The Effects of Inter-Organizational Communication on Collaborative Intellectual Capital

This paper discusses the critical success factors for a research network partnership between three universities and three private sector companies funded by a government agency. While there are many studies that outline the factors needed for an ideal collaboration, our study analyzes the reasons why collaboration fails and the role played by communication in the failure. Conceptual frameworks on collaboration and communication are used to situate our study. The conceptual frameworks include a number of dichotomous dimensions including academic dissemination of knowledge vs. industrial need for confidentiality in a competitive environment and the public funding model for universities vs. the government-funding model. These frameworks were used to situate the case with respect to the literature to compare and contrast the critical communication and conflict resolution strategies needed for the collaborative creation and preservation of intellectual capital. We conducted qualitative research on a project spanning over two years aimed at a collaborative effort to solve a specific problem: how to design and implement a resource and expertise-sharing system that all participants could use. Our results showed that, as a result of the communication practices used, knowledge sharing became quite difficult and the creation of intellectual capital faced major obstacles. The major role played by trusted relationships to create social capital was demonstrated. The case study provides lessons learned that can be used to foster inter-organizational networks to produce innovations effectively and efficiently.