TY - JOUR
T1 - Innovation in the Knowledge Age
T2 - implications for collaborative science
AU - Hinrichs, Margaret M.
AU - Seager, Thomas
AU - Tracy, Sarah
AU - Hannah, Mark
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper has benefitted from several helpful conversations with Kara Hall, Michael O’Rourke, Kaitlin Vortherms, William Guschwan, and Camilla Norgaard Jensen. This research is supported by the Environmental Protection Agency Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Program (#83558001), the National Science Foundation (#1140190, #1343772), and the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - Current trends validate the notion that multifaceted, multimodal interdisciplinary collaborations lead to increased research productivity in publications and citations, compared to those achieved by individual researchers. Moreover, it may be that scientific breakthroughs are increasingly achieved by interdisciplinary research teams. Nonetheless, despite the perceived importance of collaboration and its bibliometric benefits, today’s scientists are still trained to be autonomous, work individually, and encourage their graduate students to do the same—perpetuating values which impede the creation of collaborative space between disciplines. As a consequence, scientists working in teams typically report serious obstacles to collaboration. This paper builds off of recent recommendations from a 2015 National Academies report on the state of team science which emphasizes greater definition of roles, responsibility, accountability, goals, and milestones. However, these recommendations do not address the subjective, relational components of collaboration which can drive innovation and creativity. The relational side of collaboration is key to understanding the capacity and capabilities of the knowledge workers, such as scientists and engineers, who comprise interdisciplinary research teams. The authors’ recommendations, grounded in organizational communication and knowledge worker literature, include a renewed focus on the process of organizing through communication rather than focusing on organization as an outcome or consequence of teamwork, leading and cultivating team members rather than managing them, and the need to address self-driven, rather than external, motivations to engage in knowledge work.
AB - Current trends validate the notion that multifaceted, multimodal interdisciplinary collaborations lead to increased research productivity in publications and citations, compared to those achieved by individual researchers. Moreover, it may be that scientific breakthroughs are increasingly achieved by interdisciplinary research teams. Nonetheless, despite the perceived importance of collaboration and its bibliometric benefits, today’s scientists are still trained to be autonomous, work individually, and encourage their graduate students to do the same—perpetuating values which impede the creation of collaborative space between disciplines. As a consequence, scientists working in teams typically report serious obstacles to collaboration. This paper builds off of recent recommendations from a 2015 National Academies report on the state of team science which emphasizes greater definition of roles, responsibility, accountability, goals, and milestones. However, these recommendations do not address the subjective, relational components of collaboration which can drive innovation and creativity. The relational side of collaboration is key to understanding the capacity and capabilities of the knowledge workers, such as scientists and engineers, who comprise interdisciplinary research teams. The authors’ recommendations, grounded in organizational communication and knowledge worker literature, include a renewed focus on the process of organizing through communication rather than focusing on organization as an outcome or consequence of teamwork, leading and cultivating team members rather than managing them, and the need to address self-driven, rather than external, motivations to engage in knowledge work.
KW - Collaboration
KW - Communicative construction of organizations
KW - Emotional leadership
KW - Interdisciplinary science
KW - Knowledge work
KW - Team science
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U2 - 10.1007/s10669-016-9610-9
DO - 10.1007/s10669-016-9610-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84990847679
SN - 2194-5403
VL - 37
SP - 144
EP - 155
JO - Environment Systems and Decisions
JF - Environment Systems and Decisions
IS - 2
ER -