Team Roles and Interactions in Academic Research Project Teams and Their Potential Influence on Team Effectiveness

Abstract

Academic research is increasingly conducted by teams rather than by individual investigators. Researchers show more interest in studying the effectiveness of such teams. Evidence shows that team science leads to publications which have higher impact ratings and more patents. However, teams conducting academic research are facing various difficulties that prevent them from being successful. This thesis examines factors influencing the effectiveness of academic research project teams and explores how team role theory can help. Data collection was conducted in the University of Ottawa in the form of 5 standardized open-ended interviews with two academic research project teams and complemented by a validated questionnaire. Both teams were in the field of health science while team A had 13 – 20 members and team B had 6 members. We adopted a multi-method qualitative-dominant comparative research design and considered each team as a unit of analysis. We inductively generated codes and used the input-process-output (IPO) theory and the team role experience and orientation (TREO) theory as overarching deductive models to analyze data. Findings show that the IPO and TREO theories are helpful in studying the effectiveness of academic research project teams. The findings suggest that further research on academic research project teams using the IPO and the TREO theories is necessary, especially on the topic of team role complementarity. They also suggest that project management training on topics such as project planning and risk management can enhance academic research project teams’ effectiveness.