Discovering the Culture of Collaboration in an Institutional Merger

Willie L. McKether, The University of Toledo

Jerry Van Hoy, The University of Toledo
Gerald Natal, The University of Toledo
Christine Rigda, The University of Toledo
Kenneth Riopelle, Wayne State University
Andrew Seary, Simon Fraser University

In 2006 the University of Toledo and The Medical University of Ohio

merged to become one institution. Since the merger, administrators and
faculty have questioned the extent to which the institutional merger has
affected cross campus, interdisciplinary collaboration between faculty
located approximately three miles apart. This ongoing research examines
collaboration in the context of the merger in two iterative stages. The first
stage, and focus of this paper, examines the university’s grants database
through social network analysis. We use the institution’s grants database
to examine the extent to which collaboration changed in the post merger
environment. Using the Multinet social network analysis program, we
specifically highlight a methodological procedure created by the co-authors
of this paper to examine collaboration between faculty at the university’s
main campus and health science campuses between 2003 and 2010. We
analyze over 5,000 grant applications to discover 55 jointly submitted grant
applications by 59 faculty members from both campuses. We argue that
these 55 grant applications serve as a leading indicator of collaboration at
the merged institution and that the visualization, mapping and statistical
data has enabled us to determine annually: (1) which faculty collaborate
across the main and health science campuses; (2) isolates, or people who
do not collaborate; and (3) central people in the collaborative network. The
second research stage will include qualitative informant interviews with
faculty, staff and administrators to identify inter-dynamics and to provide
context for the quantitative and social network data. Our aim is to
understand what personal and structural factors in the university
environment encourage or inhibit cross campus, interdisciplinary
collaboration. This paper serves to provide insight on both a method to
document cross-disciplinary collaboration using a university grants
database, which can be replicated by other institutions, as well as factors
that influence such collaboration.
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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 2, Issue 4, The 1st

Collaborative Innovation Networks Conference - COINs2009. Edited by
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