Managing Japan's national collaborative basic research projects an input-interaction-integration analysis

This paper, using an input-interaction-integration analysis of management practices and project activities in Japan's national collaborative basic research projects, looks into Japan's emphasis and attempt in establishing creative research environment and effective research collaboration for promoting basic research. In all, three national collaborative programs studied both research collaboration and provision of creative research environment are observed to be significantly emphasized and practiced and considered by researchers to be important for their research. The distribution of emphasis and practice is, however, observed to be uneven across programs and sectors depending on the. Designed nature of the program and the inherent nature and management practices of the participating organizations in their respective sector.