ORGANIZATION OF THE WORK IN INSTITUTION OF R&D AND KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION IN THE AGRIBUSINESS

Abstract

The relationship between teamwork and partnership, and R&D production in EMBRAPA was verified after being selected due to its similarity with what Gibbons et al. (1996) propose in their "The new production of knowledge". All the data was gathered in EMBRAPA's management databases - covering the period between the years of 2000 and 2003. Inside this environment, the production filing is guided by gauges, organized in four subgroups: technical-scientific production; production of technical publications; technology transfer and image promotion; development of technologies, products and processes. These, added to the total production are the variables concerning the R&D production in this paper. Afterwards the data was submitted to the statistical analysis and qualitative discussion, looking for the object's subjectivity. It is interesting to observe the great extent of extreme observations for 5 variables. Between the partnership indexes and teams number, on one side, and R&D production on the other one, the correlation coefficients are low. Those results bring to discussion the possible lack of relation between the independent and dependent variables. We base the discrepancies between the R&D Embrapa's units expecting that those with a greater staff and/or with a greater span of research, in terms of themes, will establish a bigger number of teams. Bigger partnership indexes are expected from those areas of greater concentration of S&T. Those quantitative results, in these circumstances, do not mean that teams and partnerships are disposable in order to promote knowledge construction. The quantitative results are limited and, on the other hand, the universe studied is huge and full of diversities. From this information, we can admit that teams and partnerships are good strategies to achieve the objective in this new way of constructing knowledge.