Impact of hierarchy on collaboration within a scientific project team
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Authors
Cline, Heather A.
Issue Date
2008
Type
Capstone
Language
en
Keywords
Psychology
Alternative Title
Abstract
This project will study the impact of hierarchy on collaboration within an ongoing Scientific project team. This includes the study and observation of this team with representatives from different departments within the organization. Some of these departments include: project management, research and development, clinical development, manufacturing support and various quality assurance depts. etc. The members from these departments also represent different levels within the organization and also differ according to their ability to make decisions and impact change depending upon their level. This membership can include managers, directors, scientists, specialists. In some cases other department representatives may join the team in the face of new challenges that can't be quickly solved by the current team reps. In addition to studying the impact of hierarchy on the collaborative ability of this team, the primary goal will be to look at is how the collaboration is effected positively or negatively. This will be more defined in the research methodology section.
The project's goal will be also be to better understand and recommend ways to enhance collaboration within a scientific team. Firstly, this project will involve the observation of one meeting with the cross-functional (cross-hierarchical) scientific team. The second type of observation will be through interviews of between four and six employees from the team; one or two high level leaders; one or two mid-level managers; and one or two mid-high level scientists and/or specialists. They will all be asked the same questions about their participation on the team and whether they view the team as collaborating based upon a given definition of collaboration with examples to back up their observations, and how they think the hierarchy present in the team affects the team's functioning. Through qualitative analysis, using a grounded theory approach, it will be possible to extract the primary themes and conclusions of these four to six interviews as to whether there was a positive or negative impact from the hierarchy upon the collaborative ability of the team.