Collaborating and learning in strategic international university partnerships at the research faculty and administrator levels between the US and Europe

Pokimica, Jelena

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/114820 Copy

Description

Title

Collaborating and learning in strategic international university partnerships at the research faculty and administrator levels between the US and Europe

Author(s)

Pokimica, Jelena

Issue Date

2022-04-05

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Kuchinke, K. Peter

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Kuchinke, K. Peter

Committee Member(s)

• Huang, Wen-Hao David
• Witt, Mary Allison
• Gallaher, James W., Jr.

Department of Study

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Discipline

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D. (doctoral)

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Strategic university partnerships
• International research collaboration
• Administrative collaboration
• Europe
• United States
• Seed grants
• Learning patterns
• Organizational and alliance learning

Language

eng

Abstract

This is one of the first major empirical studies on research faculty and administrative collaborations in the context of seed grant-based strategic international university partnerships (IUPs), designed as a multiple case study. The partnership at focus is between two large, comprehensive, public research universities in the US and the UK. This ambitious multi-level study was based on a series of analyses of collaboration among collaborative pairs at the research faculty and administrator levels, which contributed to its robustness. I recruited and interviewed 24 participants from all available partnership cycles, totaling five, from 2014 to 2019. Eight research questions guided the study - four at each level. I sought to understand and explain faculty/administrator experiences and perceptions of various institutional and organization culture factors and symmetries and asymmetries in learning patterns that facilitated or hindered research/administrative collaboration, as well as the kinds of recommendations and visions of sustainability that the faculty/administrators had for the partnership. At the faculty level, I focused on matched faculty pairs, that is, co-Principal Investigators (co-PIs), one from each side of the partnership, from diverse disciplines, namely, genomics, psychology, and linguistics. In cases where I was able to recruit just one faculty from either side in other disciplines (in relation to whomever they were working with), their data were used for substantiating or diversifying the matched faculty findings. At the administrator level, I focused on the matched Partnership Director pair and the Vice-Provost/Pro-Vice Chancellor pair (i.e., the Executive pair). Findings were organized into themes. Four institutional factors impacted faculty collaboration in the following ways: compensating for the skills that one partner did not have but the other did facilitated faculty collaboration; difficulties in connecting to potential collaborators if a faculty did not know many colleagues overseas and lack of wider campus awareness about the partnership hindered collaboration; complexities in international grant mechanisms beyond the seed-grant slowed down faculty collaboration continuation prospects; and differences in partnership governance models influenced project goal re-setting, variations in faculty autonomy, and a more explicit promotion of regional economic development on the UK side. Regarding the institutional factors that impacted administrative collaboration, findings were organized into four themes: making connections between the partnership and global engagement strategy/strategic plan facilitated administrative collaboration; streamlining solutions helped overcome structural discrepancies in the seed-grant application submission process, proposal ranking criteria, and faculty report template; governing and making decisions from the middle or top level required administrative adjustments; and how well knowledge management and institutionalization infrastructures were developed or how much they lacked on a given campus played into administrative knowledge management effectiveness. As for the organizational culture factors, the following three impacted faculty collaboration: disciplinary and research culture differences, variations in initiative-taking, and risk aversion hindered goal setting at times; the university’s encouraging faculty to engage in collaborations and expectations of early-career faculty played into the extent of more vigorous pursuits of collaborations from the UK side and making impacts at the faculty level, while the senior faculty in the US were more oriented toward supporting their younger colleagues in manuscript writing and lead-authorship; finally, including PhD and post-doctoral associates on joint projects facilitated collaborative knowledge exchange and transfer, building lab capacities, and opportunities for completing thesis research based on the very projects. The findings at the administrative level clustered around four themes with the following effects: variations in devolved and centralized decision-making instigated administrative navigating of the decision channel, including up to the level of the state in the US; the culture of collaboration and professional development was more elaborate in the UK, including the history of collaboration within the European Union; and the meaning of time in the context of work-schedule in each country was particularly important for synchronizing administrative calendars and knowing when answers to any inquiries from either side could be expected. As concerns the learning patterns, findings were compiled around three themes at the faculty level: multiple symmetrical patterns were found with unique pattern characteristics, such as pattern amplification, interruption, and splintering – the first of their kind in a study on IUPs; a combination of competitive and non-competitive aspects in a symmetric pattern, with pattern reversal from competitive to non-competitive via expert intervention; and asymmetrical trainer-trainee-like pattern – another interesting one in this dissertation. Findings were compiled around two themes at the administrator level: multiple symmetrical mutual non-competitive patterns were found, not only with the same objects of learning, but also different ones; and an asymmetrical trainer-trainee pattern was found, extending the trainer reach well beyond the matched administrator pair (this finding was similar at the faculty level). In other words, asymmetrical patterns had a unique inclusion of staff in trainer roles beyond immediate co-PIs (or other more direct team members) on the seed-grant, which would open an appealing venue for further research in this area. Finally, both the faculty and the administrators offered recommendations for the partnership and shared ideas on its sustainability. At the faculty level, the following five themes were brought to light: more PR on the partnership and faculty network-building opportunities were recommended; in-person visits for collaboration planning and more incentives for beyond the core-group of faculty were recommended; empowering an advisory committee in the middle to advise on sustainability was imperative; more administrative support for larger international grants was seen as essential; and including graduate students on grants would hold a huge potential for knowledge sharing and transfer across countries and the building of lab capacities through these students’ international travel to and from labs. The findings clustered around three themes at the administrator level: having partnership evaluation and legal infrastructures and focusing on academic groups who were serious about collaboration were strongly recommended; investing in deep, longstanding partnerships and relations rather than “stretching too thinly” mattered; and identifying effective existing collaborations, with the greatest critical research mass and (re)investing in them was crucial for sustainability. Theoretical framework contributions specific to learning patterns have been made via framework refinements and extensions; further questions of importance for future research have been suggested and implications for practice have been drawn. Ideas for expanding the International Human Resource Development (IHRD) arm of HRD have also been suggested through growing research on international research collaborations, researcher mobility, and organizational/alliance learning, at the intersection of IHRD/OD and global higher education.

Graduation Semester

• 2022-10-11T19:20:34-05:00
• 2022-05

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Jelena Pokimica

Owning Collections