Riding the tiger? Going along with Cranet for two decades — A relational perspective

Managing international research networks over an extended period of time is important for achieving specific kinds of results, in particular country-comparative longitudinal analyses. Yet, the problems linked with it are only rarely addressed in the management literature. In this article we analyse management issues of one concrete research collaboration (Cranet) by taking a relational perspective and particularly looking at the life cycle dynamics and the coordination and control mechanisms. In addition, we discuss overarching issues related to networks like Cranet. Overall, this article provides researchers interested in such management issues with a number of ‘lessons to learn’ from the Cranet example.