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MANAGING KNOWLEDGE CREATION IN TEAMS 99

The outcome of this phase was a proposal for a research project which included a
list of ‘deliverables’ that the research team would produce jointly. This proposal then
became the contract, which bound the team of four together and against which
they would be judged by the funding body once the project was completed. While
there were no real sanctions that would apply if the team failed to deliver, there was
a potential that their reputations could be tarnished, especially with the funding
Research Council. This was clearly significant since this body was a major source
of research income for all of them. Unfortunately, the proposal was subsequently
interpreted differently by the PIs, and so became a source of continuous tension and
conflict (see below). This occurred largely because, in the rush to meet the deadline,
the detail in the proposal, in terms of the stated objectives and how they would be
achieved, had not been clearly negotiated and defined at the outset.
Once the research contract had been awarded, the PIs started working on the
project. This involved several meetings to work out how they would operate as a
team (e.g. establishing who would be responsible for what) and also to flesh out more
precisely the nature of the research problem (e.g. which theoretical perspectives and
empirical approaches would inform the research). Once the team actually started to
work together, however, the swiftly made assumptions of competence trust started to
break down. It became apparent that at least some of the PIs had in reality known very
little about the academic work of some of the others. Indeed, one of the PIs eventually
commented in exasperation that she would in future always read at least three articles
by anyone she was considering working with; implying that if she had done so in this
case she would not have gone ahead. This deterioration in perceptions of competence
trust occurred because the PIs had fundamentally different theoretical and epistemo-
logical positions, which meant that the possibility of ever reaching a consensus on
how the research should be done was remote, despite their genuine attempts to do
so. The written contract (i.e., the research proposal) also became a problem during
this phase. In retrospect at least some of the PIs felt they had committed themselves
to a proposal that had not been mapped out well in the first place.

>> PHASE 2: ENLARGING THE TEAM
Once the proposal had been accepted and the grant awarded, the research team
was enlarged with the recruitment of four ROs and one project administrator. The
four individuals initially recruited as ROs were total strangers to each other. They
were geographically dispersed across the three universities but were told that they
needed to collaborate in order to undertake the research. They were encouraged
by the PIs to work together, and several coordination mechanisms were introduced
by the PIs to encourage this integration. For example, the project was divided into
a series of work packages, which essentially laid down a formal project plan. At first
these work packages were each led by one of the ROs. However, this did not work
very effectively as the ROs found it difficult to demand action from their more senior
PIs. Moreover, the work packages proved too inflexible for the inevitable complexi-
ties of a large-scale research project. Deadlines for the different work packages were
never adhered to and the planning framework was therefore largely redundant.

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