Researcher-practitioner relationships in consortia: the Cancer Information Services Research Consortium.

• Author: Johnson, J. David

Abstract

Consortia are becoming increasingly prevalent as organizations are faced with a number of pressing environmental demands, relating particularly to the growth of information technologies and associated economic pressures. This essay focuses on the factors that lead to the successful management of researcher-practitioner relationships in consortia from a symbolic interactionist perspective. We focus on the Cancer Information Services Research Consortium (CISRC), an interesting consortium of cancer control researchers and practitioners who formed a coalition to implement trials related to three major cancer control projects, to illustrate our major substantive points. The implications section discusses the relationship between symbolic interactionist approaches and postmodern dialogic approaches to organizations, as well as focusing on the pragmatic implications of this analysis for the rapidly evolving role of consortial relationships in today's organizations.

Introduction

This essay focuses on the factors that lead to successful research-practitioner relationships. These relationships are increasingly important because, one, they can lead to the development, implementation, and evaluation of useful new ideas; two, they can enhance the policy relevance of ideas that are tested; and, three, there is a greater likelihood of successful implementation if practitioners have input early in the development of pilot research projects. The question of what promotes cooperative relationships in social systems has been one of the central issues for social scientists in this century. Symbolic interactionists (Head, 1934; Fine, 1993), sociologists (Parsons, 1960), dramatists (Littiejohn, 1992), economists (Coase, 1937; Hollander, 1990), management scholars (Smith, Caroll, & Ashford, 1995), organizational communication researchers (Harter & Krone, 2001), and others have all grappled with this problem. Here we will use the Cancer Information Services Research Consortium (CISRC), an interesting consortium of cancer control researchers and practitioners who formed a coalition to implement trials related to three major cancer control projects, to illustrate our major substantive points.

A consortium can be defined simply as a collection of entities (e.g., companies, public sector organizations) brought together by their interest in working collaboratively to accomplish something of mutual value which is beyond the resources of any one member (Cullen et al., 1999; Fleisher et al., 1998; Webster, 1995). Given the interest in new organizational forms, heightened competition, and declining resources available to any one organization, this topic has captured the attention of researchers in a wide range of disciplines (Bouman, 2002; Cullen et al., 1999; Hakansson & Sharma, 1996; Medved et al., 2001; Osborn & Hagedoorn, 1997).

Researcher-Practitioner Relationships

We seem to be constantly trailing after practitioners to determine why and how something they are innovating is or is not working, rather than leading practitioners to implement innovations that flow from the findings that we have uncovered in the course of our (we hope) rigorous investigations. (Porter, 1996, pp. 265-266) Both parties have substantial potential common benefits from a successful researcher-practitioner relationship including securing both physical and material resources and intellectual stimulation (Cullen et al., 1999; March, 2000). It is also obvious that policy makers see substantial benefits to be had from interactions between the various parties in the research enterprise, with increasing calls from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, among others, for holistic examinations of research problems through the development of synthetic relationships among often fractured disciplines. Indeed, participation of practitioners early on is positively related to utilization and favorable attitudes towards the results (Beyer & Trice, 1994). However, in spite of the these forces, the two parties seldom turn to each other (Amabile et al., 2001), in part because there are also substantial differences in the motives and perceptual frameworks of the parties stemming from the different cultures in which they are embedded (Rynes et al., 2001).

For researchers there are considerable benefits that can ensue from interacting with practitioners; in fact they may have more to immediately gain from these relationships than do practitioners. First, they gain access to research sites that are the sine qua non for conducting research (Walton, 1985; Amabile et al., 2001), that also can serve as training sites for students, and this access may be contingent on producing 'useful' results (Mohrman result from researcher-practitioner relationships and the solutions of practical problems (Keen & Stocklmayer, 1999). Fourth, researchers can be provided an opportunity for intrinsic satisfaction from seeing their ideas working in practice. Fifth, exposure to real world problems and preliminary thinking as to their solutions can potentially stimulate important new scientific discoveries (Rynes et al., 2001). Finally, 'real world' sites also offer the possibilities of income supplements and other resources (Walton, 1985). et al., 2001). Second, this access can result in 'new' knowledge from confirming, testing old knowledge or learning local knowledge that may lead to new fundamental knowledge (Cullen et al., 1999). Third, researchers can burnish their public relations image by demonstrating their 'engagement' in community problems that will enhance their relevance to policy makers on whom they depend for funding. Science in general has had a diminished role in various policy debates, especially with the rise of various advocacy groups over the last couple of decades; they need to be more sensitive to the public relations image functions that can

Practitioners also have much to gain, but often not as much as researchers, from practitioner-researcher relationships. First, ultimately their primary goal is the improved practice that can ultimately be gained by accessing intellectual resources to solve a problem (Cullen et al., 1999) and the insight of an outsider into its nature. Second, they can also gain a buffer to ultimate accountability by using researchers as stalking horses who float trial balloons for problem solutions that they might not want to be initial, sole source of. Thus, practitioners gain the considerable benefit of having someone else to blame for changes/failures thus spreading their risks (Cullen et al.,). Third, practitioners can enhance their professional status by appealing to professional standards (Cullen et al.,), especially in university and medical settings where degrees carry much weight in the status game. Fourth, especially when students or more junior faculty members are involved, practitioners can feel good about making a prosocial contribution to someone's education or career development. Fifth, in the knowledge economy where recruiting a highly skilled workforce is paramount a research relationship maybe the first step in a recruiting process for both students and researchers.

As we have seen both parties have things to gain from the researcher-practitioner relationship, but they often have even more to lose, and this is seldom explicitly mentioned. One of the paramount values of any science is the objectivity of the researchers and the preservation of their ability to maintain their independence and integrity. Often practitioners, by questioning some taken for granted assumptions threaten the researchers autonomy in ways that call into question these fundamental principals. Practitioners seldom have any great concern for the integrity of the research process, especially relating to traditional scientific verities associated with rigorous research and internal validity (Killman et al., 1994). They will change interventions if they sense they are not working to the benefit of their project, since this is after all what they do daily in their operations. "Because sponsors' needs come first, program improvement second, and evaluator's needs are only a third priority, in many evaluation studies you'll have little control over the evaluation itself and none, typically, over the object of evaluation" (Dearing, 2000, pp. 8). Practitioners also may not respect researcher's needs for confidentiality of privileged scientific information thus interfering with patent, publication, and other intellectual property rights (Keen & Stocklmayer, 1999). Unfortunately, citation analyses indicate that relationships in which researchers define the problems and pursue their own questions are most likely to be successful in academic terms (Rynes et al., 2001). Practitioners also have a different time focus with a concern for immediate application to practical problems (Killman et al.,).

Many researchers lack the skills (e.g., a sense of pragmatism) to work with practitioners and their professional education typically does not improve on this situation (Keen & Stocklmayer, 1999), since even the most trivial change in the research process may be viewed as threatening their scientific independence.

Relationships with practitioners can also be very threatening to researchers' self-concepts. First, as Goodall (1989) has articulated, researchers are often manipulated by skilled practitioners so that these practitioners can achieve their own ends. Second, critique from practitioners often centers around two opposing themes of common sense or naivete, respectively; either "you're not telling us anything we do not already know" or your ideas are so "pie in the sky," or abstract, that they could never work. Since these judgments are often based on professional experience and anecdote, they are not easily refutable. They also may be quite telling, since we seek to often describe the world as it is, we lag behind real world events and...