How can the study of cognition – specifically integrative complexity – affect our understanding of effective interdepartmental collaboration?
When Individuals need to collaborate across departmental lines to achieve otherwise unattainable goals, the collaborators have the incentive to be receptive to the needs of all involved. That receptivity is higher in those who are integratively complex. Until recently, the literature generally agreed that a person’s ability to make informed decisions based on assimilating a broad range of (or complex) perspectives led to better outcomes than in situations relying on a narrow (or simple) perspective.
Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry (1993) delved into the dichotomous nature of integratively complex & simple dispositions that people have. They linked weaknesses underlying the positive attributes that being complex often conveys.
For example, integratively complex individuals tend to be excessively receptive to competing points of view which often leads to being unable to make decisions. The corollary is that these individuals exhibit disagreeableness. This singular fact has ramifications on the success of collaborations. Disagreeableness can undermine a collaboration’s success.
The question we would like to explore is whether the disagreeableness that lurks behind integratively complex dispositions impedes collaborations’ performance. With Weick’s advice in mind, academic research provides a microcosm to investigate the complexity and disagreeableness in a collaborative setting. The nature of academic research – particularly in social sciences – with its overarching complexity requires that researchers have the ability to assimilate, evaluate, and integrate broad views on many phenomena. Simultaneously, academics have a long history of collaborating when creating new knowledge, which is exemplified by researchers sharing authorship on published papers. Disagreeableness has the propensity to undermine collaboration and the combinatorial power of integratively complex approach to generating new knowledge.
Therefore we posit that:
H1 – Published social scientists demonstrate integratively complex cognitive abilities.
H2 – Social scientists whose disagreeableness overpowers the benefits of collaboration (i.e. authors papers alone) will publish papers cited less frequently than those who can collaborate across disciplinary boundaries.
Methods:
Mining Google scholar and EBSCOhost:
We would select a set of social science journals to form our core data set.
To address H1:
From that set we would look at the reference sections and gauge the level of interdisciplinary works drawn upon to establish the author(s) level of integrative complexity. We could build a index from the number of citations in the paper and their distance from the journal topic. That would establish whether researchers are complex or not.
To address H2:
We would collect the number of authors per paper and interdiscplinary range over a given period in a select set of social science journals. We would then compare the number of authors of each paper to the number of subsequent citations for each paper to gauge its comparative success.
Friday, October 16, 2009
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You've done a good job of laying out your ideas and grounding them in the article. I would differentiate though between the amount of collaboration and the quality of the collaboration. Disagreeableness might lead to less collaboration (or fewer people wanting to work with you), but what collaboration does happen in these situations might be better as both sides have forced the conversation to go further and deeper. Some of the readings we read early in the semester would support the idea that what you have described would be "compromise" and for us to really have "collaboration" we need some disagreement. So, I think you should be more explicit in your hypothesis that you are looking at the amount not the quality of the collaboration.
ReplyDeleteI think I understand your method.Your result will be a rank order of academic publishers based on number of authors and citations these papers have generated. The question is whether this method will answer the hypothesis you begin with. In your own words,
ReplyDelete"The question we would like to explore is whether the disagreeableness that lurks behind integratively complex dispositions impedes collaborations’ performance."
How will your method explore the relationship between author's performance in your scale to disagreeableness behind the IC desposition?
Interesting... I am unsure that I follow the logic that if you "author papers alone" that that is a sign of disagreeableness...could there be other reasons? Regarding your methods.. by looking for the number of citations, are you controlling for date? So for example, older aricles vs. new ones that have not had a chance to be cited? Are you controlling for literature review articles vs. others?
ReplyDeleteI think Kelly's comment is on the mark. It seems you will have to establish an additional claim--that sole authorship is frequently the result of disagreeableness--which could be problematic.
ReplyDeleteI would think some of the most brilliant and most cited social scientists would also be among most disagreeable. Their unwillingness to collaborate and "follow the herd" is what allows them to create seminal works that change paradigms and become highly cited. This would also be interesting to look at.
ReplyDeleteInteresting proposition and one with readily accessable data - great job. I think you should explore two aspects of your hypothesis more. One, it is not clear to me why integratively complex thinkers because they are disagreeable are not good collaboraters. I'm not saying that is untrue, just that you need to spell out your logic more. Two, I think you need to further elaborate on how you will identify thinking style from publications alone. Wouldn't an instrument be necessary to tease out this characteristic?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love the creative way in which you are trying to address your hypotheses with secondary data. If you can develop a skill for that, it can be an efficient and creative way to build a research program. Pfeffer, for example, is great at that. And there is a classic book from decades ago that is worth looking at--I think it is called "Unobtrusive measures" full of creative ideas like measuring the interest that certain topics have by examining how worn out the floor is in front of exhibits on those topics in museums. Fun stuff.
ReplyDeleteMy second comment is that your classmates raise some very important points in response to your proposal. I think each point of feedback they raise is worth considering.
Let me just add one point to their good points, and that is the importance of being very clear in your language choices. For example, you talk about integrating ideas collaboratively throughout your post, but it is not until the end of the second hypothesis that I realize that you are talking about inter-disciplinary research and using this as a proxy for thinking about inter-departmental collaboration. Writing with more precision will become increasingly important as you move forward.
Cool ideas, though! Keep playing with them. And also thrive on your colleagues' feedback.
Let me know if this helps everyone:
ReplyDeleteProposition A: Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry (1993) predicts that integratively complex people will tend to be be poor collaborators.
Proposition B: Highly published Management Scholars will tend to be integratively complex people. (A job which requires understanding and defending issues in as many ways as possible will favor integratively complex thinkers).
Therefore,if A and B are true than proposition C should also be true: In "A" management journals, there will be more highly sited (above an appropriate baseline number) articles that are solely authored than jointly authored.
(Another way to test this proposition is: Solely authored articles in "A" management journals will tend to be more highly sited than those that are coauthored.)
Both proposition B and C are testable propositions.
(Although B may not really need to be tested, some could argue that management scholars are not necessarily integratively complex. The logic being that the peer review process forces one to be an integratively complex writer, even if a scholar is not naturally integratively complex. Ryan postulated that one can be both simple and integratively complex at the same time, and this may be one of those situations.)
Thanks for the comments
ReplyDeleteAdrian,
ReplyDeleteYes, this does help and makes this much more clear.. but how would you propose to control for other variables besides "disagreeableness" that might be a reason that scholars write alone... for example, in some disciplines, you are measured by writing articles alone...
um... that's cited with a "c" not an "s". I was distracted and thinking about websites and google scholar...(reference to my comment writeup).
ReplyDeleteThanks a ton for the comment, Kelly. You are totally correct.
ReplyDelete