Setting up your team for knowledge integration

By Shalini Misra, Megan A. Rippy and Stanley B. Grant.

What kinds of collaborative arrangements best foster knowledge integration? Should you keep your team together by forming one big group to work toward your shared goals? Or should you differentiate tasks by breaking work into smaller components and assign the pieces to sub-groups? How large should sub-groups be and how should they be composed? What types of engagement processes lead to successful knowledge integration?

If you have led a large cross-disciplinary research effort, you have grappled with these questions.

We addressed these questions by assessing the linkages between integration processes and research products in a self-evaluation of the first two years of our National Science Foundation Growing Convergence Research project on inland freshwater salinization (Misra, Rippy and Grant, 2024). Along with nine disciplines, our project included a stakeholder team consisting of 42 local experts. We distill what we learned into the following recommendations to inform design and implementation of inter- and transdisciplinary research initiatives.

1. Integrative insights emerge through intensive dialogue within small groups or reflection by a single member, rather than team-wide deliberations. Large initiatives should consider creating differentiated sub-groups.
2. Team composition matters when creating sub-groups. The breadth of disciplines and stakeholder expertise represented and the integrative capacity and orientation of the leaders and members in the sub-groups are critical factors for successful knowledge exchange and integration.
3. Sub-groups that are heterogenous (include a wide variety and breadth of disciplines and expertise) are likely to frame problems or questions inclusively at the outset. Conceptualizing problems and questions too narrowly at the outset can hinder cross-disciplinary integration.
4. The integrative capacity of the leaders, and the collaborative mechanisms used to facilitate research, moderate the relationship between team size and composition and the integrative quality of products.
5. Skilled integration by one leader or a small group of members can result in highly integrative research products, but only when problems are framed broadly and more collaborative engagement processes are used.
6. Skilled integrative leadership and capacity is critical for creating collaboration opportunities, easing power imbalances between academics and practitioners, and facilitating mutual learning and community building.
7. While consultation, coordination, or cooperation may be appropriate or even necessary modes of engagement in inter- and transdisciplinary research, they may not result in highly integrative and transformative research products.
8. Teams should build in time for small group reflective activities focused on generating integrative insights since they are likely to be particularly beneficial in the early stages of convergence projects and result in higher levels of cross-disciplinary integration.

Do these findings align with your experiences in leading or participating in large cross-disciplinary collaborations? What are some of your recommendations for setting up teams for effective knowledge integration?

To find out more:

Misra, S., Rippy, M. A. and Grant, S. B. (2024). Analyzing Knowledge Integration in Convergence Research. Environmental Science and Policy, 162: 103902. (Online) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103902

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)

Biography: Shalini Misra PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech, Arlington, USA. Her research focuses on the study of the processes and outcomes of transdisciplinary collaborative scientific, training, and action research initiatives; and the social, psychological, and cultural implications of the Internet and mobile communication technologies.

Biography: Megan A Rippy PhD is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, stationed at the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Lab in northern Virginia, USA. Her research interests include urban water quality and public/ecosystem health, green stormwater infrastructure, and ecosystem services and public perception of urban greenspace.

Biography: Stanley B. Grant PhD is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, and Director of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Lab in Northern Virginia, USA. He studies pollutant fate and transport through aquatic systems.