Control in collaborative research and technology development: a case study in the chemical industry

It is widely accepted that companies operating in research-intensive industries need to pursue an “outward-looking”, collaborative research and technology development strategy. Research collaboration, however, always carries risks, in particular, the risk of sensitive information leakage, be it as a result of purposeful betrayal by collaborators or accidental disclosure. It has been shown that traditional legal and bureaucratic control mechanisms are not able to deal with this problem adequately and that the more “outward-looking” the research strategy that a company follows, the more it has to rely on social control mechanisms such as reputational concerns of key researchers and the incremental development of higher levels of trust among individuals. This paper analyses the relationship between management control and social control in collaborative research and development in more detail and introduces the results of a small-scale interview-based study of the trust-building and control processes in fine fragrance research.