| Research Article Review | Proactive encouragement of interdisciplinary research teams in a business school environment: strategy and results | |

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Research Article Review
Proactive encouragement of interdisciplinary research teams in a business school environment: strategy and results
Author: Susan M. Adams, Nathan C. Carter, Charles R. Hadlock, Dominique M. Haughton and George Sirbu
Introduction: This article describes the importance of interdisciplinary research and teaching that has become a common theme in assessing the state of modern university. The US National Academies have issued a self described ‘call to action’ to universities to upgrade their attention to this issue and the retiring president of the International Economics Association has argued strongly for more to be done to connect the disciplines. Many academic work of business school faculty still tends to focus on the interests of disciplinary academic journals. The pressures for a disciplinary focus encourage individual investigators to pursue common phenomena.

It is convenient to view cross-disciplinary collaboration using a social network Paradigm. Research findings indicate that, in general, diverse teams promote more innovative solutions provided they can work well together. Individuals working on teams are bridge to external resources from their own social networks. In this way a team benefits from members that have connections to outside networks that can provide access to additional views, expertise, and information that an individual, or a more homogeneous team, may not possess.

This research article explains that the use of an interdisciplinary team rather than a team from a single discipline provides access to multiple avenues of research from which to draw new perspectives.
For transforming the institution into a business university the following guidelines were adopted as the basis for the initiative: 1. faculty could reach a new level of reputation and contribution only by focusing on major current issues facing the business world, rather than spending much of their time in isolated academic niches that might have much less impact on the practice of business; 2. such major current issues are almost invariably interdisciplinary in nature 3. interdisciplinary faculty teams usually possess an experience base and multidimensional that exceed the capabilities and background of single researchers; and

This study explains that to promote interdisciplinary research teams there is a strategy that the administration first issued a request for proposals (RFP) to the faculty Characteristics of eligible projects under request for proposals initiatives are 1. Required Participation of faculty from more than one academic department 2. An important and reasonably well-defined research agenda that is set in the context of current knowledge 3. Well-defined leadership of the venture, including a single, overall project leader 4. Regular reporting plans to the faculty as a whole
Desirable, to the extent practicable 1. An inside/outside review committee with a clear role, ensuring regular 2. involvement in the process of evaluating progress and direction 3. Plans to generate additional or follow-on external support and evidence that this is realistic 4. Hosting of a research meeting or workshop that would include outside experts and/or business leaders 5. Hosting of visiting scholars in the research area 6. Involvement of students in the research program 7. A mix of more senior and more junior faculty members and, possibly, the inclusion of senior faculty members who had not recently been involved in serious research

Objective: to promote collaborative research across traditional boundaries in a business-oriented university as part of an institutional transformation.

Research Methodology: 1. This Study is Quantitative type of Research. 2. Out of the Quantitative Research Designs, this study follows a Descriptive research. 3. Data about collaborative research teams is collected by using secondary method. Data is obtained from faculty research database as of the end of 2004. With the implementation of strategy researcher Compare the data with the previous period. 4. Researcher examine the co publication networks for two distinct period 2000-01 and 2003-4 5. Network visualization software Pajek is used to represent the networks in details. 6. Figure 1 and 2 depict the two networks graphically 7. Two groups are evolve in collaboration art and science departments and business departments

Figure 1. Co-publication network in 2000–01.

Figure 2. Co-publication network in 2003–04.
Findings:
When we examined the publication networks for two distinct periods the following findings were obtained from the analysis: 1. Number of collaborative research teams before and after strategic initiative in 2000–01 there were only four connections between departments, whereas in 2003–04 there were 16. 2. The number of interdisciplinary publications within the university, that is, journal articles with at least two authors from different departments, is seven compared to 36. (3.61% vs 13.79%), whereby the ratio is reported to the total number of journal article publications. 3. The Fisher exact test shows a p value less than 0.0001 leading to the conclusion that the threefold increase is significant. 4. 33 joint publications between the two divisions in the latter time period compared with only one in the former period.

Critical evaluation: 1. In this study there is no such statement about data from the database is updated or not for the entire study period. 2. Comparisons of the earlier and later years in this study suggest that the initiative is achieving a demonstrable degree of success but author do not discuss that these initiative and strategy is success full in other business schools.