Culture and Collaboration: The eBerea case

Culture and Collaboration: The eBerea case

Albers, J.

Bouwman, H. (mentor)
De Jong, M. (mentor)

Technology, Policy and Management

Management of Technology

2013-10-03

This research has been done to explore the influence of cross-nationality preference in communication and knowledge-transfer on the emergence of collaborations in an academic research network. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions’ Individualism, Long-term orientation and Uncertainty Avoidance are proposed to affect collaboration through participants’ formal and informal communication, willingness to travel, media richness preference and online community forum participation. Results were drawn from an online survey submitted to the European and Chinese participants of the eBerea project, working for eight universities in Finland, The Netherlands, Italy and China. No significant relation between culture and collaboration can be obtained among the propositions. Nevertheless, significant differences between European and Chinese participants’ preferences on media-richness, use of the online tool and use of informal communication can be spotted in data, of which media-richness preference and the use of informal communication are the main instruments in the development of collaborations amongst researchers according to literature. Participants’ willingness to travel is almost identical amongst the Chinese and Europeans. The analysis of the collaborations shows that both groups of nationality still mainly collaborate with participants of their own nationality, the Chinese participants however show a more in-group oriented collaboration pattern then the European participants.

culture
communication
knowledge transfer
collaboration
research network

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e7946bba-d90d-4506-95e2-c662b1e7bec3

2013-10-03

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Albers, J.