Problems in cross-cultural collaborative research: A case study analysis

Abstract

There is little doubt that cross-disciplinary and cross-national collaborative research teams are important in an increasingly globalized world. With the breaking down of disciplinary silos currently being encouraged by Universities, such collaborative research groups are becoming more common in Universities anxious to increase their research outputs across the board. However, problems of reflexivity, divergences in consciousness and experience-based value interpretations, lead to differences in emphasis put in the analytical process of data interpretation in the context of cross-cultural communities-of- research-practice which can cause defensive (deflexive) reactions counterproductive to the collaborative research goal of global validation of specific theories and concepts. Along with these specific interpretive research specific problems that stem largely from how Popper's third world (the world of objective thought) is constituted in the analytical lenses and value systems of personnel in collaborative multinational research groups, there are management problems of co-ordination and administration of the research process itself. These spring from several sources including inequalities in power among researchers, different perceptions of reward, divergent conceptual and data interpretations, and the need to maintain momentum to achieve a given research goal within a specific time period. The rationale of the study is to investigate, using Popper's Three World heuristic, the epistemological and ontological (contextual) sources of practical problems of reflexivity in the management of collaborative research. To achieve this end, the paper presents a longitudinal descriptive case study of issues arising in the functioning of an on-going cross-cultural, multi-national, collaborative research group. Remedial steps for improving the functioning and output of global research initiatives that utilize a collaborative research process are outlined in the paper.