This is a doctoral dissertation study which will investigate the formation and management of interorganizational project teams in high energy physics. The shift to team science began in high energy physics after World War II. In the 1950's and 1960's, experiments were performed by small single-institution group of physicists. Today groups of 180-200 scientists at several institutions are common. The study will examine, among other things, how a research team selects goal and membership to maximize the team performance, and what the role of the team leaders is in creating the optimum fit between goal, team membership, and the sponsoring organization. The study will utilize interviews with high energy physicists about their participation in a particular experiment, and data from a database on all high energy physics experiments conducted from 1974 to the present will be used to estimate variance in team performance. This study will contribute to a growing literature on collaboration and the processes facilitating successful collaboration between scientists.
