and communications technology (ICT) may facilitate and/or impede collaboration in research and development.

Research Setting

The case study took place at an R&D Center in the USA. The R&D Center was first funded in late 1999, with a five-year, $15 million commitment from a national funding agency with matching support from several participating universities, corporations and a non-profit foundation. Initially, the Center had approximately 30 faculty scientists and 82 students and post-doctoral fellows, and three full-time staff members. The faculty and students were located at four universities in the U.S. Membership has changed over the years, and at the time this chapter was written there were approximately 45 faculty scientists, 70 students and post-doctoral fellows and three full-time staff members physically located at five U.S. universities.

Data Collection and Analysis

This case study began during the beginning stages of the Center and continued for two years. During the proposal stage, initial plans for the Center were developed and submitted to a national funding agency for review. Next, the funding agency organized an on-site review at which the proposed Center management team, invited university administrators, and corporate and private sponsors presented more detailed plans and motivation for the Center. Approximately six months later, the Center was approved and it officially began operating two months later. It had been in operation for two years at the time this chapter was written.

While conducting the case study, the author was a participant observer. As noted by Adler and Adler (1987), three levels of participant observation are possible: complete, active and peripheral. The author primarily assumed a complete membership role, switching to a peripheral membership role when activities focused on research outside her area of expertise. As a complete member, the author had functional, in addition to research, roles in the research setting. For example, the author served as the Center Coordinator of Social Science Research Efforts and a member of the Center management team. She actively participated in the management meetings, contributing to discussions and participating in decision-making. However, when the meetings and decision-making focused on research in natural science and engineering topics, topics not in the author's areas of expertise, she assumed the role of a peripheral participant observer. She observed the activity, taking notes and audio-recordings, and occasionally discussed events and outcomes with meeting participants, but she did not actively participate in the discussions and decision-making. Seventy-three management team meetings were held during the two-year study, and the author observed and participated in these meetings. The author periodically was a peripheral member participant in center-wide weekly research meetings, generally observing discussions and only completely participating when discussions regarding collaboration and collaboration technology took place. Center members were made aware of the author's roles.

Observation data included transcribed audio-recordings of meetings, video-recordings of videoconferences, meeting and Center documentation and researcher notes. These data were analyzed using semantic content analysis (Robson, 2002), i.e., themes and meanings behind the observations and meeting transcripts were sought. General themes investigated included organizational structure and management practices and their impact (both positive and negative) on trust, the use of information and communications technology and its impact on trust, and breakdowns of trust. These themes were selected based on previous research that discusses the impact of management and technology on trust (e.g., Whitener et al., 1998; Rocco et al., 2001). Examples of these themes were identified and synthesized in topic memos. This was an iterative process, with all data analyzed multiple times, searching for additional data regarding these themes, synthesizing the data, and interpreting the meaning behind the data. The results are presented in the following sections.

Two sociometric surveys were also conducted to provide quantitative data regarding collaboration within the Center. The survey instruments listed each Center member and their university affiliation. Respondents were asked to specify who they currently worked or interacted with, and to briefly describe the focus of that work. Examples of foci listed are: "cleaning and mass transfer study," "exchange ideas and collaborate on cleaning mechanisms," and "design of apparatus." The surveys were sent to all Center members approximately 12 and 24 months after the Center was established. Response rates for the two surveys were 68% and 73%, respectively. The data were analyzed using sociometric techniques (Wasserman & Faust, 1994) to investigate the number of collaborations among scientists and students, collaborations across universities and changes in collaborations over time.