Most of the respondents (81.2 per cent) have not come across any such hindrance or hindering policies or anything which hinder the R&D and they think it all depends on the mandates of the institute. But after carefully interviewing the scientists some of the limitations to collaboration can be elucidated below in the words of a scientist from the Institute of Rice Research, Hyderabad:
There is a limitation by National Biodiversity Authority, they insist that any project first should be approved by the biodiversity authority and then collaboration will go on.
Nowadays, the biggest challenge lies in bureaucratic procedures because there are a lot of procedures which need to be followed before taking small steps which hinder the process of scientific collaboration. Whatever collaboration takes place should be finally targeted for the agricultural improvement, for example, improvement of agricultural crop health, drug discovery from plant, plant improvement by tissue culture, etc.
Collaboration between government and academia is often hindered due to much time spent on bureaucratic processes of the government organization. An administrative process of collaboration is often much time consuming. Scientists often claim how unnecessarily time is spent on getting quotation for almost everything. Based on field study conducted at different research institutes in India, the challenges faced by individual scientists can be summed up as follows:
Lack of understanding
University and industry and their relationship have evolved over time. University’s style of working or doing research is different from industry. As some of the scientists interviewed suggest that university’s style of research is different from the industry.
Further, they suggested that research undertaken by university’s scientists is exploratory in R&D, whereas, industry develops a lot of ideas having commercial implications.
Thus, there is a need to develop linkages between basic and strategic research, and government often plays an important role in mediating the interests of different stakeholders.
Lack of mutual trust
Mutual trust builds between scientists of academia, government, and industry when there is sharing of data between the partners. Mutual trust helps in the development of technology/product as its involvement initiates the networking between two or more
partners, both working on different methods. Scientists included in the present study view trust as a preliminary source of networking ties. Mutual trust develops when extra effort is voluntary given and reciprocated. Where there is no feeling of ‘being cheated’ or loss. A sense of trust develops over time and over successful collaboration between networking parties. Literature on scientific collaboration suggests that for a scientific collaboration to be successful there should be trust between the collaborative partners and also trust is the foundation of collaboration. It is also essential for effective management of collaboration between academia and industry or within academia or industry (Sonnenwald 2007; Knorr-Cetina 1999; Dodgson 1993 and Tartari et al. 2012).
Personality traits among collaborators
Personality traits and social bonding play an important role while forming the collaboration with individual researcher. Scientists choose whom they would like to collaborate and under different circumstances. Here, personal characteristics and working style of scientists play an important role in forming collaboration. For successful collaboration, personal traits are essential.
Unequal collaboration
Scientific collaboration is often successful if the entire team of collaborators participates equally and performs their responsibility agreed in the contract or otherwise.
Conflicts arise if one partner performs less than the agreed work as mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) or contract. If one feels burdened in the process of collaboration, it will not lead to successful collaboration and thus will hinder the process of networking in the future too.
Bureaucratic process
The present study suggests that administrative process involved in forming collaboration is quite lengthy and it hampers the output of scientific collaboration. As more time is spent on getting a quotation for a small number of samples. Thus, most of the scientists interviewed suggest that bureaucratic process for should be made flexible and should accommodate the needs and convenience of collaborators.
Inability to send samples abroad
Scientists working on basic research while addressing the collaboration abroad suggest that they cannot often form the collaboration with international partners due to inability to send samples abroad as the rules of the government do not allow so. There is a need for policy changes at this level to facilitate collaboration with the international partners.
Lack of funding
Funding has decreased for agricultural research and is low in case of basic research as compared to applied research. The slash in funding for basic research affects its growth in universities. Funding does not come out at the proper time and this led to the completion of projects in a hurried manner at the last moment due to which result outcome gets adversely affected. Delay of funding is another drawback in agricultural research funding. This not only delays the term of the project but also affects the outcome of particular projects.
Collaboration is not successful when only commercial interest is involved. This mostly happens when industry comes into the picture. The industry is often guided by the commercial interest and risk-benefit factors. In collaboration with the industry, this risk
is often borne by the farmers or government. These are the concerns which should be carefully addressed by involving all the actors in network keeping in mind the benefits or remunerations of all the actors involved.
The advantage with the private sector is that they are time bound. Delay and uncertainty in establishing a partnership may enhance transaction cost. Timely response from public sector would be appreciated and this is possible only when there is increased motivation within the scientist of public institutions like university and other teaching institutes. For collaboration to happen trust is very important. According to a scientist of Agharkar Research Institute, Pune: “Scientific collaboration… where both collaborators share trust and complement each other… there should not be any conflict.”
Mutual trust is crucial to determine the effective collaboration between networking partners. Reputation or goodwill of industry is important, while forming collaborative ties between the scientists working in university or mission oriented research institutions and industry.
A university selects a list of reputed companies while forming a collaborative networking with the industry and vice-versa. Sharing of knowledge with diverse collaborators makes the potential collaborative partners more willing to collaborate in future and enables them to trust the processes (Olson and Olson 2000).