The Patterning of Collaborative Behavior and Knowledge Culminations in Interdisciplinary Research Centers

Minerva 58 (1):71-95 (2020)
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Abstract

Due to investments in interdisciplinary research endeavors, the number and variety of interdisciplinary research centers have grown exponentially during the past decades. While interdisciplinary research centers rely on varied organizational arrangements, we know little about the conditions and processes that mediate collaborative arrangements and interdisciplinary research outcomes. This study examines how different collaborative arrangements shape scholars’ experiences of interdisciplinary research and understandings of interdisciplinary knowledge culminations in the context of university-based research centers. We conducted three in-depth qualitative case studies on different centers, which recruited researchers from natural sciences, medicine, and social sciences. We refer to them as the Biotech Center, the Environmental Center, and the Premature Birth Center. Our analysis of 53 interviews with interdisciplinary scholars across the three centers demonstrates that the scholars perceive particular features of the centers’ collaborative arrangements as meaningful for interdisciplinary collaboration. Specifically, the center’s mission, physical architecture, and leadership and task structure were seen as affecting scholars’ motivation, interaction, and inclusion in the centers, which then shaped the interdisciplinary knowledge culminations. At the Biotech Center, knowledge was translated towards concrete products, at the Environmental Center knowledge was pooled together from varied fields to create new problem framings, and at the Premature Birth Center, interdisciplinary collaboration was crafted through top-down knowledge brokerage.

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Elizabeth Evans
Clemson University

References found in this work

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
Epistemic cultures: how the sciences make knowledge.Karin Knorr-Cetina - 1999 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.David Bohm - 1964 - Philosophical Quarterly 14 (57):377-379.
A taxonomy of interdisciplinarity.Julie Thompson Klein - 2010 - In Julie Thompson Klein & Carl Mitcham (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Oxford University Press.

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