Author : Saludadez, Jean A.

Summary : Seeking a form of knowledge that places communication as constitutive of temporary organization, Exploring the temporary organization that is research collaboration as it is structured and restructured in stories people tell. Framing the research problem in terms of a muted voice of a group of people in the research collaboration discourse: What research collaboration stories do researchers tell? And how is the temporary organization that is research collaboration structured and restructured in the stories they tell? With 30 forestry researchers in three Southeast Asian universities with which the author had access by virtue of her affiliation as student, as staff and as a scholar of a consortium of universities. From the recurring symbols and repeated expressions in their narratives, and the sequencing of repeating or not repeating a collaborative act, the author derived two types of stories, "the partner story" and "the not partner story". The partner story tells of a continuing partner relationship, the not partner story of a not continuing partner relationship. The author retold the partner and the not partner stories through eight stories in various settings. By departing from the usual conception of network as information link, the study surfaced existing networks of partner relationship obscured in managerialist stories and in the literatures on research collaboration. The networks are "hidden transcripts" existing but unseen as the researchers' experiences and perspective are unheard in the centered discourse.