The Relation Between Research and Development Project Performance and Technical Communication in a Developing Country—Afghanistan

This study examines the effects of frequency and centrality of communication on research and development project success. The data used in this study are from 49 government funded R & D projects in Afghanistan during 1979. The results of the multivariate analyses show that frequency of communication is positively correlated with performance for mid and high performing groups, centrality or location of the project within the communications network is negatively related with project performance within the low performance category. The results are consistent with the evidence thus far obtained for developed countries. There appears to be little difference in the effects of centrality and frequency of communication on the performance between research and development projects. This result is not consistent with the available evidence for developed countries. The results of the regressions on the socio-metric data suggest age are negatively correlated with communication centrality. This is due to the particular circumstances found in 1979 in Afghanistan where the older scholars were typically trained in the region while the younger scholars were mostly Western trained. While conceptually this study is indebted to the research concerning developed countries, these results imply that caution is mandated in generalizing the given body of knowledge to developing countries.