Measuring the quality of cooperation in interdisciplinary research clusters

Research in the challenging field of industrial engineering and engineering management often needs the expertise from more than one discipline. Therefore interdisciplinary research has taken on continuously greater significance. Over the last years various research clusters — such as cluster of excellence — were initiated in the course of the German excellence initiative. Thereby researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds are brought together, to investigate research questions with societal and economical relevance. These new research clusters cause various challenges, especially on communication, because communication is one decisive factor of success in interdisciplinary cooperation. Approaches to investigate communication, performance and interdisciplinarity within these clusters are compared and a communication oriented measurement approach is explained. Especially the operationalization and validation of the indicator communication, giving conclusions onto the quality of cooperation, is depicted as well as measures to react on.