Teamwork

Understanding diversity primer: 9. Team roles

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_9_team-roles

What is the range of roles that members of a team need to cover in order for the team to be effective? What strengths and weaknesses are associated with each role?

Teamwork is common in research on complex societal and environmental problems. The Belbin team roles identify nine clusters of skills that need to be included within a team for it to be most effective. An individual can bring more than one cluster of skills to the team, with most people having two or three Belbin team roles that they are comfortable with.

Read more

Clarifying incentives and expectations in research collaborations

By Alisa Zomer and Varja Lipovsek

authors_alisa-zomer_varja-lipovsek
1. Alisa Zomer (biography)
2. Varja Lipovsek (biography)

In which areas do research collaborations between academics and practitioners often run into trouble? What difficult questions can we ask ourselves and our partners at the outset of a research collaboration that can set us up for a successful partnership? How can we learn from past successful and failed aspects of research partnerships?

In our experience four areas where collaborations can have problems are:

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 8. Personality

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_8_personalityWhat is a useful way of understanding personality and why is it important? How could personality affect how problems are framed, understood and responded to? How does personality affect how well those contributing to the research work together?

Personality is one of the most evident ways in which people differ. A useful way of coming to terms with this aspect of diversity is to focus on traits that predict behaviour. The HEXACO model is considered to be valid across cultures and focuses on 6 traits:

Read more

Managing risk and equity in collaborative research

By Alisa Zomer and Selmah Goldberg

authors_alisa-zomer_selmah-goldberg
1. Alisa Zomer (biography)
2. Selmah Goldberg (biography)

How do the perceived costs, benefits and risks that researchers envision compare to reality when a project is implemented? How can we best support equitable exchange and decision-making for all actors involved in research study design and implementation?

We have developed a risk and equity matrix to stimulate systematic consideration of potential impacts for stakeholders, researchers and others involved in a research process, to ensure that risks and benefits of research collaborations are distributed in a more equitable manner.

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 7. Culture

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_7_culture

How can we begin to understand cultural diversity? How does culture affect how problems are framed, understood and responded to? How does culture affect how well those contributing to the research work together?

In this primer, the term ‘culture’ is used to describe the social behaviours and norms of groups in society. There is, therefore, overlap with values, but culture and values are not identical. Cultural differences are commonly thought of in relation to the inhabitants of different countries, but can also apply to occupations, religions, age-groups, members of different social classes and much more.

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 6. Interests

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_6_interests

What are interests and why are they important? How do they affect how problems are framed, understood and responded to? How do they affect how well those contributing to the research work together?

What are interests?

Interests will be familiar through attention paid to ‘conflicts of interest,’ ‘vested interests’ and ‘interest groups.’ Yet interests are challenging to pin down.

The common definition of interests as things that a person is curious about has some relevance for research. It needs to be rounded out by another aspect of interests, which is about having a stake in something and standing to gain or lose depending on what happens to that something.

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 5. Values

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_5

How can differences in values be understood? How do differences in values affect research on complex societal and environmental problems, especially how problems are framed, understood and responded to, as well as how well those contributing to the research work together?

Ten basic personal values

Shalom Schwartz’s theory of basic values (2012) identifies ten broad personal values, which are differentiated by their underlying goal or motivation, as described in the table below. These values seem to be culturally robust.

Overall, each value helps humans cope with one or more of three requirements of existence, namely the needs of:

Read more

Four typical behaviours in interdisciplinary knowledge integration

By Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

authors_annemarie-horn_eduardo-urias
1. Annemarie Horn (biography)
2. Eduardo Urias (biography)

Why do some collaborators in interdisciplinary teamwork clash? And why does collaboration between others seem smooth but not yield anything? What causes these differences in collaboration, and how can this inform interventions to support interdisciplinary collaboration and integration?

When we started teaching an interdisciplinary masters course, we expected it to become a battlefield, based on our reading of countless lists of the challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration. We thought that the students’ diverse study backgrounds – ranging from arts to medicine, and from social sciences to mathematics – would cause tensions; that they would disagree with each other about theories and methods that they were unfamiliar with and held opinions about.

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 4. Power

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_4

How can an understanding of diversity in power improve research on complex societal and environmental problems? What are the different ways in which diversity in power plays out?

Simply put, there are currently two common ways in which power is taken into account in research on complex societal and environmental problems:

  1. those working with marginalised stakeholders, or otherwise committed to giving everyone involved in the research an equal voice, often seek to eliminate differences in power
  2. those who seek to use their research to change policy or practice generally attempt to find ways to influence those with the power to make those changes.

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 3. Perceptions of good research

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_3

How do different perceptions arise of what makes for ‘good’ research? How can researchers come to understand such differences and their impacts on how problems are framed, understood and responded to, as well as how they affect the ability of those contributing to the research to work together?

Differences arise because training in a discipline involves inculcating a specific way of investigating the world, including which types of questions are worth addressing; legitimate ways of gathering, analysing and interpreting data; standards for validation; and the role of values in the research process. Educating someone in a discipline aims to make the discipline’s specific approach to research ingrained and tacit.

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 2. Mental models

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_2

What are mental models and why are they important? How do they affect how problems are framed, understood and responded to? How do they affect how well those contributing to the research work together?

Mental models are a person’s understanding of the world and how it works, and are unique to each person. They exist in a person’s mind as a set of small-scale simplified models about different aspects of reality that are functional but necessarily incomplete.

Mental models apply to all aspects of reality ranging from concrete objects such as a ‘chair;’ to abstract concepts such as ‘trust;’ to geographical locations such as ‘Sydney;’ to connections, interconnections and causal relationships; and to simple and complex situations.

Read more

Understanding diversity primer: 1. Why diversity?

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_1_updated_220412

Why do researchers who tackle complex societal and environmental problems need to understand diversity? What kinds of diversity are relevant? What are some good starting points?

Diversity is critical for:

  • developing a more comprehensive understanding of any complex problem, both what is known and what is not known
  • providing a greater range of ideas about addressing the problem, including what may and may not work
  • providing deeper and more effective insights into how the research can support policy and/or practice action to address the problem by government, business and civil society.

Read more