Massey Documents by Type

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/294

Browse

Filters

1980 - 198912010 - 20131

Settings

Subject: search.filters.subject.Scientific research

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Collaboration in scientific research : the views and practices of researchers in the College of Sciences, Massey University, Turitea campus : a case study : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2013) Emerre, Margaret
    Collaboration in scientific research has been increasing steadily for the last thirty years and it now characterises scientific research world-wide. New Zealand is part of this trend and this study looks at the collaboration in scientific research in one tertiary institution in New Zealand. As a mixed methods study it incorporates a survey of researchers and a number of semi-structured interviews. The researchers who participated in the study cover the full array of science disciplines and range in experience from early to late career researchers. Information on the institutional context has been gathered from the university’s key strategic plan, The Road to 2020, and from an interview with the Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Research & Enterprise, and the perspective of the funding agencies comes from interviews with senior officers of the four main research funding agencies. The findings suggest that researchers collaborate for a variety of reasons: for personal reasons because they enjoy working with others; for tactical reasons to increase the probability of getting funding; but overall they collaborate to get better outcomes. The funding agencies promote collaboration for quite different reasons. For them it is a mechanism to promote quality, to augment the science sector, and to ensure that New Zealand researchers can work with the best that the world has to offer. New Zealand researchers are members of an international community of scientific researchers and are active participants in what Martin Lord Rees calls the “unending quest of science; as its frontiers advance, new mysteries come into focus just beyond those frontiers” (p. 469, 2010). Just as the quest of science continues, the quest for understanding how “science is done” and finding new ways of “doing science” continues. Collaborating in research is one of those ‘new ways’ and whilst collaboration is now ubiquitous, the process of collaboration has not received a great deal of attention in the literature. As resources become leaner and demands for accountability stronger, there is a renewed interest in areas such as research competencies, the initial training of researchers and subsequent professional development, the composition of a research team, leadership of research teams, and management of research projects. This thesis concludes with a set of recommendations for researchers.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Work patterns in research organisations : a case study of some social aspects of scientific knowledge development : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1980) Hes, Richard Lubomir
    This thesis involved an investigation of some social aspects of scientific knowledge development. In particular, it focused on the "work patterns" of problem solvers and the "effects" research organisations have on them. The proposed theories were tested in one government research organisation. The "work patterns" of problem solvers were defined in terms of three stages of work (the Work Programme Development, the Idea Generation of specific projects, and the Problem Solving of these specific projects). It was hypothesised and substantiated, using the log-linear modelling technique, that each stage of work is associated with a distinctive pattern of communication, conceptualised in terms of six dimensions (sources of information, types of information, circumstances and modes of information transfer, and the effects of the information). It was shown that the Work Programme Development occurs in response to information, passively received, from external sources during formal circumstances. Ideas for specific projects are generated on the basis of scientific information acquired from journals. In solving specific projects, problem solvers actively consult internal sources, in informal circumstances. The "effects" of organisations on the work patterns of problem solvers were considered by investigating the effects of (a) three organisational properties (analytic, structural, and global) on internal flows of communication, and (b) those environmental properties on external patterns of communication which could have been investigated in a case study situation. Hypotheses were derived from the resource dependence theory of organisations which was proposed by Pfeffer and Salancik (1978). The investigation of the effects of the research organisation on the internal flows of communication used locally optimal tests and showed that all three properties of organisations influence the formation of these communications. Internal communications occurred mainly within structural and global constraints, and among people who had similar attributes (analytic properties). Some evidence was found that close physical proximity, which had a strong influence on internal communication, could be overcome by colleague networks, which formed among people with similar analytic properties (autonomy, work related orientations and socially recognised work competence). Informal networks also played an important role in the formation of colleague networks. The investigations of the effects of the research organisation on the patterns of external communication indicated that the vast majority of information which was received from external sources came from other research organisations, and the amount declined with increasing distance from the focal organisation. The very limited communication with the client communities was not geographically constrained. Implications for research administrators were discussed. Consistent with attitudes of the respondents toward the roles of research administrators, the findings of this study suggest that the most important role of research administrators should be in facilitating communication, contacts, and the provision of resources.