Managing Research Networks: A Study of Inter-Organisational Linkages

Higher the uncertainty in the environment for which technologies have to be developed, greater is the compulsion for inter-disciplinary research. Every discipline necessary for addressing the research problem may not exist in the same institute. Even if it does, the number of scientists may be so few that the peer group for critical scrutiny and growth of the discipline may become necessary also because the consumer of research may have a diversified resource use strategy. In rainfed, semi-arid and arid environments, most of the disadvantaged households have diversified portfolios. Technologies aimed at improving the performance of these portfolios will have to be evaluated on their effects on different sub-system of household portfolio. Such appraisal may not be feasible within one organization. Sustainability of technology may thus require three things, (a) client orientation, (b) location specificity, and (c) economic viability with attendant risk minimization together with minimum externalities. To achieve these outcomes, scientists may pool, exchange, segment or authorize use of resources, information, influence and opportunities. In the process, technologies requiring diverse skills, multiple scales of operation and complexity of tasks may be developed through inter-organizational networks. The skills, scale and complexity are independent in nature. Technologies requiring single skill may have to be developed for large scale and complex environments as well as resource management conditions. Similarly, technology at small scale such as micro watershed may require large number of skills and complex interactions. The implications of these interactions for inter-organizational networking remain to be identified. Many organizations have resources which may not be optimally used within the organization. Thus the redundancy of some resources and scarcity of others often generate the need for inter-organizational networks. At the same time distribution of power, authority and control over scarce resources and access to key decision makers may be such that some functional networks may not emerge while other dysfunctional networks may get established. Management of networks thus becomes a challenging proposition for the organizational leaders. In part one of the paper socio-ecological, institutional and public policy contexts of inter-organizational networking are introduced. Literature on evolution and functioning of networks in agricultural research is reviewed in part two. The findings from empirical research based on interviews with the scientists in ICAR and SAUs(State..) are presented in part three.