Research collaboration in universities and academic entrepreneurship: the-state-of-the-art

There is abundant evidence that research collaboration has become the norm in every field of scientific and technical research. We provide a critical overview of the literature on research collaboration, focusing particularly on individual-level collaborations among university researchers, but we also give attention to university researchers’ collaborations with researchers in other sectors, including industry. We consider collaborations aimed chiefly at expanding the base of knowledge (knowledge-focused collaborations) as well as ones focused on production of economic value and wealth (property-focused collaborations), the latter including most academic entrepreneurship research collaborations. To help organize our review we develop a framework for analysis, one that considers attributes of collaborators, collaborative process and organization characteristics as the affect collaboration choices and outcomes. In addition, we develop and use a “Propositional Table for Research Collaboration Literature,” presented as an “Appendix” to this study. We conclude with some suggestions for possible improvement in research on collaboration including: (1) more attention to multiple levels of analysis and the interactions among them; (2) more careful measurement of impacts as opposed to outputs; (3) more studies on ‘malpractice’ in collaboration, including exploitation; (4) increased attention to collaborators’ motives and the social psychology of collaborative teams.     

El papel de la unasur ante los conflictos internacionales: dos estudios de caso

The Union of South American Nations, unasur, has, since its beginnings, stood out as an effective player in international conflict resolution and mediation. In order to achieve said resolution and mediation, this multilateral organization has appealed to different political configurations which allow for a channeling of conflicts which do not conform to institutional patterns and traditional resolutions. Despite its preference for alternate forms of resolution, presidential summits have worked as its main resource in the search for innovative solutions that are respectful of South American countries’ democratic and constitutional order. This article specifically analyzes two cases of profound institutional problems: the failed coup d’état in Ecuador (which occurred on the 30^th of September 2010) and the overthrow of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in June 2012. After studying these two extreme cases, and their political reverberations, a comprehensive view is laid out regarding unasur’s successes and failures as a player in international conflict resolutions.     

The Relative Resilience of Property: First Possession and Order Without Law in East Timor

Much of the recent literature on customary property relations in sub‐Saharan Africa has highlighted underlying characteristics of negotiability and indeterminacy. Custom is prone to reinvention as resource claimants manipulate customary references across multiple forums for property legitimation and authority. This article focuses on the resilience of customary property relations in East Timor. Based on a study of customary authority in the village of Babulo, we conclude that traditional Timorese narratives of first possession, where land authority is claimed by groups that trace descent to a mythic first settler, have acted as adaptive and resilient focal points for the reproduction of customary property relations in historical circumstances of war, colonization, and occupation. While a finding of customary resilience is not new to postcolonial contexts, the relative novelty of our study lies in its structured explanation for resilience in circumstances of war and displacement, based on the social ordering capacity of first possession principles themselves. This explanation, which derives from focal point theories for cooperative property relations, also takes into account a number of limits on the ordering capacity of first possession principles, which support a conclusion of relative or constrained resilience, particularly in terms of contested interpretations of possessory authority in contemporary East Timor.