Antecedents of co‐ordination in academic international project research

Abstract

Suggests that the intellectual distance among scholars is a cause of difficult co‐ordination during the project. The intellectual distance among scholars is the distance among their cognitive systems, a wide concept including a multi‐level belonging: institutional, disciplinary, paradigmatic, and cultural belonging, as well as social networking, etc. The higher the cumulative intellectual distance within the academic international research projects (AIRP), the higher the co‐ordination needs during the process. Nevertheless, this paper suggests a better acknowledgement of intellectual distance might foster AIRP effectiveness. Assumes that cognitive systems are assessable only indirectly through scholars’ intellectual artefacts, thus introducing a methodology in order to study them. Adopts scholars’ citations as a proxy of their cognitive system, thus testing methodology on two major management journals. Suggests a few actions project champions may adopt in order to abridge intellectual distance within AIRP.

Citation

Turati, C., Usai, A. and Ravagnani, R. (1998), "Antecedents of co‐ordination in academic international project research", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 13 No. 3/4, pp. 188-198. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683949810214995