Atividades cooperativas de pesquisa científica e tecnológica em Minas Gerais: projetos, redes e consórcios

Abstract

Data were gathered on 79 individual scientific and technological research projects and networks being developed through cooperation among researchers in Minas Gerais Brazil, up to year 2003. Several aspects related to the creation, structure, dynamics and operation ofthese alliances were described. They reveal a highly rapid growth in the number of established partnerships beginning in 1998, and this can be related to the fact that funding agencies in Brazil, either at a national or regional level, had launched an intensive movement for enhancing cooperative researches since then. The survey identified 673 researchers who had actually participated in shared R&D activities. Information was asked to them, through Internet, in order to capture their perceptions on factors that either motivate the creation of partnerships; stimulate or inhibit their stability; facilitate or damage the possibility of arriving to the aimed results. Replies were received from 305 researchers, 82,3% of them holding doctoral degrees, as became known. Despite the high level of the sample, the process by which it was obtained doesnt allow to consider it as a probabilistic one, so preventing the possibility of making strong statistical generalizations from the sample. Two main theoretical perspectives were considered, the Institutional Theory and the Relational Exchange Theory, complemented by elements from other organizational, sociological or economic theories. The two major theoretical approaches seemed useful to help understanding the studied phenomena. The collected data, when submitted to Cluster Analysis, showed a strong trend towards isomorphic perceptions, by the researchers, of almost all the 11 factors generated by the Factorial Analysis. Thus, the distinctive classes of researchers previously determined in terms of academic degree, research experience or type of organization they were engaged in, didnt reveal strong differences in the way they see and feel cooperative R&D endeavors. This find led to a search of the source of this isomorphism and it is believed that coercion forces come from the action of the funding agencies that, through the mechanisms of biddings, stimulate cooperative research. As the participating organization dont have well structured research activities evaluation systems for actually justify partnerships in terms of effectiveness and efficiency neither the funding agencies do -, then this stimuli to alliances originate from rationalized myths used to justify their policies. Meanwhile, the mechanism spread despite its limitations but so far the process is not fully institutionalized and can be positioned only in one of the previous phases: habitualization or objectification. The obtained data also demonstrate the importance that is being given to the contracts even the informal, social ones. Among the stronger perspectives of the Relational Exchange Theory, came out of the data that trust, gratitude and solidarity are paramount for motivating, assure stability and avoidance of fails in arriving to the desired results.Unexpectedly, the existence of personal extraprofessional relations among the participants of a partnership does not appear to have the importance given to it by other authors. The management of the alliances, encompassing elements of decision making, information flow and the mechanisms for sharing results were features that received very high evaluation from the researchers. They also consider that the different mechanisms by which funding agencies relate with theirs users dont help to reach the aimed results of the cooperative activities andhas not a positive effect in motivating and giving stability to alliances.